Today's Topics:
1. Southern Africa, zabalaza.net: Practices of
Self-Organisation in South Africa: The Experience of the 1980s
and its Implications for Contemporary Protest
Self-Organisation in South Africa: The Experience of the 1980s
and its Implications for Contemporary Protest
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. anarkismo.net: The Limits of Hegemony - Review of Jonathan
M. Smucker, Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals by Wayne
Price (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3.
M. Smucker, Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals by Wayne
Price (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3.
France, Alternative Libertaire AL Novembre - Essay:
Véronique Decker, "The School of the People" (fr, it, pt)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
The talk that I'm going to present today is based on a research project that I carried out
with my colleague Vladislav Kruchinsky in South Africa in 2011-2013. The aim of our
research was to analyse and explore the methods and practices of self-organisation from
below that existed in the crucial 1980s period of the anti-apartheid struggle. ---- The
vast majority of the material that's written about that period of struggle is devoted to
the role of the large, institutionalised anti-apartheid forces, such as the United
Democratic Front, an umbrella body for the community-based anti-apartheid organisations
including church and sports groups, which was formed in 1983. A large part of it also
focuses on the African National Congress, which is presented in the dominant narrative of
the ANC as the leader of the anti-apartheid struggle.
My aim, with Vlad, was to look beyond these big organisations, and to focus on
communities' struggles, viewed through ordinary people's stories. When we started our
research, we understood that we wanted first-hand information, from the participants in
the struggles. This is social history, meaning that it looks at the view from below, with
the people interviewed themselves active participants in the stories they tell. We
conducted extensive interviews with active members of the communities, township residents,
from those days. We hope to finish this project with a book, which will be a compilation
of the interviews.
Practices of Self-Organisation in South Africa: The Experience of the 1980s and its
Implications for Contemporary Protest
By Daria Zelenova
This is a lightly edited transcript of a presentation at a workshop hosted by the
International Labour Research & Information Group (ILRIG) and the Orange Farm Human Rights
Advice Centre in Drieziek extension 1, Orange Farm township, south of Soweto, South
Africa, on 24 June 2017. It was attended by a hall full of community and worker activists,
including veterans of the big rebellions of the 1980s.
The talk that I'm going to present today is based on a research project that I carried out
with my colleague Vladislav Kruchinsky in South Africa in 2011-2013. The aim of our
research was to analyse and explore the methods and practices of self-organisation from
below that existed in the crucial 1980s period of the anti-apartheid struggle.
The vast majority of the material that's written about that period of struggle is devoted
to the role of the large, institutionalised anti-apartheid forces, such as the United
Democratic Front, an umbrella body for the community-based anti-apartheid organisations
including church and sports groups, which was formed in 1983. A large part of it also
focuses on the African National Congress, which is presented in the dominant narrative of
the ANC as the leader of the anti-apartheid struggle.
My aim, with Vlad, was to look beyond these big organisations, and to focus on
communities' struggles, viewed through ordinary people's stories. When we started our
research, we understood that we wanted first-hand information, from the participants in
the struggles. This is social history, meaning that it looks at the view from below, with
the people interviewed themselves active participants in the stories they tell. We
conducted extensive interviews with active members of the communities, township residents,
from those days. We hope to finish this project with a book, which will be a compilation
of the interviews.
History From Below
The interviews that we collected shed light on very important local histories of the
politicisation of, and resistance by, working class and poor people, against economic
inequality and the oppression of the racist apartheid regime. We learned how ordinary
township residents, not necessarily activists, but ordinary aunties and school pupils,
mothers and grandmothers, and trade unionists, reclaimed power at the level of their
yards, their blocks, their street, their zones, and eventually, of the whole township. We
learned how new spaces based on a relatively horizontal distribution of power emerged, and
what challenges this "horizontality" faced.
In addition to the interviews, we did work at two major archives of South Africa, which
have collected material from the 1980s struggles. These are the Wits Historical Papers at
the University of the Witwatersrand, and the South African History Archive next to the
Constitutional Court in Johannesburg. We analysed original leaflets, brochures, minutes of
meetings, posters and newspapers from the 1980s.
I am going to present some of this material today. The main question in our research was:
Why social self-organisation by the working class and the poor in South Africa, based on
the principles of equal distribution of power, and often with a very horizontal or flat
structure, became an idea that could inspire masses around the country, and worked as a
practice that helped dismantle apartheid?
I'd like to start with why we focused on the 1980s. We do so for two reasons.
First of all the 1980s was a crucial period in the anti-apartheid struggle, with mass
resistance coupled to unprecedented levels of social and political self-organisation. That
was the time when the "notions of ‘popular democracy,' ‘people's power,'
‘self-empowerment', ‘democracy from below' were all introduced as new ideas and practices
into South African politics" (in the words of UDF veteran Raymond Suttner, in an interview).
A careful analysis of the 1980s in South Africa shows that the dismantling of the
apartheid regime became possible because the process of resistance was dispersed through
the whole country, through countless acts of local disobedience, of consumer/ transport/
school boycotts, of strikes and stay-aways - or community-based general strikes. This
dispersed resistance built on, and gave rise to, alternative practices of self-governance
by ordinary people.
Secondly, a very important feature of that period was a democratisation of movements, and
the birth of a radical democratic culture. This included changes at the personal level. It
was in the 1980s that, for the first time, issues like gender inequality, of freedom of
choice of a partner, and of domestic violence were openly raised on a wide scale, and when
it became possible to openly oppose "traditional leaders" like chiefs and kings, something
noted by analysts like Michael Neocosmos.
A major political event in that decade was the creation of the UDF as an umbrella
structure capable of uniting a huge number of the already-existing organisations
throughout the country, and of spurring more organising. The UDF was contested, but over
time, it came to identify itself strongly with a radical vision of change.
A "People's Democracy"
Leading UDF figure Morphe Morobe commented in a talk called "Towards a People's Democracy"
that a "democratic South Africa is one of the aims or goals of our struggle." But he also
made it clear that democracy is the means by which we conduct the struggle:
The creation of democratic means is for us as important as having democratic goals as our
objective. Too often models of a future democratic South Africa are put forward which bear
no relation to existing organisations, practices and traditions of political struggle in
this country. What is possible in the future depends on what we are able to create and
sustain now. A democratic South Africa will not be fashioned only after transference of
political power to the majority has taken place.
The UDF outlined a much more radical vision of democracy than what South Africa ended up
with in 1994. Morobe continued "Our democratic aim... is control over every aspect of our
lives, and not just the right (important as it is) to vote for a central government every
four to five years." He stressed that "The creation of a democratic South Africa" was not
something to be left for the future, or delivered from above; it "can only become a
reality with the participation of millions of South Africans in the process - a process
which has already begun in the townships, factories and schools of our land," through the
yard and street committees, civics, student groups, unions and other formations that had
emerged.
As the 1980s progressed, this vision became a practice, both in daily struggles, and when,
as we will see, some organisations involved in resistance started to replace the state
with what were called "organs of people's power." In some cases, for example, street
committees helped run public services, youth organisations created parks, and people
created self-defence and anti-crime patrols.
Unions and Townships
It is necessary to identify the two most important prerequisites for the emergence of the
UDF. First, from the middle of the 1970s, after the famous 1973 Durban strikes, the
independent trade union movement was gaining serious strength: mass strikes and factory
struggles took place in the country, workers established democratic control of their
unions and created strike committees. The spread of the democratic culture and organising
approach of these unions, especially the Federation of South African Trade Unions formed
in 1979, played a major role in mobilizing ordinary people, and in enabling the
development of so-called "organs of people's power" outside the workplace.
Secondly, in the townships where, since the late 1970s, there were conditions of
socio-economic decline in the context of capitalist crisis, there was the emergence of new
organisations in the forms of street committees and action committees and "civic"
associations.
While the unions raised issues around wages, transport, racist treatment and so on at
work, the new community structures' task was to fight for the everyday social needs of the
residents: decent housing, lower rents, electricity, against evictions, etc. As with the
unions, these struggles raised larger issues around the distribution of wealth and power;
and, as with the unions, these structures enabled people to take more and more control
over their daily lives, and to start to build a counter-power against the government -
resisting the state, and sometimes later replacing some of its functions.
The socio-economic situation of township residents was very difficult. In conditions of
growing unemployment, rising prices, and low-quality education and municipal services, and
the under-development of the townships, issues like employment, housing and services were
quite sharp. It must be remembered that, in many townships, there was little access to
electricity, or to water in the home, sewerage systems often involved public toilets or
the bucket system, and there were massive housing backlogs.
In this situation, women and children often played a key role in struggles. Even
non-politicized housewives were easily mobilized into the struggle for local change. One
example comes from the Valhalla Park Civic Association, which was formed by the residents
of the Coloured township of Valhalla Park in the Western Cape to address evictions. Auntie
Jane Roberts, who took part in this from 1984, told us that "we started to see what was
happening to the people in the communities, and we decided as a community, ‘Okay, we gonna
to be built up now.'" The Civic reconnected water and electricity that was cut off by the
authorities, and put people back into the houses if they were evicted.
Another activist, Auntie Gertie, helped build the Valhalla Concerned Residents
Association, after she was evicted, with her three little children. After she had some
success in fighting evictions, she started to help others in her area. She told us her
story of involvement in the struggle:
I grew up in poverty and I used to live here, and there, and all around. As my father was
working, he wasn't able to look after me as a child; I had to go to school and I lived by
one auntie, and then by another auntie, and so, I travelled around as a child. And at the
age of, I think, 10-11 my father got married to another woman and ... then I went to live
with the stepmother and she was[not]kind to me. I grew up, there was nobody I could have
gone to and say, ‘My[eye]is sore,' so I grew up very independently.... So I became very
independent, do everything on my own. And in the 1980s, I became a single mother: I gave
birth to my son and not married; and then a daughter, and then another daughter; and then
I had three children. And I became a single mother then. And yes, there was nobody to go
to: I just had to find my own way, with the little money I earn, I had to find my own way.
Through that I've become into struggle.... I have been evicted by the City of Cape Town.
Not twice but thrice. That is how I became involved in the civic organisation.
She continued:
There were three of us... We called people to the public meeting, and we spoke with the
people and said we're forming this organisation named Concerned Residents, we are ...
going to assist you - and who of you people is prepared to join us?
Another respondent, Trevor Ngwane, who was active in the Jabavu branch of the Soweto Civic
Association in the 1980s, remembered how this civic operated:
...we met in people's houses, we had one meeting a week... We would rotate, this time in
this house, and this time in this... For example we would hold a meeting in a priest's
place, because he's respected, or in a teacher's place, or in a trade unionist's house.
And then there was no membership, and the issues we discussed were problems in the
townships, the lights, we talked about the end of apartheid, we talked about children's
education, or someone died, and they don't have anybody to bury him[about raising funds].
The call for such meetings was often made door-to-door, meeting the neighbours personally,
or writing small notes and leaving them under the front door of the house.
Committees and Civics
The civics were, in short, residents' associations that dealt with the concerns of the
people. They took different forms, but the typical civic had an executive committee, which
comprised a chairperson, vice-chairperson, a secretary and a treasurer. The leaders would
often be elected for three years, but they could be re-elected or recalled, upon the
demand of the majority. The duty of the leaders was to report back to the communities in
which they were based. A very important point is that the leaders were parts of these
communities, facing the same problems as other residents. As Aunty Jane put it: "We were
in the community fighting for the community," so "We can't as the leaders say to the
community we want that or we demand that... they are using us and they tell us what to
do." A culture of accountability was revealed itself in procedures during the meetings, in
regular report-backs, and in continual communication with the residents.
The chairpersons' functions were basically those of co-ordination, calling meetings, and
organisation and preparation for campaigns. The idea of leadership as "serving the
community" went hand-in-hand with a sensitive and careful attitude towards the
decision-making process.
Civics interacted in different ways with more localised forms of self-organisation like
block, yard and street committees. Like the civics, these were formed to tackle specific
problems, such as high rentals, poor electrification, bad housing, the bucket system and
crime. In contrast to civics, where leadership tended to be dominated by more educated
people, fluent in English or Afrikaans, with some political background, these local
committees centred on ordinary township residents, often without political experience or
organising and facilitating skills. Like civics, these committees emerged in the late
1970s and proliferated in the 1980s.
In some cases, they were separate from the civics, and were more spontaneous local groups.
The strongest and most democratic civics, however, were built on a solid foundation of
yard, block and street committees. In these cases, the civic actually consisted of the
committees operating in the township communities. One interesting example comes from
Belville on the outskirts of Cape Town in the early 1980s, as reported in Grassroots
newspaper:
The people of Belville realized that they needed a strong organisation to fight for their
rights. This meant that the organisation had to represent everyone in Belville. So house
meetings were held in all streets! And the people from each street elected a street
representative. There are some of the duties of a street representative: 1. The street
representative must know all the problems of the people in the street. 2. They must
represent the needs of the street at representative committee meetings. 3. They must
report all representative committee meetings to their street. 4. The representative
committee is building unity in the area because it represents all the streets. 5. The
street reps must not work alone, but with the help of all the people in the street. So the
street rep is the link between the rep committee. In this way the people are working
together to build a strong organisation.
Then the street representatives in Belville joined the larger Cape Areas Housing Action
Committee, which covered a number of neighbourhoods and townships, and fought bad housing
conditions. By coming together in CAHAC, people could share their experiences and find
solutions to common problems and work together in common actions. And through street
committees, set up by ordinary residents with mandated delegates, ordinary people could
control the civic organisation.
Another remarkable example comes from Alexandra township in Johannesburg, which was a
hotbed of struggle, where radical unionists from the FOSATU tradition played an important
role. Moses Mayekiso, a metalworker from FOSATU and a leader of the Alexandra Action
Committee, explained how the township was organised in the mid-1980s:
It was the pyramid structure. The people in the yard (because Alexandra is so overcrowded,
there are about 4 houses in one yard, in one house you find there are 4 to 6 rooms, and in
each room there is a family ... that's 4 times 8 number of people - sharing one tap,
outside tap of water, sharing one toilet: you can imagine) ... would get together in one
yard and create a yard committee to regulate living conditions, so that there will be no
conflict in the yard. Also that yard committee comes together to create a block committee:
you put many yards ... from that street and that street and that's the block committee.
Then from block committee, there will be a street committee, then area committee - up to
the civic. People would come together to elect their leader, every street, democratically
raise their hand and people would decide on their leadership.
Media and Education
The 1970s and 1980s were also a time of a vibrant alternative press and media, which
provided an alternative to the big business newspapers and the government-run broadcasting
system. These helped share news, and ideas, and politics. For example, community-based
newspapers such as Speak and Grassroots included numerous discussions about how to include
more people into the decision-making process. Special study groups were launched by
activists and community leaders in order to share knowledge on popular participation and
democratic organisation.
Respondents interviewed also pointed to other structures that emerged to organise people
and raise their grievances, sometimes at meetings at people's houses, and sometimes in
public mass meetings. One such experience was shared by Bricks Mokolo, an activist in
Orange Farm community, who started to get involved into the struggle in the late 1970s.
In 1985, Bricks was elected a chairperson of the Vaal Parents' Education Crisis Committee.
Education crisis committees emerged as a response to the crisis in education, and drew in
children and youth, as well as parents - and, where possible, teachers. It must be
remembered that this was a time of massive revolts in black African, Coloured and Indian
schools, as well as in the universities, and that youth - including school-leavers, the
unemployed, and those who were not studying - played a massive role in committees and
civics, as well as education struggles, and in the unions. Class boycotts were common, and
youth were in the forefront of clashes with the authorities.
Bricks explained:
...there are challenges facing your community that needs you and your child - everyone -
to work together. We faced a lot of problems: houses, education, labour. Now we looked at
the education problems, and we said we need parents to get involved into supporting our
children at school, and fighting or demanding the education right for our children, and
there were demands that were put forward. One of the demands was free education, and one
department for free education for all, including blacks.
"People's Power" Takes Over
The massive township struggles of 1984 to 1986 saw a huge growth in the power of the
various organs of people's power in the townships - block, yard and street committees;
civics; student and youth groups; women's associations; union structures based in
neighbourhoods; education crisis committees - and massive de-stabilisation of apartheid
local government. As Mayekiso noted, a focus on immediate problems led easily to an attack
on the system as a whole:
The conditions that caused the formation of these organisations were bread and butter
issues, but addressing these bread and butter issues automatically drives you to politics.
"Why the streets are dirty? Why we are not getting houses?" So through these issues people
got politicized and conscientised.
Effective township organisations, Mayekiso added, allowed extremely effective protest
actions with high degrees of popular support. The formation of strong self-organised
bodies made it possible to run massive campaigns:
...at the beginning, when people would meet in the garage or in an open space in someone's
yard, and in the streets openly,[they would]... get trouble by the police. But people
defied and met. Not only the structure itself, the committees, but the actual meetings
were the organs of people's power, including the structures themselves...
General meetings, firstly, is where the grassroots democracy belongs, it's actual people's
power; that's the main basic organ of people's power, therefore the main decisions comes
from there, like the boycotts: the decision of boycotts would arise out of those meetings,
from the grassroots.... ‘We're not happy with the bus fares'... the decision to protest
and to march is made there. If the committees can't decide by themselves they have to send
the idea at the general meeting, if it's anonymous - it's anonymous, or sometimes they
vote. If it's one who is opposed - it'll be taken to a vote...
As protests grew, including attacks on state representatives, many areas became no-go
areas for the police, and when the army was sent in, it faced resistance. The Black Local
Authorities imposed by the apartheid government often collapsed, while councils in
Coloured and Indian areas lacked credibility. In many places, organs of people's power
displaced the BLAs. In townships like Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, Suttner noted in
a 2004 article, self-organisation reached a peak when "widely representative community
elements took control of important aspects of township life and the fleeing of government
officials left a vacuum, which the civic structures filled."
This was the period in which street and civics started to run public services, when youth
organisations created parks, and when people created self-defence and anti-crime patrols
replaced the police in many areas. This understanding of struggle as self-empowering
became central to anti-apartheid propaganda, and was articulated in slogans and concepts
like "people's power," or "Amandla-Ngawethu." These reflected the situation that was
already happening on a mass scale. In 1986, when organs of people's power had already
emerged in many of the South African townships and when BLAs were falling, the exiled ANC
leadership made its famous call for "ungovernability" and "people's power." The ANC in
exile had recognized the strong potential and possibilities of self-organising, and hoped
to use it for the purposes of the party.
The End of the Revolt
The apartheid state responded to the rebellions with repression, using extra-legal forces,
such as vigilantes and hit squads, and the mobilisation of the army, expansion of the
police, and the auxiliary forces of the homeland regimes. The second State of Emergency in
1986 led to the arrest of more than 20,000 people, and involved the largest repressive
operation in the history of South Africa. Police and army violence, including in
detention, was common, and by the end of 1986 the state had suppressed (or at least,
greatly weakened), many community-based organisations. The UDF was severely restricted in
its operations, and a number of high-profile UDF figures, as well as activists like
Mayekiso, were charged with treason.
The more intense the state repression, the worse the effect on the ability of people's
power to be successful. The arrest of many of the most experienced leaders also led to
structures of accountability being undermined and escalating clashes with the security
forces by youth, leading to a militarisation of struggle and a decline in a broader
community involvement.
But the apartheid state now knew that major reforms were needed. Efforts were made in the
late 1980s to carry out reforms aimed at weakening the protest movement, and to reach out
to the ANC. When the transition period started in 1990, the ANC leadership worked hard to
establish its hegemony over the community and youth structures and the unions, with the
UDF shut down in 1991, many of its affiliates absorbed into ANC wings or into ANC-aligned
groups. When the ANC came into power in 1994 the days of "people's power" were gone, the
movements of the 1980s co-opted or closed or sidelined. There was a process of
depoliticisation and a move to focus on state power, with the ANC-led state meant to
"deliver" to the citizens.
Some Lessons
It is important to note that not everything was perfect in the 1980s. There were power
abuses, and important challenges to democratic practices. Some of the civics did not
change leaders: this is explained by the domination of charismatic personalities, and,
sometimes, the abuse of leadership positions. The fact that participation in any kind of
resistance organisation ran the risk of being arrested and charged meant many people were
not willing to take the risk of openly participating.
Civics faced challenges of gender and age inequalities: there was a generation gap between
elder residents and the leaders of the civic associations consisted basically of youth,
who sometimes imposed their will on the others. This could include using violence. There
were tensions between civics and unions, in part because the unions wanted to ensure their
autonomy and were wary of undemocratic practices in UDF-affiliated bodies. The ANC also
exercised a growing influence behind the scenes, and ANC militants were often intolerant
of non-ANC voices.
However, the period of mass self-organisation in the 1980s showed the possibilities of the
people's self-organisation and self-rule from below. It illustrated the potential for
co-operation between trade unions, community based organisations, and other types- youth,
cultural, sports - and unprecedented levels of solidarity. It showed mutual help projects,
which created spaces of solidarity and communal support: soup kitchens, sewing
collectives, community crèches, anti-crime patrols, defence units, and people's courts.
The radical interpretation of democracy deserves special attention. In the 1980s,
democratic practices, like mass meetings, the accountability of leaders and committees,
were important, and people also saw democracy's value to struggles.
Today, many of the principles of the self-organisation of the 1980s, and the very culture
of radical, participatory and direct democracy, with its obligatory and absolute
accountability of community leaders, with its special love for long and open meetings, are
continued by some contemporary social movements in South Africa. I think that is the
legacy of the 1980s, when many people believe that democracy is not an abstract idea, but
rather a tool and practice, which must be used by the whole community.
https://zabalaza.net/2017/12/01/practices-of-self-organisation-in-south-africa-the-experience-of-the-1980s-and-its-implications-for-contemporary-protest/
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Message: 2
How can we build an effective popular movement to change society? That is the subject of
this book, which has been widely praised. In my opinion, it has important and profoundly
true things to say, but is politically unbalanced and mistaken in certain ways. ---- This
is an important and interesting book about how to build a movement. From the blurbs it
includes, it has been highly praised by many well-known militants and theorists of change.
In my opinion, as a libertarian (antiauthoritarian) socialist, it has something profoundly
true to say, but it is politically unbalanced. ---- We live in a time when awful things
are happening, politically, economically, socially, militarily, and ecologically-and worse
things threaten to happen. Yet, as Jonathan Smucker points out (relying on the polls),
"Today in the United States more millennials identify with socialism than with
capitalism....On nearly every major issue, relatively progressive positions have come to
enjoy a majority of support....The establishment is in crisis. Popular opinion is on our
side." (2017; 252-254) Why then are those committed to social justice so weak,
marginalized, and with minimal political impact? What can be done to change that? That is
the important topic addressed by this book.
Smucker's message is essentially this: too much of the Left is inward-looking, comfortable
with itself, and self-involved. It is correct, even essential, to have a core group of
reliable militants, but leftists must reach out to others, go beyond their comfort zone,
and get other people involved, to whatever degree they can be involved. It is not enough
to build a club of the like-minded. It is necessary to work out a strategy for winning
gains, for influencing others, for achievement, and for exercising power. It is necessary
to build a movement, a movement for power. The strategic aim should be to challenge the
dominance (the "hegemony") of the ruling elite over popular consciousness and established
institutions-and to ultimately replace its hegemony with that of the Left.
That is the book in a nutshell. He repeats the message over and over, to drive it home,
with various elaborations and modifications. This message is true and important but not
especially new. For decades, revolutionary Marxist and anarchist organizations have urged
their members to go beyond middle class intellectuals and students, to root themselves in
the working class-particularly in the most oppressed and discriminated-against sectors of
the working class (African-Americans, unskilled workers, women, etc.). This was essential
for building an effective revolutionary movement.
For example, in the ‘70s, Hal Draper criticized sects which postured as small mass
parties: "The life-principle of a revolutionary mass party is not simply its Full Program,
which can be copied with nothing but an activist typewriter and can be expanded or
contracted like an accordion. Its life-principle is its integral involvement as a part of
the working-class movement, its immersion in the class struggle not by a Central Committee
decision but because it lives there." (quoted in Krul 2011)
Prefiguration vs. Strategy
The problem of the self-enclosed and isolated grouping, then, applies in many forms on the
Left. It applies to small revolutionary socialist organizations, built around their dogmas
and their newspapers. It applies to co-op stores and bicycle clubs. But Smucker is
especially aiming his criticism at anarchists, based on his experience in the Occupy Wall
Street encampment in 2011. (Which is also consistent with my own-much more
limited-experience with OWS.) He describes the anarchists as focused on building a
self-governing collectivity, which would inspire people to go and do likewise. They did
not, he claims, think of OWS in strategic terms, about how to use it as a basis for
building a broader movement to challenge established politics. They vehemently opposed
raising demands on the state, which would have been necessary if the movement was to
attract others. He counterposes the anarchist emphasis on "prefigurative" organizing to
his focus on "strategic" thinking.
"In contrast to power politics, ‘prefigurative politics' seeks to demonstrate the ‘better
world' it envisions for the future in the actions it takes today....I argue that even
leftist idealists have to strategically engage power politics proper, if they hope to
build anything bigger than a radical clubhouse." (103) Smucker cites major anarchist
theorists, "Manuel Catells, Richard J.F. Day, and David Graeber seem to concur with my
claim that[prefigurative politics]aims to replace...strategic politics, especially if the
later is defined in terms of hegemonic contestation." (127)
For example, David Graeber has written, "... most successful forms of popular resistance
have historically taken the form not of challenging power head on, but of ‘slipping away
from its grasp', whether by means of flight, desertion, or the founding of new
communities." (quoted in Price 2016) Laurence Davis summarizes-favorably-this viewpoint,
"For contemporary ‘small-a' anarchists...these here-and-now alternative institutions...and
social relationships ...are the essence of anarchism....Many contemporary anarchists
insist that ‘the revolution is now'...." (same) Some autonomous Marxists have adopted a
similar perspective, calling it "exodus"-somehow escaping from capitalism without
confronting it or the state.
I have written several essays critical of this view (Price 2015a; 2015b; 2006). Most of
Smucker's criticism is on the mark. The capitalist class with its institutions of
power-especially the state-will not allow the people to gradually and peacefully build
alternate institutions which could replace the market, industrial capitalism, and the
national state. This was demonstrated (once again) when the police broke up Occupy
encampments, after a few months. This was done throughout the country, with coordination
by the (Obama-Democratic) national government. The power of the state could not be ignored.
But the opinions he cites are from only one school of anarchism. There is also the
tradition of revolutionary class-struggle anarchism (libertarian socialism). (Price 2016;
2009) This aims to build a mass movement which can eventually overthrow the capitalist
class and its state, along with all other institutions of oppression-and replace them with
self-managed, cooperative, nonprofit, institutions from below. It sees a major role for
the working class, with its potential power to stop the means of production. It also has
organized other sections of the oppressed and exploited to fight for freedom, in various
countries and at various times.
Smucker, who claims to have once been an anarchist, appears to be completely ignorant of
this alternate, and mainstream, tendency in anarchism, which goes back to Bakunin and
Kropotkin, the anarchist-communists and the anarcho-syndicalists. (A slight example of
Smucker's ignorance of anarchism appears in his discussion of recent biological evidence
that human beings, like other animals, are not only competitive and aggressive, but also
are highly cooperative and sociable. This is true, but it was demonstrated over a century
ago by Peter Kropotkin in his Mutual Aid, a foundational work for anarchism.)
Revolutionary anarchism would not accept this binary counterposition of prefiguration vs.
a strategy for power-whether raised, on different sides, by Smucker or by certain
anarchists. Even Smucker accepts that a strategic approach may incorporate prefiguration,
as a minor aspect. But actually the two depend on each other. We cannot build a
participatory democratic society unless we build a participatory democratic movement, and
it will be a stronger movement the more that people democratically participate.
This point is made in a book on unions, fittingly titled, Democracy is Power. "Internal
democracy is key to union power....A union will act in the interests of members only if
these members control the union....The power of the union lies in the participation of its
members, and it requires democracy to make members want to be involved....A union run by
the members is also more likely to exercise its power." (Parker & Gruelle 1999; 14) This
does not mean that specific forms, such as consensus and open membership, are always
required. However, strategy and prefiguration should be one and the same.
The Limits of Liberalism
The primary weakness of this book is its one-sided focus on sectarian withdrawal and
self-involvement on the Left. What Smucker says against this is true, but it is not the
whole truth.
The main problem with the Left in the U.S. (and elsewhere) is not self-involvement but
liberalism, reformism, and opportunism. From the ‘30s to today, most of the Left has
supported-or at least, accommodated-capitalism, only urging better regulation of business
by the state. It has promoted the state as the main remedy for all social evils-if only
the state would be somewhat more democratic. It has portrayed the state as a neutral
institution, to be used by the corporate rich or by the working people, depending on
events. It has urged a focus on elections, to put individuals into office to be
"political" for the people. It has channeled mass action into the Democratic Party, the
"party of the people," which has consistently been the swamp in which movements suffocate
and die. This has been true not only of liberals but also of most of those calling
themselves "socialists" or "communists."
The liberal approach has led to victories, but none which have remained stable and
reliable (especially since the period of renewed stagnation and decline beginning about
1970, following the "long boom"). Unions won the right to organize-but today unions in the
private sector only represent about 6 % of the labor force, about where they were before
the upsurge of the ‘30s. African-Americans defeated legal segregation, but Black people
are still on the bottom of society. Even their right to vote is under attack. Women made
gains, which are again under attack, especially the right to legal abortions. The "Vietnam
syndrome," which limited the U.S.'s military interventions abroad, is over; now the U.S.
wages war around the world, and threatens nuclear war with North Korea. Advancements in
environmental protection have been viciously attacked by the current administration-which
has attacked popular gains in every field. (Readers may add to the list as they chose.)
Liberalism-reformism-has been a failure overall.
Yet this seems to be Jonathan Smucker's perspective. While he strongly (and correctly)
criticizes self-enclosed, sectarian, anarchists and others, he has barely a few phrases
about the danger of being coopted by ruling powers. He hopes to build a broad popular
movement, including large numbers of "ordinary people," workers of all sorts, students,
and oppressed people-but also to include powerful people from the rich and governing
sectors. He wants to win over "allies within the existing establishment." (167) Radicals
need to know "how to strategically influence a decision-maker...." (250) There is a need
for "actively courting influential supporters...." (70) This implies not an alliance
against the ruling class but an alliance with sections of the ruling class and the state.
(This has traditionally been called a "Popular Front," as opposed to a broad alliance of
organizations, parties, and movements of the working class and oppressed sections, which
has been called a "United Front.") In order to include establishment allies, the movement
would have to limit the demands which can be raised and the methods which can be used.
Smucker's aim is not only for a popular movement to develop counter-power to the ruling
class, but to take state power. "The state is no longer an other that we stand in
opposition to as total outsiders; instead we become responsible for it-parts of it, at
least...." (152) His goal is "to consolidate victories in the state....wresting the helm."
(150) He expresses admiration for "the Chavistas in Venezuela...[who]have succeeded in
winning some level-however limited a degree-of state power...." (136) Smucker does not
mention more recent developments in Venezuela, which have not gone so well for the regime
nor for its working and poor people.
Elections and the Democratic Party
To win "victories in the state", it will be necessary to run in elections. "Hopefully this
moment is helping today's radicals to reconsider our relationship to electoral campaigns
and political parties...." (170) Besides the Chavistas, he makes several glowing
references to Bernie Sanders' campaign. "In 2016 Bernie Sanders picked up the torch that
Occupy lit...."?(246) "The Bernie Sanders campaign showed again...the ripe possibility of
such an insurgent political alignment." (217) The Sanders campaign did demonstrate that
there was a lot of dissatisfaction which might be mobilized even behind someone who was
called a "socialist" and spoke of "revolution." This was significant.
But what was the strategic result? Sanders channeled this dissatisfaction into the
Democratic Party, eventually behind Hillary Clinton, a neoliberal, militarist,
establishment politician. Those who organized the Sanders campaign are now trying to keep
its momentum in the capitalist party which has historically been the graveyard of
movements. They want to turn the militant youth into voting fodder for another
pro-imperialist, pro-capitalist, candidate, who has no solution for the economic and
ecological disasters which are looming.
Smuckers cites a lot of sociologists and political scientists, but few radicals. He cites
no anarchists (except for the non-revolutionary types) and no Marxists (except for the
Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci--died in 1937). He never considers the nature of the
state, apparently treating it as a neutral institution which can be used by either the
people or by the corporate rich. He seems to think that competing classes can take over
different "parts" of the same state-denying that it is a unitary institution. One thing on
which both the revolutionary anarchists and Lenin agreed was that the existing state was
an instrument of capitalism, and that it needed to be overthrown and replaced by alternate
institutions. The fate of the Occupy encampments was one demonstration of this.
Other examples have appeared more recently in Greece in the fate of the elected Syriza
government, in Brazil with the Workers' Party government, in South Africa with the ANC,
and in many other reformist parties over the decades (such as Allende in Chile in 1973 or
the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 30s). Smucker discusses the OWS experience
but not any of these. Nor does he examine any of the rich history of revolutions and
counterrevolutions, which have been studied by anarchists, Marxists, and bourgeois
historians. It is true that we cannot expect a revolution-or even a prerevolutionary
period-in the near future. But the goal of a revolution can be used to guide the current
struggle for reforms and how that is carried out. A study of the history of previous
attempts at revolution could provide lessons even broader than only looking at OWS and the
other limited experiences which Smucker has personally gone through.
In fact, limiting ourselves just to struggles for reforms, in the U.S. almost every major
victory has been won by non-electoral means. The rights of unions were won through mass
strike waves. The destruction of legal Jim Crow and other gains for African-Americans were
won through mass civil disobedience as well as urban rebellions ("riots"). The war in
Vietnam was opposed through demonstrations, draft resistance, campus strikes, and a
virtual mutiny in the armed forces. LGBT rights were fought for through the Stonewall
rebellion and ACT-UP's civil disobedience. The women's movement was an integral part of
these non-electoral struggles. The legal and electoral aspects of these movements were
efforts by the establishment to respond to these popular struggles, to get them under
control, and finally to kill them. The Democratic Party played a big part in that.
The Hegemony of Gramsci
Smucker relies heavily on the concepts of Antonio Gramsci, such as "hegemony",
"articulation," and others. Without being a Gramsci enthusiast, I do not criticize Smucker
for being willing to learn from a Marxist theorist. (Although it seems a little odd to use
an unusual word like "hegemony" in the title of a book addressed to a wide audience.)
Gramsci advocated a revolution by the working class, in a broad alliance with all
oppressed and exploited people, to overturn capitalism and the existing state. These are
concepts with which I agree and which Smucker may not, or at least does not raise here.
However, even the best Marxists should be read critically, given the disastrous results
whenever Marxists have taken power.
For example, the concept of "hegemony," as used by Gramsci, indicates that the capitalist
class rules through dominating popular culture and ideology-and that the working class and
oppressed need to reverse this, so that emancipatory culture and ideology becomes the
"common sense" of the popular classes.
However, "hegemony" might also be interpreted with authoritarian implications, implying
that a minority which thinks it knows the Truth should seek to dominate popular
consciousness. In fact, Gramsci was a Leninist, an advocate of a centralized vanguard
party. The party, in his conception, aimed to take power through a new state, presumably
in the interests of the working class. In the factional conflicts within the Communist
International and the Italian Communist Party, Gramsci took the side of Stalin (Chiaradia
2013).
"Hegemony" may also be interpreted as a reformist strategy. If we focus predominantly on
the cultural and ideological power of the ruling class, this may lead to downplaying its
economic power (the use of unemployment and insecurity to discipline the working class)
and the armed power of its state. The police and military do not usually interfere
directly in politics, but they are always in the background, to be used in a crisis
(again: as in the destruction of the Occupy encampments). This can lead militants to
emphasize political maneuvering and cultural enlightenment, and to ignore hard power,
confrontation, and the nature of the state. In fact, after World War II, the Italian
Communist Party, as well as later "Eurocommunist" parties, followed reformist strategies
while claiming to be inspired by Gramsci.
None of this should prevent people from learning whatever they can from Gramsci's work.
(See Anderson 1977.) But they should view it critically.
Hope for the Future
Jonathan Smucker expects continuing difficulties and crises in society to create openings
for popular movements, in various ways and on various issues. "A left hegemonic project
will become a realistic possibility in the decades ahead." (255) "The signs are all around
us that such a progressive populist alignment is coming into being." (247) I think this
perspective is likely. I also agree with Smucker that radicals need to prepare for this,
to think about how to cope with the growing discontent, and to organize ourselves as part
of organizing others. The self-organizing of radicals is part of the self-organizing of
popular movements.
However, he ignores some of the dangers involved. Liberals, reformists, and those
establishment allies Smucker wants to look for, will aim to keep the "populist" movements
within respectable and limited bounds-that is, to keep them ineffective. Revolutionary
anarchists and other libertarian socialists need to build a militant, radical, left wing
of the movements (especially the labor movement with its potential strategic power). They
need to oppose (to seek hegemony over) those who withdraw into self-satisfied isolation,
but also to oppose those who are willing to accept the limitations of capitalism and its
state.
In the front of this book, his anarchist publishers, the AK Press Collective, have a
statement. Probably referring to his electoralism and similar aspects of his strategy,
they write, "Smucker's personal politics sometimes include strategies for social change
that AK Press doesn't advocate, but we think the ideas he presents will be useful to a
range of strategic approaches...."
As did AK Press, I find this a useful and interesting book. It raises insightful
criticisms of some anarchists and others. It proposes programmatic suggestions, some of
which I think are valuable from a revolutionary view- and some of which I think are wrong
(reformist) but worth thinking through as he presents them.
References
Anderson, Perry (1977). "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci."
New Left Review.
http://www.praxisphilosophie.de/anderson_gramsci_antino...s.pdf
Chiaradia, John (2013). "Amadeo Bordiga and the Myth of Antonio Gramsci."
https://libcom.org/library/amadeo-bordiga-myth-antonio-...radia
Krul, Matthijs (2011). "What We Can Learn From Hal Draper."
http://mccaine.org/2011/04/14/what-we-can-learn-from-ha...aper/
Parker, Mike, & Gruelle, Martha (1999). Democracy is Power; Rebuilding Unions for the
Bottom Up. Detroit: A Labor Notes Book.
Price, Wayne (2016). "In Defense of Revolutionary Class-Struggle Anarchism." Anarkismo.
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/29243?search_text=Dav...aeber
Price, Wayne (2015a). "Response to Crimethinc's ‘Why We Don't Make Demands'." Anarkismo.
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/28353?search_text=Way...Price
Price, Wayne (2015b). "The Reversed Revolutions of David Graeber:
Review of David Graeber, Revolutions in Reverse." Anarkismo.
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/28134?search_text=Wayn...Price
Price, Wayne (2009). "The Two Main Trends in Anarchism." Anarkismo
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/13536?search_text=Wayn...Price
Price, Wayne (2006). "Confronting the Question of Power; Should the Oppressed Take Power?"
Anarkismo.
http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=2496
Smucker, Jonathan M. (2017). Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals. Chico CA: AK Press.
*written for www.Anarkismo.net
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/30699
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Message: 3
After her first book, Trop classe, published last year, Véronique Decker takes us back to
Karl-Marx in Bobigny with L'École du peuple, released on June 1 st . We could not miss
this valuable testimony in the current context of school scrap and public services in
general, especially in working-class neighborhoods. ---- Through 64 tickets, Véronique
Decker delivers her daily life as a school director in Seine-Saint-Denis and her
commitment to defend the public school. ---- And this daily is not always pink. The one
who has been teaching and running a school for thirty years in Bobigny makes an implacable
statement of the progressive disintegration of public services and the increased
precariousness of its inhabitants. For Véronique Decker: " Yes the level goes down. But
not the level of the students, the level of the quality of action of the social state that
we did not know how to demand. "
Véronique Decker recounts through everyday experiences the difficulties that teachers,
parents and students face in working-class neighborhoods: the gradual death of the network
of specialized aids for children in difficulty (Rased) to help children who had difficulty
learning, lack of means and equipment, precariousness among officers and facilitators that
does not allow for stability in the operation of the school, the boiler that malfunctions
... For those who have not read it yet, we strongly advise them to read this committed
testimony in a resolutely militant and combative tone.
Caesar (AL Saint Denis)
Véronique Decker, The School of the People, Libertalia, 10 €.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Essai-Veronique-Decker-L-Ecole-du-peuple
------------------------------
Véronique Decker, "The School of the People" (fr, it, pt)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
The talk that I'm going to present today is based on a research project that I carried out
with my colleague Vladislav Kruchinsky in South Africa in 2011-2013. The aim of our
research was to analyse and explore the methods and practices of self-organisation from
below that existed in the crucial 1980s period of the anti-apartheid struggle. ---- The
vast majority of the material that's written about that period of struggle is devoted to
the role of the large, institutionalised anti-apartheid forces, such as the United
Democratic Front, an umbrella body for the community-based anti-apartheid organisations
including church and sports groups, which was formed in 1983. A large part of it also
focuses on the African National Congress, which is presented in the dominant narrative of
the ANC as the leader of the anti-apartheid struggle.
My aim, with Vlad, was to look beyond these big organisations, and to focus on
communities' struggles, viewed through ordinary people's stories. When we started our
research, we understood that we wanted first-hand information, from the participants in
the struggles. This is social history, meaning that it looks at the view from below, with
the people interviewed themselves active participants in the stories they tell. We
conducted extensive interviews with active members of the communities, township residents,
from those days. We hope to finish this project with a book, which will be a compilation
of the interviews.
Practices of Self-Organisation in South Africa: The Experience of the 1980s and its
Implications for Contemporary Protest
By Daria Zelenova
This is a lightly edited transcript of a presentation at a workshop hosted by the
International Labour Research & Information Group (ILRIG) and the Orange Farm Human Rights
Advice Centre in Drieziek extension 1, Orange Farm township, south of Soweto, South
Africa, on 24 June 2017. It was attended by a hall full of community and worker activists,
including veterans of the big rebellions of the 1980s.
The talk that I'm going to present today is based on a research project that I carried out
with my colleague Vladislav Kruchinsky in South Africa in 2011-2013. The aim of our
research was to analyse and explore the methods and practices of self-organisation from
below that existed in the crucial 1980s period of the anti-apartheid struggle.
The vast majority of the material that's written about that period of struggle is devoted
to the role of the large, institutionalised anti-apartheid forces, such as the United
Democratic Front, an umbrella body for the community-based anti-apartheid organisations
including church and sports groups, which was formed in 1983. A large part of it also
focuses on the African National Congress, which is presented in the dominant narrative of
the ANC as the leader of the anti-apartheid struggle.
My aim, with Vlad, was to look beyond these big organisations, and to focus on
communities' struggles, viewed through ordinary people's stories. When we started our
research, we understood that we wanted first-hand information, from the participants in
the struggles. This is social history, meaning that it looks at the view from below, with
the people interviewed themselves active participants in the stories they tell. We
conducted extensive interviews with active members of the communities, township residents,
from those days. We hope to finish this project with a book, which will be a compilation
of the interviews.
History From Below
The interviews that we collected shed light on very important local histories of the
politicisation of, and resistance by, working class and poor people, against economic
inequality and the oppression of the racist apartheid regime. We learned how ordinary
township residents, not necessarily activists, but ordinary aunties and school pupils,
mothers and grandmothers, and trade unionists, reclaimed power at the level of their
yards, their blocks, their street, their zones, and eventually, of the whole township. We
learned how new spaces based on a relatively horizontal distribution of power emerged, and
what challenges this "horizontality" faced.
In addition to the interviews, we did work at two major archives of South Africa, which
have collected material from the 1980s struggles. These are the Wits Historical Papers at
the University of the Witwatersrand, and the South African History Archive next to the
Constitutional Court in Johannesburg. We analysed original leaflets, brochures, minutes of
meetings, posters and newspapers from the 1980s.
I am going to present some of this material today. The main question in our research was:
Why social self-organisation by the working class and the poor in South Africa, based on
the principles of equal distribution of power, and often with a very horizontal or flat
structure, became an idea that could inspire masses around the country, and worked as a
practice that helped dismantle apartheid?
I'd like to start with why we focused on the 1980s. We do so for two reasons.
First of all the 1980s was a crucial period in the anti-apartheid struggle, with mass
resistance coupled to unprecedented levels of social and political self-organisation. That
was the time when the "notions of ‘popular democracy,' ‘people's power,'
‘self-empowerment', ‘democracy from below' were all introduced as new ideas and practices
into South African politics" (in the words of UDF veteran Raymond Suttner, in an interview).
A careful analysis of the 1980s in South Africa shows that the dismantling of the
apartheid regime became possible because the process of resistance was dispersed through
the whole country, through countless acts of local disobedience, of consumer/ transport/
school boycotts, of strikes and stay-aways - or community-based general strikes. This
dispersed resistance built on, and gave rise to, alternative practices of self-governance
by ordinary people.
Secondly, a very important feature of that period was a democratisation of movements, and
the birth of a radical democratic culture. This included changes at the personal level. It
was in the 1980s that, for the first time, issues like gender inequality, of freedom of
choice of a partner, and of domestic violence were openly raised on a wide scale, and when
it became possible to openly oppose "traditional leaders" like chiefs and kings, something
noted by analysts like Michael Neocosmos.
A major political event in that decade was the creation of the UDF as an umbrella
structure capable of uniting a huge number of the already-existing organisations
throughout the country, and of spurring more organising. The UDF was contested, but over
time, it came to identify itself strongly with a radical vision of change.
A "People's Democracy"
Leading UDF figure Morphe Morobe commented in a talk called "Towards a People's Democracy"
that a "democratic South Africa is one of the aims or goals of our struggle." But he also
made it clear that democracy is the means by which we conduct the struggle:
The creation of democratic means is for us as important as having democratic goals as our
objective. Too often models of a future democratic South Africa are put forward which bear
no relation to existing organisations, practices and traditions of political struggle in
this country. What is possible in the future depends on what we are able to create and
sustain now. A democratic South Africa will not be fashioned only after transference of
political power to the majority has taken place.
The UDF outlined a much more radical vision of democracy than what South Africa ended up
with in 1994. Morobe continued "Our democratic aim... is control over every aspect of our
lives, and not just the right (important as it is) to vote for a central government every
four to five years." He stressed that "The creation of a democratic South Africa" was not
something to be left for the future, or delivered from above; it "can only become a
reality with the participation of millions of South Africans in the process - a process
which has already begun in the townships, factories and schools of our land," through the
yard and street committees, civics, student groups, unions and other formations that had
emerged.
As the 1980s progressed, this vision became a practice, both in daily struggles, and when,
as we will see, some organisations involved in resistance started to replace the state
with what were called "organs of people's power." In some cases, for example, street
committees helped run public services, youth organisations created parks, and people
created self-defence and anti-crime patrols.
Unions and Townships
It is necessary to identify the two most important prerequisites for the emergence of the
UDF. First, from the middle of the 1970s, after the famous 1973 Durban strikes, the
independent trade union movement was gaining serious strength: mass strikes and factory
struggles took place in the country, workers established democratic control of their
unions and created strike committees. The spread of the democratic culture and organising
approach of these unions, especially the Federation of South African Trade Unions formed
in 1979, played a major role in mobilizing ordinary people, and in enabling the
development of so-called "organs of people's power" outside the workplace.
Secondly, in the townships where, since the late 1970s, there were conditions of
socio-economic decline in the context of capitalist crisis, there was the emergence of new
organisations in the forms of street committees and action committees and "civic"
associations.
While the unions raised issues around wages, transport, racist treatment and so on at
work, the new community structures' task was to fight for the everyday social needs of the
residents: decent housing, lower rents, electricity, against evictions, etc. As with the
unions, these struggles raised larger issues around the distribution of wealth and power;
and, as with the unions, these structures enabled people to take more and more control
over their daily lives, and to start to build a counter-power against the government -
resisting the state, and sometimes later replacing some of its functions.
The socio-economic situation of township residents was very difficult. In conditions of
growing unemployment, rising prices, and low-quality education and municipal services, and
the under-development of the townships, issues like employment, housing and services were
quite sharp. It must be remembered that, in many townships, there was little access to
electricity, or to water in the home, sewerage systems often involved public toilets or
the bucket system, and there were massive housing backlogs.
In this situation, women and children often played a key role in struggles. Even
non-politicized housewives were easily mobilized into the struggle for local change. One
example comes from the Valhalla Park Civic Association, which was formed by the residents
of the Coloured township of Valhalla Park in the Western Cape to address evictions. Auntie
Jane Roberts, who took part in this from 1984, told us that "we started to see what was
happening to the people in the communities, and we decided as a community, ‘Okay, we gonna
to be built up now.'" The Civic reconnected water and electricity that was cut off by the
authorities, and put people back into the houses if they were evicted.
Another activist, Auntie Gertie, helped build the Valhalla Concerned Residents
Association, after she was evicted, with her three little children. After she had some
success in fighting evictions, she started to help others in her area. She told us her
story of involvement in the struggle:
I grew up in poverty and I used to live here, and there, and all around. As my father was
working, he wasn't able to look after me as a child; I had to go to school and I lived by
one auntie, and then by another auntie, and so, I travelled around as a child. And at the
age of, I think, 10-11 my father got married to another woman and ... then I went to live
with the stepmother and she was[not]kind to me. I grew up, there was nobody I could have
gone to and say, ‘My[eye]is sore,' so I grew up very independently.... So I became very
independent, do everything on my own. And in the 1980s, I became a single mother: I gave
birth to my son and not married; and then a daughter, and then another daughter; and then
I had three children. And I became a single mother then. And yes, there was nobody to go
to: I just had to find my own way, with the little money I earn, I had to find my own way.
Through that I've become into struggle.... I have been evicted by the City of Cape Town.
Not twice but thrice. That is how I became involved in the civic organisation.
She continued:
There were three of us... We called people to the public meeting, and we spoke with the
people and said we're forming this organisation named Concerned Residents, we are ...
going to assist you - and who of you people is prepared to join us?
Another respondent, Trevor Ngwane, who was active in the Jabavu branch of the Soweto Civic
Association in the 1980s, remembered how this civic operated:
...we met in people's houses, we had one meeting a week... We would rotate, this time in
this house, and this time in this... For example we would hold a meeting in a priest's
place, because he's respected, or in a teacher's place, or in a trade unionist's house.
And then there was no membership, and the issues we discussed were problems in the
townships, the lights, we talked about the end of apartheid, we talked about children's
education, or someone died, and they don't have anybody to bury him[about raising funds].
The call for such meetings was often made door-to-door, meeting the neighbours personally,
or writing small notes and leaving them under the front door of the house.
Committees and Civics
The civics were, in short, residents' associations that dealt with the concerns of the
people. They took different forms, but the typical civic had an executive committee, which
comprised a chairperson, vice-chairperson, a secretary and a treasurer. The leaders would
often be elected for three years, but they could be re-elected or recalled, upon the
demand of the majority. The duty of the leaders was to report back to the communities in
which they were based. A very important point is that the leaders were parts of these
communities, facing the same problems as other residents. As Aunty Jane put it: "We were
in the community fighting for the community," so "We can't as the leaders say to the
community we want that or we demand that... they are using us and they tell us what to
do." A culture of accountability was revealed itself in procedures during the meetings, in
regular report-backs, and in continual communication with the residents.
The chairpersons' functions were basically those of co-ordination, calling meetings, and
organisation and preparation for campaigns. The idea of leadership as "serving the
community" went hand-in-hand with a sensitive and careful attitude towards the
decision-making process.
Civics interacted in different ways with more localised forms of self-organisation like
block, yard and street committees. Like the civics, these were formed to tackle specific
problems, such as high rentals, poor electrification, bad housing, the bucket system and
crime. In contrast to civics, where leadership tended to be dominated by more educated
people, fluent in English or Afrikaans, with some political background, these local
committees centred on ordinary township residents, often without political experience or
organising and facilitating skills. Like civics, these committees emerged in the late
1970s and proliferated in the 1980s.
In some cases, they were separate from the civics, and were more spontaneous local groups.
The strongest and most democratic civics, however, were built on a solid foundation of
yard, block and street committees. In these cases, the civic actually consisted of the
committees operating in the township communities. One interesting example comes from
Belville on the outskirts of Cape Town in the early 1980s, as reported in Grassroots
newspaper:
The people of Belville realized that they needed a strong organisation to fight for their
rights. This meant that the organisation had to represent everyone in Belville. So house
meetings were held in all streets! And the people from each street elected a street
representative. There are some of the duties of a street representative: 1. The street
representative must know all the problems of the people in the street. 2. They must
represent the needs of the street at representative committee meetings. 3. They must
report all representative committee meetings to their street. 4. The representative
committee is building unity in the area because it represents all the streets. 5. The
street reps must not work alone, but with the help of all the people in the street. So the
street rep is the link between the rep committee. In this way the people are working
together to build a strong organisation.
Then the street representatives in Belville joined the larger Cape Areas Housing Action
Committee, which covered a number of neighbourhoods and townships, and fought bad housing
conditions. By coming together in CAHAC, people could share their experiences and find
solutions to common problems and work together in common actions. And through street
committees, set up by ordinary residents with mandated delegates, ordinary people could
control the civic organisation.
Another remarkable example comes from Alexandra township in Johannesburg, which was a
hotbed of struggle, where radical unionists from the FOSATU tradition played an important
role. Moses Mayekiso, a metalworker from FOSATU and a leader of the Alexandra Action
Committee, explained how the township was organised in the mid-1980s:
It was the pyramid structure. The people in the yard (because Alexandra is so overcrowded,
there are about 4 houses in one yard, in one house you find there are 4 to 6 rooms, and in
each room there is a family ... that's 4 times 8 number of people - sharing one tap,
outside tap of water, sharing one toilet: you can imagine) ... would get together in one
yard and create a yard committee to regulate living conditions, so that there will be no
conflict in the yard. Also that yard committee comes together to create a block committee:
you put many yards ... from that street and that street and that's the block committee.
Then from block committee, there will be a street committee, then area committee - up to
the civic. People would come together to elect their leader, every street, democratically
raise their hand and people would decide on their leadership.
Media and Education
The 1970s and 1980s were also a time of a vibrant alternative press and media, which
provided an alternative to the big business newspapers and the government-run broadcasting
system. These helped share news, and ideas, and politics. For example, community-based
newspapers such as Speak and Grassroots included numerous discussions about how to include
more people into the decision-making process. Special study groups were launched by
activists and community leaders in order to share knowledge on popular participation and
democratic organisation.
Respondents interviewed also pointed to other structures that emerged to organise people
and raise their grievances, sometimes at meetings at people's houses, and sometimes in
public mass meetings. One such experience was shared by Bricks Mokolo, an activist in
Orange Farm community, who started to get involved into the struggle in the late 1970s.
In 1985, Bricks was elected a chairperson of the Vaal Parents' Education Crisis Committee.
Education crisis committees emerged as a response to the crisis in education, and drew in
children and youth, as well as parents - and, where possible, teachers. It must be
remembered that this was a time of massive revolts in black African, Coloured and Indian
schools, as well as in the universities, and that youth - including school-leavers, the
unemployed, and those who were not studying - played a massive role in committees and
civics, as well as education struggles, and in the unions. Class boycotts were common, and
youth were in the forefront of clashes with the authorities.
Bricks explained:
...there are challenges facing your community that needs you and your child - everyone -
to work together. We faced a lot of problems: houses, education, labour. Now we looked at
the education problems, and we said we need parents to get involved into supporting our
children at school, and fighting or demanding the education right for our children, and
there were demands that were put forward. One of the demands was free education, and one
department for free education for all, including blacks.
"People's Power" Takes Over
The massive township struggles of 1984 to 1986 saw a huge growth in the power of the
various organs of people's power in the townships - block, yard and street committees;
civics; student and youth groups; women's associations; union structures based in
neighbourhoods; education crisis committees - and massive de-stabilisation of apartheid
local government. As Mayekiso noted, a focus on immediate problems led easily to an attack
on the system as a whole:
The conditions that caused the formation of these organisations were bread and butter
issues, but addressing these bread and butter issues automatically drives you to politics.
"Why the streets are dirty? Why we are not getting houses?" So through these issues people
got politicized and conscientised.
Effective township organisations, Mayekiso added, allowed extremely effective protest
actions with high degrees of popular support. The formation of strong self-organised
bodies made it possible to run massive campaigns:
...at the beginning, when people would meet in the garage or in an open space in someone's
yard, and in the streets openly,[they would]... get trouble by the police. But people
defied and met. Not only the structure itself, the committees, but the actual meetings
were the organs of people's power, including the structures themselves...
General meetings, firstly, is where the grassroots democracy belongs, it's actual people's
power; that's the main basic organ of people's power, therefore the main decisions comes
from there, like the boycotts: the decision of boycotts would arise out of those meetings,
from the grassroots.... ‘We're not happy with the bus fares'... the decision to protest
and to march is made there. If the committees can't decide by themselves they have to send
the idea at the general meeting, if it's anonymous - it's anonymous, or sometimes they
vote. If it's one who is opposed - it'll be taken to a vote...
As protests grew, including attacks on state representatives, many areas became no-go
areas for the police, and when the army was sent in, it faced resistance. The Black Local
Authorities imposed by the apartheid government often collapsed, while councils in
Coloured and Indian areas lacked credibility. In many places, organs of people's power
displaced the BLAs. In townships like Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, Suttner noted in
a 2004 article, self-organisation reached a peak when "widely representative community
elements took control of important aspects of township life and the fleeing of government
officials left a vacuum, which the civic structures filled."
This was the period in which street and civics started to run public services, when youth
organisations created parks, and when people created self-defence and anti-crime patrols
replaced the police in many areas. This understanding of struggle as self-empowering
became central to anti-apartheid propaganda, and was articulated in slogans and concepts
like "people's power," or "Amandla-Ngawethu." These reflected the situation that was
already happening on a mass scale. In 1986, when organs of people's power had already
emerged in many of the South African townships and when BLAs were falling, the exiled ANC
leadership made its famous call for "ungovernability" and "people's power." The ANC in
exile had recognized the strong potential and possibilities of self-organising, and hoped
to use it for the purposes of the party.
The End of the Revolt
The apartheid state responded to the rebellions with repression, using extra-legal forces,
such as vigilantes and hit squads, and the mobilisation of the army, expansion of the
police, and the auxiliary forces of the homeland regimes. The second State of Emergency in
1986 led to the arrest of more than 20,000 people, and involved the largest repressive
operation in the history of South Africa. Police and army violence, including in
detention, was common, and by the end of 1986 the state had suppressed (or at least,
greatly weakened), many community-based organisations. The UDF was severely restricted in
its operations, and a number of high-profile UDF figures, as well as activists like
Mayekiso, were charged with treason.
The more intense the state repression, the worse the effect on the ability of people's
power to be successful. The arrest of many of the most experienced leaders also led to
structures of accountability being undermined and escalating clashes with the security
forces by youth, leading to a militarisation of struggle and a decline in a broader
community involvement.
But the apartheid state now knew that major reforms were needed. Efforts were made in the
late 1980s to carry out reforms aimed at weakening the protest movement, and to reach out
to the ANC. When the transition period started in 1990, the ANC leadership worked hard to
establish its hegemony over the community and youth structures and the unions, with the
UDF shut down in 1991, many of its affiliates absorbed into ANC wings or into ANC-aligned
groups. When the ANC came into power in 1994 the days of "people's power" were gone, the
movements of the 1980s co-opted or closed or sidelined. There was a process of
depoliticisation and a move to focus on state power, with the ANC-led state meant to
"deliver" to the citizens.
Some Lessons
It is important to note that not everything was perfect in the 1980s. There were power
abuses, and important challenges to democratic practices. Some of the civics did not
change leaders: this is explained by the domination of charismatic personalities, and,
sometimes, the abuse of leadership positions. The fact that participation in any kind of
resistance organisation ran the risk of being arrested and charged meant many people were
not willing to take the risk of openly participating.
Civics faced challenges of gender and age inequalities: there was a generation gap between
elder residents and the leaders of the civic associations consisted basically of youth,
who sometimes imposed their will on the others. This could include using violence. There
were tensions between civics and unions, in part because the unions wanted to ensure their
autonomy and were wary of undemocratic practices in UDF-affiliated bodies. The ANC also
exercised a growing influence behind the scenes, and ANC militants were often intolerant
of non-ANC voices.
However, the period of mass self-organisation in the 1980s showed the possibilities of the
people's self-organisation and self-rule from below. It illustrated the potential for
co-operation between trade unions, community based organisations, and other types- youth,
cultural, sports - and unprecedented levels of solidarity. It showed mutual help projects,
which created spaces of solidarity and communal support: soup kitchens, sewing
collectives, community crèches, anti-crime patrols, defence units, and people's courts.
The radical interpretation of democracy deserves special attention. In the 1980s,
democratic practices, like mass meetings, the accountability of leaders and committees,
were important, and people also saw democracy's value to struggles.
Today, many of the principles of the self-organisation of the 1980s, and the very culture
of radical, participatory and direct democracy, with its obligatory and absolute
accountability of community leaders, with its special love for long and open meetings, are
continued by some contemporary social movements in South Africa. I think that is the
legacy of the 1980s, when many people believe that democracy is not an abstract idea, but
rather a tool and practice, which must be used by the whole community.
https://zabalaza.net/2017/12/01/practices-of-self-organisation-in-south-africa-the-experience-of-the-1980s-and-its-implications-for-contemporary-protest/
------------------------------
Message: 2
How can we build an effective popular movement to change society? That is the subject of
this book, which has been widely praised. In my opinion, it has important and profoundly
true things to say, but is politically unbalanced and mistaken in certain ways. ---- This
is an important and interesting book about how to build a movement. From the blurbs it
includes, it has been highly praised by many well-known militants and theorists of change.
In my opinion, as a libertarian (antiauthoritarian) socialist, it has something profoundly
true to say, but it is politically unbalanced. ---- We live in a time when awful things
are happening, politically, economically, socially, militarily, and ecologically-and worse
things threaten to happen. Yet, as Jonathan Smucker points out (relying on the polls),
"Today in the United States more millennials identify with socialism than with
capitalism....On nearly every major issue, relatively progressive positions have come to
enjoy a majority of support....The establishment is in crisis. Popular opinion is on our
side." (2017; 252-254) Why then are those committed to social justice so weak,
marginalized, and with minimal political impact? What can be done to change that? That is
the important topic addressed by this book.
Smucker's message is essentially this: too much of the Left is inward-looking, comfortable
with itself, and self-involved. It is correct, even essential, to have a core group of
reliable militants, but leftists must reach out to others, go beyond their comfort zone,
and get other people involved, to whatever degree they can be involved. It is not enough
to build a club of the like-minded. It is necessary to work out a strategy for winning
gains, for influencing others, for achievement, and for exercising power. It is necessary
to build a movement, a movement for power. The strategic aim should be to challenge the
dominance (the "hegemony") of the ruling elite over popular consciousness and established
institutions-and to ultimately replace its hegemony with that of the Left.
That is the book in a nutshell. He repeats the message over and over, to drive it home,
with various elaborations and modifications. This message is true and important but not
especially new. For decades, revolutionary Marxist and anarchist organizations have urged
their members to go beyond middle class intellectuals and students, to root themselves in
the working class-particularly in the most oppressed and discriminated-against sectors of
the working class (African-Americans, unskilled workers, women, etc.). This was essential
for building an effective revolutionary movement.
For example, in the ‘70s, Hal Draper criticized sects which postured as small mass
parties: "The life-principle of a revolutionary mass party is not simply its Full Program,
which can be copied with nothing but an activist typewriter and can be expanded or
contracted like an accordion. Its life-principle is its integral involvement as a part of
the working-class movement, its immersion in the class struggle not by a Central Committee
decision but because it lives there." (quoted in Krul 2011)
Prefiguration vs. Strategy
The problem of the self-enclosed and isolated grouping, then, applies in many forms on the
Left. It applies to small revolutionary socialist organizations, built around their dogmas
and their newspapers. It applies to co-op stores and bicycle clubs. But Smucker is
especially aiming his criticism at anarchists, based on his experience in the Occupy Wall
Street encampment in 2011. (Which is also consistent with my own-much more
limited-experience with OWS.) He describes the anarchists as focused on building a
self-governing collectivity, which would inspire people to go and do likewise. They did
not, he claims, think of OWS in strategic terms, about how to use it as a basis for
building a broader movement to challenge established politics. They vehemently opposed
raising demands on the state, which would have been necessary if the movement was to
attract others. He counterposes the anarchist emphasis on "prefigurative" organizing to
his focus on "strategic" thinking.
"In contrast to power politics, ‘prefigurative politics' seeks to demonstrate the ‘better
world' it envisions for the future in the actions it takes today....I argue that even
leftist idealists have to strategically engage power politics proper, if they hope to
build anything bigger than a radical clubhouse." (103) Smucker cites major anarchist
theorists, "Manuel Catells, Richard J.F. Day, and David Graeber seem to concur with my
claim that[prefigurative politics]aims to replace...strategic politics, especially if the
later is defined in terms of hegemonic contestation." (127)
For example, David Graeber has written, "... most successful forms of popular resistance
have historically taken the form not of challenging power head on, but of ‘slipping away
from its grasp', whether by means of flight, desertion, or the founding of new
communities." (quoted in Price 2016) Laurence Davis summarizes-favorably-this viewpoint,
"For contemporary ‘small-a' anarchists...these here-and-now alternative institutions...and
social relationships ...are the essence of anarchism....Many contemporary anarchists
insist that ‘the revolution is now'...." (same) Some autonomous Marxists have adopted a
similar perspective, calling it "exodus"-somehow escaping from capitalism without
confronting it or the state.
I have written several essays critical of this view (Price 2015a; 2015b; 2006). Most of
Smucker's criticism is on the mark. The capitalist class with its institutions of
power-especially the state-will not allow the people to gradually and peacefully build
alternate institutions which could replace the market, industrial capitalism, and the
national state. This was demonstrated (once again) when the police broke up Occupy
encampments, after a few months. This was done throughout the country, with coordination
by the (Obama-Democratic) national government. The power of the state could not be ignored.
But the opinions he cites are from only one school of anarchism. There is also the
tradition of revolutionary class-struggle anarchism (libertarian socialism). (Price 2016;
2009) This aims to build a mass movement which can eventually overthrow the capitalist
class and its state, along with all other institutions of oppression-and replace them with
self-managed, cooperative, nonprofit, institutions from below. It sees a major role for
the working class, with its potential power to stop the means of production. It also has
organized other sections of the oppressed and exploited to fight for freedom, in various
countries and at various times.
Smucker, who claims to have once been an anarchist, appears to be completely ignorant of
this alternate, and mainstream, tendency in anarchism, which goes back to Bakunin and
Kropotkin, the anarchist-communists and the anarcho-syndicalists. (A slight example of
Smucker's ignorance of anarchism appears in his discussion of recent biological evidence
that human beings, like other animals, are not only competitive and aggressive, but also
are highly cooperative and sociable. This is true, but it was demonstrated over a century
ago by Peter Kropotkin in his Mutual Aid, a foundational work for anarchism.)
Revolutionary anarchism would not accept this binary counterposition of prefiguration vs.
a strategy for power-whether raised, on different sides, by Smucker or by certain
anarchists. Even Smucker accepts that a strategic approach may incorporate prefiguration,
as a minor aspect. But actually the two depend on each other. We cannot build a
participatory democratic society unless we build a participatory democratic movement, and
it will be a stronger movement the more that people democratically participate.
This point is made in a book on unions, fittingly titled, Democracy is Power. "Internal
democracy is key to union power....A union will act in the interests of members only if
these members control the union....The power of the union lies in the participation of its
members, and it requires democracy to make members want to be involved....A union run by
the members is also more likely to exercise its power." (Parker & Gruelle 1999; 14) This
does not mean that specific forms, such as consensus and open membership, are always
required. However, strategy and prefiguration should be one and the same.
The Limits of Liberalism
The primary weakness of this book is its one-sided focus on sectarian withdrawal and
self-involvement on the Left. What Smucker says against this is true, but it is not the
whole truth.
The main problem with the Left in the U.S. (and elsewhere) is not self-involvement but
liberalism, reformism, and opportunism. From the ‘30s to today, most of the Left has
supported-or at least, accommodated-capitalism, only urging better regulation of business
by the state. It has promoted the state as the main remedy for all social evils-if only
the state would be somewhat more democratic. It has portrayed the state as a neutral
institution, to be used by the corporate rich or by the working people, depending on
events. It has urged a focus on elections, to put individuals into office to be
"political" for the people. It has channeled mass action into the Democratic Party, the
"party of the people," which has consistently been the swamp in which movements suffocate
and die. This has been true not only of liberals but also of most of those calling
themselves "socialists" or "communists."
The liberal approach has led to victories, but none which have remained stable and
reliable (especially since the period of renewed stagnation and decline beginning about
1970, following the "long boom"). Unions won the right to organize-but today unions in the
private sector only represent about 6 % of the labor force, about where they were before
the upsurge of the ‘30s. African-Americans defeated legal segregation, but Black people
are still on the bottom of society. Even their right to vote is under attack. Women made
gains, which are again under attack, especially the right to legal abortions. The "Vietnam
syndrome," which limited the U.S.'s military interventions abroad, is over; now the U.S.
wages war around the world, and threatens nuclear war with North Korea. Advancements in
environmental protection have been viciously attacked by the current administration-which
has attacked popular gains in every field. (Readers may add to the list as they chose.)
Liberalism-reformism-has been a failure overall.
Yet this seems to be Jonathan Smucker's perspective. While he strongly (and correctly)
criticizes self-enclosed, sectarian, anarchists and others, he has barely a few phrases
about the danger of being coopted by ruling powers. He hopes to build a broad popular
movement, including large numbers of "ordinary people," workers of all sorts, students,
and oppressed people-but also to include powerful people from the rich and governing
sectors. He wants to win over "allies within the existing establishment." (167) Radicals
need to know "how to strategically influence a decision-maker...." (250) There is a need
for "actively courting influential supporters...." (70) This implies not an alliance
against the ruling class but an alliance with sections of the ruling class and the state.
(This has traditionally been called a "Popular Front," as opposed to a broad alliance of
organizations, parties, and movements of the working class and oppressed sections, which
has been called a "United Front.") In order to include establishment allies, the movement
would have to limit the demands which can be raised and the methods which can be used.
Smucker's aim is not only for a popular movement to develop counter-power to the ruling
class, but to take state power. "The state is no longer an other that we stand in
opposition to as total outsiders; instead we become responsible for it-parts of it, at
least...." (152) His goal is "to consolidate victories in the state....wresting the helm."
(150) He expresses admiration for "the Chavistas in Venezuela...[who]have succeeded in
winning some level-however limited a degree-of state power...." (136) Smucker does not
mention more recent developments in Venezuela, which have not gone so well for the regime
nor for its working and poor people.
Elections and the Democratic Party
To win "victories in the state", it will be necessary to run in elections. "Hopefully this
moment is helping today's radicals to reconsider our relationship to electoral campaigns
and political parties...." (170) Besides the Chavistas, he makes several glowing
references to Bernie Sanders' campaign. "In 2016 Bernie Sanders picked up the torch that
Occupy lit...."?(246) "The Bernie Sanders campaign showed again...the ripe possibility of
such an insurgent political alignment." (217) The Sanders campaign did demonstrate that
there was a lot of dissatisfaction which might be mobilized even behind someone who was
called a "socialist" and spoke of "revolution." This was significant.
But what was the strategic result? Sanders channeled this dissatisfaction into the
Democratic Party, eventually behind Hillary Clinton, a neoliberal, militarist,
establishment politician. Those who organized the Sanders campaign are now trying to keep
its momentum in the capitalist party which has historically been the graveyard of
movements. They want to turn the militant youth into voting fodder for another
pro-imperialist, pro-capitalist, candidate, who has no solution for the economic and
ecological disasters which are looming.
Smuckers cites a lot of sociologists and political scientists, but few radicals. He cites
no anarchists (except for the non-revolutionary types) and no Marxists (except for the
Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci--died in 1937). He never considers the nature of the
state, apparently treating it as a neutral institution which can be used by either the
people or by the corporate rich. He seems to think that competing classes can take over
different "parts" of the same state-denying that it is a unitary institution. One thing on
which both the revolutionary anarchists and Lenin agreed was that the existing state was
an instrument of capitalism, and that it needed to be overthrown and replaced by alternate
institutions. The fate of the Occupy encampments was one demonstration of this.
Other examples have appeared more recently in Greece in the fate of the elected Syriza
government, in Brazil with the Workers' Party government, in South Africa with the ANC,
and in many other reformist parties over the decades (such as Allende in Chile in 1973 or
the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 30s). Smucker discusses the OWS experience
but not any of these. Nor does he examine any of the rich history of revolutions and
counterrevolutions, which have been studied by anarchists, Marxists, and bourgeois
historians. It is true that we cannot expect a revolution-or even a prerevolutionary
period-in the near future. But the goal of a revolution can be used to guide the current
struggle for reforms and how that is carried out. A study of the history of previous
attempts at revolution could provide lessons even broader than only looking at OWS and the
other limited experiences which Smucker has personally gone through.
In fact, limiting ourselves just to struggles for reforms, in the U.S. almost every major
victory has been won by non-electoral means. The rights of unions were won through mass
strike waves. The destruction of legal Jim Crow and other gains for African-Americans were
won through mass civil disobedience as well as urban rebellions ("riots"). The war in
Vietnam was opposed through demonstrations, draft resistance, campus strikes, and a
virtual mutiny in the armed forces. LGBT rights were fought for through the Stonewall
rebellion and ACT-UP's civil disobedience. The women's movement was an integral part of
these non-electoral struggles. The legal and electoral aspects of these movements were
efforts by the establishment to respond to these popular struggles, to get them under
control, and finally to kill them. The Democratic Party played a big part in that.
The Hegemony of Gramsci
Smucker relies heavily on the concepts of Antonio Gramsci, such as "hegemony",
"articulation," and others. Without being a Gramsci enthusiast, I do not criticize Smucker
for being willing to learn from a Marxist theorist. (Although it seems a little odd to use
an unusual word like "hegemony" in the title of a book addressed to a wide audience.)
Gramsci advocated a revolution by the working class, in a broad alliance with all
oppressed and exploited people, to overturn capitalism and the existing state. These are
concepts with which I agree and which Smucker may not, or at least does not raise here.
However, even the best Marxists should be read critically, given the disastrous results
whenever Marxists have taken power.
For example, the concept of "hegemony," as used by Gramsci, indicates that the capitalist
class rules through dominating popular culture and ideology-and that the working class and
oppressed need to reverse this, so that emancipatory culture and ideology becomes the
"common sense" of the popular classes.
However, "hegemony" might also be interpreted with authoritarian implications, implying
that a minority which thinks it knows the Truth should seek to dominate popular
consciousness. In fact, Gramsci was a Leninist, an advocate of a centralized vanguard
party. The party, in his conception, aimed to take power through a new state, presumably
in the interests of the working class. In the factional conflicts within the Communist
International and the Italian Communist Party, Gramsci took the side of Stalin (Chiaradia
2013).
"Hegemony" may also be interpreted as a reformist strategy. If we focus predominantly on
the cultural and ideological power of the ruling class, this may lead to downplaying its
economic power (the use of unemployment and insecurity to discipline the working class)
and the armed power of its state. The police and military do not usually interfere
directly in politics, but they are always in the background, to be used in a crisis
(again: as in the destruction of the Occupy encampments). This can lead militants to
emphasize political maneuvering and cultural enlightenment, and to ignore hard power,
confrontation, and the nature of the state. In fact, after World War II, the Italian
Communist Party, as well as later "Eurocommunist" parties, followed reformist strategies
while claiming to be inspired by Gramsci.
None of this should prevent people from learning whatever they can from Gramsci's work.
(See Anderson 1977.) But they should view it critically.
Hope for the Future
Jonathan Smucker expects continuing difficulties and crises in society to create openings
for popular movements, in various ways and on various issues. "A left hegemonic project
will become a realistic possibility in the decades ahead." (255) "The signs are all around
us that such a progressive populist alignment is coming into being." (247) I think this
perspective is likely. I also agree with Smucker that radicals need to prepare for this,
to think about how to cope with the growing discontent, and to organize ourselves as part
of organizing others. The self-organizing of radicals is part of the self-organizing of
popular movements.
However, he ignores some of the dangers involved. Liberals, reformists, and those
establishment allies Smucker wants to look for, will aim to keep the "populist" movements
within respectable and limited bounds-that is, to keep them ineffective. Revolutionary
anarchists and other libertarian socialists need to build a militant, radical, left wing
of the movements (especially the labor movement with its potential strategic power). They
need to oppose (to seek hegemony over) those who withdraw into self-satisfied isolation,
but also to oppose those who are willing to accept the limitations of capitalism and its
state.
In the front of this book, his anarchist publishers, the AK Press Collective, have a
statement. Probably referring to his electoralism and similar aspects of his strategy,
they write, "Smucker's personal politics sometimes include strategies for social change
that AK Press doesn't advocate, but we think the ideas he presents will be useful to a
range of strategic approaches...."
As did AK Press, I find this a useful and interesting book. It raises insightful
criticisms of some anarchists and others. It proposes programmatic suggestions, some of
which I think are valuable from a revolutionary view- and some of which I think are wrong
(reformist) but worth thinking through as he presents them.
References
Anderson, Perry (1977). "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci."
New Left Review.
http://www.praxisphilosophie.de/anderson_gramsci_antino...s.pdf
Chiaradia, John (2013). "Amadeo Bordiga and the Myth of Antonio Gramsci."
https://libcom.org/library/amadeo-bordiga-myth-antonio-...radia
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*written for www.Anarkismo.net
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/30699
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Message: 3
After her first book, Trop classe, published last year, Véronique Decker takes us back to
Karl-Marx in Bobigny with L'École du peuple, released on June 1 st . We could not miss
this valuable testimony in the current context of school scrap and public services in
general, especially in working-class neighborhoods. ---- Through 64 tickets, Véronique
Decker delivers her daily life as a school director in Seine-Saint-Denis and her
commitment to defend the public school. ---- And this daily is not always pink. The one
who has been teaching and running a school for thirty years in Bobigny makes an implacable
statement of the progressive disintegration of public services and the increased
precariousness of its inhabitants. For Véronique Decker: " Yes the level goes down. But
not the level of the students, the level of the quality of action of the social state that
we did not know how to demand. "
Véronique Decker recounts through everyday experiences the difficulties that teachers,
parents and students face in working-class neighborhoods: the gradual death of the network
of specialized aids for children in difficulty (Rased) to help children who had difficulty
learning, lack of means and equipment, precariousness among officers and facilitators that
does not allow for stability in the operation of the school, the boiler that malfunctions
... For those who have not read it yet, we strongly advise them to read this committed
testimony in a resolutely militant and combative tone.
Caesar (AL Saint Denis)
Véronique Decker, The School of the People, Libertalia, 10 €.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Essai-Veronique-Decker-L-Ecole-du-peuple
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