Leadership and a Distrust for Privilege
This is an essay I wrote in the spirit of creating dialogue in the movement. It is a critical look at where we're at today, and where we need to be, while learning from our ancestors and those who came before us. It is a synthesis of my own personal experience, and the collective experience of companer@s organizing and struggling in our communities and different spaces.
The development of capitalism in the U.S. was based on white Protestantism and the progress of the white male protestant merchants and landowners. Their values, standards and the culture of the rulers are dominant in this society. Their agenda is guided by this culture and the preservation of their rule. If you do not reflect the power structure of imperialism (which is white, capitalist, patriarchal, and heterosexist) you are subjugated by their rule. The power structure is set up to manipulate, control, exploit, imprison, murder, and even exterminate those who do not look like them.
Oppression in the U.S. is also complex. While there are organizations out there whose rhetoric doesn’t go beyond the “proletariat” (or working class) things are much more complex than that. The oppressed are those who are people of color, working class, women, queer people, and the youth as well. This is because of the power relationships that exist in this country. Where white males, through manifest destiny, sought to conquer and dominate this land. Throughout the history of this country, they have systematically killed, tortured, exploited, exterminated people who did not reflect their power structure, who stood in their way of expansion and more power, and posed a threat to their power and way of life.
The state is used to enforce their system of power and to keep it intact. The state is made up of the police, the courts, the prison system, their government, government agencies, and even their schools. So anybody that rises up or resists the power structure will be faced with repression and also will have to take on the enforcers of the state. Not only when people rise up, but also in their day-to-day life because in their communities' they're living in third world conditions, the state is used to maintain a culture of fear. They terrorize the people who live there, throw them in prison, and murder them. Historically, the state has been responsible for the extermination of indigenous people, the preservation of racial slavery, the theft of land and the colonization of people (in particular Mexico, Indigenous people, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii), the upholding of patriarchy (where women were and still are subjugated and seen as second class citizens -- to be child bearers and servants to men), and denied the right for queer people to not only marry but to love whom they choose.
The question is how do we organize around all these different and distinct forms of oppression to challenge and change the power structure. How do we allow for autonomy and self-determination but still have a common plan and strategy for the liberation of the oppressed?
I think this all comes from who’s leading and who is fighting to lead the movement. The politics of any organization will be influenced by who makes up the organization. If you have an organization where the majority of people are from a privileged background then your politics and the political positions of your organization will reflect the social position that is probably less genuine and more liberal. This relates to the left in general in the US today. The vanguard parties are led by people who have privileged positions in society, therefore there are going to want to gravitate to a leadership position and power -- the privileged (white, upper middle class men, who have had the privilege and the time to dig into politics) are usually the ones leading and calling the shots within these vanguard parties and also hold this notion that they’re going to “liberate the oppressed” which is all rooted in their social position. A lot of these white folks suffer from the messiah complex. The same goes for anarchists, who in North America and in particular in the US are influenced by a white middle class male position because the political SCENE is made up of them -- and the ones who dominate within the anarchist organizations (especially within a structureless environment) are those same people.
I think that the white comrades who want revolutionary change need to start organizing other radical white people and white communities, and the same goes for the middle class people. Instead of forming these vertical, white-leftist, charity organizations, lets build strategic alliances, and give the oppressed the space to organize themselves. It is important to choose a side in the low intensity war that is being waged on our communities, and the role for settler-colonialists is not to lead in our own liberation.
So how do we organize ourselves, build autonomy, become self-sufficient while at the same time challenge power and change those relationships? These are the main tasks to carry out as revolutionaries: to empower ourselves and oppressed communities, build the structures that give people a glimpse of how things can be different and how we can organize ourselves, build our fighting capacity, integrate ourselves within the communities and mass movements, and build a political and revolutionary base within these communities -- and build the leadership skills, consciousness, and experience in collective struggle within these communities. Who are these privileged organizations to tell the oppressed how they should organize and struggle? We have much to learn from the “masses” as we have to teach the “masses.”
“Although we know the revolutionary project to defeat the system of capitalism and enslavement requires millions of other allies who will help us, we will decide the agenda, the timetable, and the tactics of obtaining freedom.”
The process of developing a praxis that is effective should be important, and we should always have as principle what works for us here while maintaining our autonomy and individual freedom -- and adapting ideas and theories that help guide our organizing to our specific conditions.
The question should be put out there though, why organize amongst the oppressed -- isn’t everybody oppressed in a way? Yes in a way this is true, but also there are different social positions within this system and people have different privileges. The politics of the oppressed will always be more genuine if they are involved first-hand in facilitating the process of their own liberation. Anytime you have the majority privileged folks in your organization -- the politics of the organization will become watered down-- because consciously or subconsciously they have more at stake -- they have more to lose. I draw heavily from organizations like the Black Panther Party (where I disagree with their structure as well as other mistakes they made) who were one of the most serious organizations in the 60’s in terms of revolutionary praxis in their communities, building dual power, fighting for better positioning within the communities, political-and self defense training, and having an understanding/analysis of race and class politics (while seriously trying to deal with gender problems in the organization). They were an organization that was serious enough that it posed the biggest threat to the US government -- so much that the state prioritized smashing them. There are many lessons to draw from that experience and learn from mistakes as well -- but one thing that you can look at is that the organization was a form of self-organization of the oppressed (a top-down self-organization not a horizontal one though, which lead to the defeat of the organization) where the politics were adapted to their communities and were more genuine as well. This posed a huge threat to the power structure and the state. While we’re organizing for autonomy within communities there is a need to connect, communicate, coordinate and work along other communities for the same aims, platform, and/or demands. This is where federalism can help connect not only oppressed communities, but privileged allies who are organizing within their own communities to link up and build a revolutionary movement that has clear politics, common vision, and strategy.
Realistically revolution will not happen through a vanguard party. It will happen through the movement of millions of people. This has been the case in any popular social movement that has been successful anywhere -- the problem has been that the popular movements become co-opted by different interests that do not reflect those of the people in the long run (as in bourgeois nationalists, authoritarian socialists, fascists etc.). The role of the federation shouldn’t be to try to place itself in front of the popular struggles, but have some influence within them, to raise consciousness, support, and help in the process of developing other revolutionary organizers for the long-term struggle or the overall liberation process.
The community councils are a way where people can build dual power, basically build the structures and people's institutions that would replace this system and power structure within their communities. They would organize to rely on themselves for their needs (and eventually stop relying on the state -- the police especially because they act as an occupying army in our communities). People might look at this and say that why do this -- why not just fight to get state power? This is power -- it’s a collective distribution of power to those who run the communities -- we’re cutting out the middle men (the state as in the police, their courts, their schools, and other agencies that make us dependent on them). In a way we’re retaking the communities (which include the place where we work, associate, and go to school) -- which is where we live, and we could run ourselves anyway.
The struggle for our liberation as colonized people also has to be deeply rooted in the struggle for land. This system and this way of life have disconnected many of our indigenous sisters and brothers from the land. For a free and independent people land is necessary for the survival of the people. To decolonize ourselves we must connect back to the land, collectivize it, and learn to live off of it. Only then will we be truly self-sustainable. To paraphrase Malcolm X, "All revolutions are struggles for land." In fact this expansionist white settler-colonialist system stole all of the land that is considered America today, and continues to suppress any liberation struggle from Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Occupied Mexico (Aztlan), the Republic of New Africa (The South), the North East, and so on. The truth is, white settlers have no roots in this hemisphere, and the only way they can survive here is by a massive police and military, in other words the state apparatus. The people of this hemisphere will never be free until we destroy this system founded on white-settler colonialism and all of those who defend it.
This is a strategy for social change, where communities are organizing themselves and building a base for the struggle -- and an example of how we can organize ourselves, associate freely, and live according the basic principles of human rights -- including “to each according to his ability and to each according to his need.” This is real communism in practice.
Where anti-authoritarian socialists disagree with Marxist-Leninists is in the transitional state (where the vanguard party will lead the “masses” through a stage where they have ultimate power -- into finally a stateless society where them along with the state will magically disappear and they would give up their rule). The underlying structure, and power relations that existed in the Soviet Union, and China set the stage for capitalism to not only be implemented but with a much more oppressive and repressive state.
In China, anarchists discussed the idea of social transformation, and the challenging of what was oppressive in the traditional Chinese culture, which Mao learned from and the Cultural Revolution was waged by students and peasants in China, but because of the power dynamics -- the revolution did not succeed. When Mao died in the mid-70’s, the four other members of the central committee were put in prison -- the people were not empowered enough to distinguish between the different factions that were fighting for power, and afterwards the most feudal and oppressive social relationships returned to China. This would not have happened if there were different power relationships and power was distributed -- and the masses of oppressed people (the peasants, working class, women, oppressed nationalities) had real ownership of the struggle and were leading.
It is important to realize that there is a low intensity war being waged against the oppressed and has been going on and it is intensifying here. It is important to get into the question of revolutionary struggle and what that means.
I personally feel that the revolutionary struggle in order to succeed would have to be made up by a multi-faceted approach and through different tactics and a strategy (that is being developed through our experience). The community councils will not win out on their own, especially if we’re concentrated in urban areas and have no support and allies from white radicals and revolutionaries and the middle class and other privileged sectors. Also from the forgotten rural communities where people are also isolated.
As we do this we have to build our fighting potential within our own communities and among ourselves. There’s also the real case of the state coming down on us and trying to destroy what we’re creating in our communities. It is a threat to them to create autonomous communities within their state. So what then, do we not fight back? It is important that the fighting strength of the people is raised by self-defense training and programs in the community while at the same time we are organizing around the issues that are affecting us. So we survive, but at the same time we fight, and we fight for the survival of our autonomous communities and our community programs.
I have a lot of unity with George Jackson’s (of the Black Panther Party) strategy. Where you build dual power within your community (he called this the Black Commune), at the same time while you’re gaining popular support within these communities, you’re preparing and training to defend yourself from the state -- because most likely they will try to smash us. Through the collective experiences of struggle of the people within the communities they would support each other and carry out a social revolution -- and this will probably turn into a civil war between the state along the enforcers and supporters of this system and the popular movements, and the federation of revolutionary community councils. So, there is a need to have two wings: one that organizes the community programs and popular support and the other that is hidden from the eyes of the state that builds the fighting capacity and fighting potential of the revolutionary organization and the community itself. At first the second wing does not have to be large, and can be broken into decentralized cells of 3 to 5 people (who know and trust each other), training and taking direct action against the state (while raising the level of combativity it is important that we do not allow that these forces attack our people, our communities, and/or smash our foundation).
The idea of an armed people was also put to practice by anarchists in the Ukraine during the Russian Revolution through people's militias -- where they elected their own officers, who defended and were made up of people from the community councils. One of the organizers from that period was Nestor Makhno. At the end they suffered betrayal and a military defeat by the Red Army. I have a lot of unity with this model for organizing a defense for our liberated spaces.
In any military aspect of organizing there’s a need for expertise (as in people who have experience and training in military strategy and other aspects needed for self defense), in Chiapas the EZLN makes up the military component of their autonomous communities, and the army is under direct control of the bodies of community decision making. Another example where military expertise was important was in the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party. Geronimo Pratt had experience in the military and even was a Vietnam War veteran. He was able to train other panthers in what he knew, as a result, the Los Angeles office on 41st and Central was barricaded with sand bags and all of their members were trained. When the police attempted to attack their office, the Panthers were able to hold them off, with the help and the support of the community. If it wasn't for that expertise they would have all been killed by the LAPD. I think learning from all these different models is important.
Our movement has not yet reach the military stage yet, but that does not mean we should not discuss this question seriously or leave our guard down. Armed struggle, as in non-violence, is a tactic in an overall strategy for systemic change. We not only have to look at it when it comes to self-defense (which is the ultimate reason for people's militias and a democratic military structure) but that armed struggle in opposition to US imperialism is justified not only because they are killing us on a day to day basis here (and it is a struggle for our survival -- as oppressed people in particular and humanity in general), they are also killing millions more around the world through its military and its “free” market.
At the same time we should not uphold and romanticize the culture of violence or the culture of the gun, but see it as a tactic to within the overall revolutionary movement. On the other hand oppressed communities will decide ultimately what kind of tactics they would take up and carry out. To paraphrase Ward Churchill, “its chauvinistic for someone who is privileged in America to be telling colonized people how they should be fighting for their liberation.”
“It was anarchists who first pointed to the crucial role that the peasants must play in any serious revolutionary attempt in China, and Anarchists were the first to engage in any serious attempts to organize the peasants.”
Chinese students studying in Tokyo formed a group that rooted its anarchism in political traditions native to Asia and advocated a peasant-based society built around democratically run villages organized into a free federation for mutual aid and defense.
There were some problems with a different Chinese anarchist group that studied in Paris which was influenced by European anarchism. This group took a traditional obscure anarchist position on the nation-state and that there wasn’t a need to integrate your politics to your specific conditions and the culture locally:
“While consistent with the stance of the global Anarchist movement at the time, this position elicits mixed responses from modern Anarchists, many of whom see revolutionary potential in the struggles of oppressed ethnic and racial groups. In terms of the Revolutionary project in China, Ward Churchill cites the declarations of support for ethnic self-determination for China’s ethnic minorities which the Communist movement made as key to winning their movement the support of those groups; which was to prove decisive during the later civil war between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalists."
“It is ironic that the Anarchist movement, which is based on the idea of local political and economic self-determination – and thus fulfills the autonomist aspirations of those groups - was unable to articulate to minority communities how their desire for self-determination would be realized within the context of an Anarchist society.”
Joaquin Cienfuegos
(Member of the South Central Chapter of Cop Watch Los Angeles and the Revolutionary Autonomous Communities)
Comments (7 of 7)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7Hi, Joaquin, do you have the version in Spanish?
Thank you
no I don't have it in Spanish yet, but I hope to get it translated soon
thank you for reading it
I don't really want to comment too much on questions related to a US context that I know very little about - certainly very little that is first hand. The paper seems very interesting and I leave debate on its strategic positions to other US and Western anarchos, who I trust won't feel to intimidated by its robustness.
What do I want to raise, though, is a concern with the presentation of Chinese anarchism. It is really fantastic to see a US anarchist engaging seriously with classical anarchist history; all too often debates on these issues are carried out as if anarchism emerged in 1968 and is a sort of poor cousin to the left with little serious theory.
The author does however seem to be a looking for an anarchist history to justify his or her positions. The paper lavishes praise on the "Chinese students studying in Tokyo [that] formed a group that rooted its anarchism in political traditions native to Asia", which is contrasted favorably with "a different Chinese anarchist group that studied in Paris ... influenced by European anarchism ... [and] took a traditional obscure anarchist position on the nation-state and that there wasn’t a need to integrate your politics to your specific conditions and the culture locally".
What the author fails to mention (besides the fact that Tokyo was itself an imperial metropolis and that "Asian traditions" were not in a hermetically sealed universe worlds away from the West) is that the so-called "Paris anarchists" were by the far the most active of the two streams. Rejecting the primitivist and volisch edge of a lot of the Tokyo current, and by no means abstract activists the author suggests, the so-called "Paris anarchists" were seriously engaged with Chinese realities, active in labour, peasant organising AND seriously involved in debating the national question and imperialism. They were, indeed, the mainstream of Chinese anarchism, which is not really an ideal example to buttress the author's prescriptions with historical examples.
There were vivid debates on strategy around imperialism by all the Chinese anarchist streams (as opposed to the "obscure" position our author discovers in the "Paris" tradition), and it was generally people coming out of the "Tokyo" tradition, with its tendency to cultural essentialism, generally provided the great majority of those who ended up working in the Guomindang uncritically as key officials, even after 1927.
I agree with the author that a crude workerism must be avoided, and that crude class reductionism is very often a way of dodging uncomfortable issues. I also agree, frankly, that anarchists must champion national self-determination (albeit outside a Statist framework).
These are however pretty complex issues, and I think a closer - but more careful reading of classical anarchism - is important. Certainly, there is a good deal to be learned from say Ba Jin's polemics around the Goumindang, and perhaps comrades can cast their eyes a bit beyond the usual list of US nationalists like Churchill etc. who are cited largely uncritically.
The problems with the Tokyo anarchists go deeper as the main figures ended up favouring the traditional monarchy over the new republican regime to the extent of becoming police informers (see http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/worldwidemovements/scalapino.html text where footnote 91 is marked ). This was directly linked to upholding traditional values (which they considered the republicans would undermine).
It also put them at odds with the unfolding revolution which was based around an attack on tradition as holding China back. In fact can't think of a worse example to use if you wanted to argue for taking local conditions into account as their traditionalism would have excluded them from the revolutionary movement of 1919 even if they had not already changed sides.
The Paris anarchists on the other hand also made some serious mistakes but at least they formed some of the leadership of the republican movement (KMT) in its revolutionary phase - the problem was their failures include not breaking with it as it later turned to reaction. Both in fact represented different faces of adoptation to local conditions, the failure of the Tokyo group and indeed of this article is in recognising that local conditions are not set in stone but also subject to change. A defence of the traditional can thus very easily become a defence nof reaction even when you confine it to local conditions.
Joaquin doesn't really define what "privilege" means. for any person or group, there are almost always people worse off or better off than you are. So, does Joaquin's analysis lead to the view that it is only the "worst off" who are most important or what? And how is that defined? Are the homeless the worst off for example? Often in fact the worst off are so desperate they have little time or capacity for organizing.
Every class or group is internally hiearchical so there are always more or less privileged within it. Within the working class, there are hierarchies of skill, income, immigration status, age, color/race/nationality, gender, etc. Within communities of color, there are hierarchies of class, gender, income, skill, immigration status, etc. And so on.
What's not clear is what the basis of unity is to be on which a large mass movement against the system is to be developed.
Organizing within the community is very important -- it's what i've mainly been focused on myself in recent years, but most people spend a huge portion of their time in work, where they are oppressed directly by the bosses. But Joaquin has nothing to say about workplace organizing or its relationship to community organizing. In workplaces one is confronted with the huge heterogeneity of the working class in the U.S. How is a unity among them to be forged to develop a movement against their employers? It can't be developed, in my opinion, without dealing with the varous ways people are divided, with the various oppressions people face, as women, as people of color, as gay, as immigrants, etc. the issue of how a cross-group alliance is to be developed needs to be faced.
This requires that the various groups that make up the working class relate to each other on the basis of some sort of mutual respect, and dialogue, so that they come to undersand and appreciate how the shoe hurts for others. One issue that Joaquin's piece slides over is the fact that the white working class is also an oppressed group. There can't be an alliance of the oppressed unless the various groups that make up the oppressed are acknowledged and respected.
"I think that the white comrades who want revolutionary change need to start organizing other radical white people and white communities.. ."
OUCH !!
I have recently exchanging views with people who claim to be doing just that - the "National Anarchists" , and who apply the same arguments about cultural identity and separatism and community and federalism
see
http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2007/11/anarcho-racists.html
We all must learn from our own particular exploitation but it is also necessary to go further and recognise the commonality of how we are controlled and conditioned . Then we seek common cause and action . We cannot create an hierarchy of degree of individual exploitation .
Nor can i let pass by this article's call for possible armed struggle . Risking the put down of "chauvinism" by being critical , does this really present a coherent constructive strategy for the North American working class or a romantic regression to the days of the street barricades ?
1. Thanks Andrew for a better and more precise discussion of the Tokyo anarchists. I should stress that there was much that was admirable about their views - for example, He Zhen's feminist work, for which see Peter Zarrow's book "Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture". Also, I don't think there was an inherently recationary trajectory in their views. What was I was particularly objecting to, overall, was the article's author's attempt to appropriate uncritically their stance for American-style identity politics and minority nationalism, and his implicit dismissal of the mainstream Asian anarchist movement.
2. I am afraid the author is invoking Mao in support of positions that Mao did not hold.I am no admirer of Mao or his regime, but that does not mean its acceptable to caricature the man of his politics. It is correct to claim that "the declarations of support for ethnic self-determination for China’s ethnic minorities which the Communist movement made as key to winning their movement the support of those groups" BUT it is nonsense to see this as supporting the Lorenzo Ervin/ APOC "whiteskin privilege" and separatist organising strategy line. First, Mao was aiming at a single unified China, and not the sort of Balkanisation Joaquin advocates. Mao favored a certain amount of cultural autonomy, but no more . Second, Mao's strategy centered on building a mass base amongst the Han majority with a SINGLE mass party representing not just the Han but all the minorities in ONE country - this is exactly the opposite of what Joaquin advocates, and fundamentally irreconcilable with his dismissal of the White majority in the US through labour aristocracy-type arguments. If Joaquin thinks he can support in Mao for his separatism, he may be right - BUT he has NOT found it yet - certainly not in his current formulations , which are really a melange of 1960s New Left ideology, and 1980s Western identity politics.
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