Having it all figured out: organizing, vision, and the anxiety of the perfectionist
An anonymous commenter (the first comment on my blog! thanks!) wrote: "we must continue organizing, no doubt. But what kind of world are we going for, and how are our every day efforts linked to that vision?"
Well, to quote a famously indecisive, and infamously unsuccessful, crusader for justice, "that is the question." Rosa Luxemburg phrased the question this way a century ago:
"The international movement of the proletariat toward its complete emancipation is a process peculiar in the following respect. For the first time in the history of civilization, the people are expressing their will consciously and in opposition to all ruling classes. But this will can only be satisfied beyond the limits of the existing system.I believe the labor movement and allied grassroots community organizations are the best day-to-day tools available to us. And I'm attracted to Michael Albert's vision of Participatory Economics. But I'm turned off by anyone who claims to have this problem all figured out. If anyone had the path to a better society all mapped out, we'd be there already.
Now the mass can only acquire and strengthen this will in the course of day-to-day struggle against the existing social order -- that is, within the limits of capitalist society.
On the one hand, we have the mass; on the other, its historic goal, located outside of existing society. On one had, we have the day-to-day struggle; on the other, the social revolution. Such are the terms of the dialectic contradiction through which the socialist movement makes its way.
It follows that this movement can best advance by tacking betwixt and between the two dangers by which it is constantly being threatened. One is the loss of its mass character; the other, the abandonment of its goal. One is the danger of sinking back to the condition of a sect; the other, the danger of becoming a movement of bourgeois social reform."
My favorite thing about Luxemburg's phrasing of the question is that she acknowledges, in a very deep way, the difficulty of answering it. She also acknowledges the impossibility of maintaining perfect control over the direction(s) the movement(s) take(s):
"That is why it is illusory, and contrary to historic experience, to hope to fix, once and for always, the direction of the revolutionary socialist struggle with the aid of formal means, which are expected to secure the labor movement against all possibilities of opportunist digression."Here's the moral of the story, as far as I'm concerned: let's not get our undies all in a knot over assumed or actual imperfections in the leadership of our unions or other organizations. Let's not let our anxiety about the future course of these organizations hold us back from putting our all into building the union today.
Of course, we can learn from past failures: the Soviet Union, "communist" (capitalist) China, Allende's Chile, the Paris commune, the anarchist takeover of Barcelona, etc, etc. But what can the American left learn from current struggles in other countries, such as Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico, that appear to be working, at least for now?
Check out this article about the labor movement's relationship with the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela.
posted by submarino @ 12:43 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Thank you for the lengthy response, although from this computer I'm not able to see my previous post, but no matter.
Maybe I do have "the anxiety of a perfectionist" at times, but to my knowledge this has never prevented me from standing on the right side of things and devoting energy to the struggle. I actually think all activists, broadly defined, should be constantly interrogating themselves, as individuals and as a group, to keep themselves on the best road possible for real liberation, in tune with their own understanding and principles.
Just to clarify, this is not a call to discover unchanging absolute truth, as if such a thing even existed, or to somehow figure things out once and for all and "secure" the existing movements against selling out, to paraphrase our extremely courageous but unsuccessful Luxembourg (as a side note, I'm not sure if I would say her indecisiveness was the main cause of the German Communists' failure to bring about what would have been the world's second example of proletarian dictatorship, not counting the short-lived Paris Commune). Rather, it's an admission that what we know or believe to be correct at a given time, in this case in politics, is constantly changing, all while we continue to study and fight the good fight.
As far as this dude's idea of participatory economics, I've looked into it before, and I have some thoughts (mu ha ha..). I'll refrain from expounding on them here since I've digressed way off the topic of American labor unions by now. But some things I would like to know are
1) has this ever existed?
2) if so, where and on what scale? and
3) to what extent did the practice of this ideology quantitatively and qualitatively overcome the ills of the system it sought to revolutionize?
I very much enjoy this sort of discussion and I think a progressive labor movement in a country increasingly headed towards internal fascism, to say nothing of its international policies, is one of the best places to be getting into it, especially with "the workers" themselves! However if I sound dismissive it's only because in order to avoid comparing an abstract idea with actual social movements, I increasingly try to keep those three questions in mind when I'm learning about the myriad of movements around the globe, past and present, that "the left" can claim in its tradition.
Though a scan of Znet's page on participatory economics seems to offer some sincere ideas and arguments, it has left me hanging on these questions, and I feel as though Raymond Lotta's talk this thursday (http://rwor.org/a/016/set-record-straight-tour.htm)
will approach them in a provocative but factual manner while discussing the world's first socialist revolutions in Russia and China, including their failures in historical context. So far I've made it a "date" with an organizer from my union, although I'm sure I'll recognize some other faces there and I encourage all interested people to come.
In short I think the prism through which our generation interprets, builds and leads contemporary social movements will and should have a lot to do with what each of us thinks is needed and what we see as possible, and that most of us (myself included) don't know our history well enough.
Lastly I can't resist leaving these two lengthy quotes from "What Is To Be Done?", which popped out to me tonight when I began skimming through this classic by old V.I.:
"The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e, it may itself realise the necessity for combining in unions, for fighting against the employers and for striving to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc."
"Social-Democracy [note: meaning revolutionary socialism, NOT welfare-statism] leads the struggle of the working class, not only for better terms for the sale of labour-power, but for the abolition of the social system that compels the propertyless to sell themselves to the rich. Social-Democracy represents the working class, not in its relation to a given group of employers alone, but in its relation to all classes of modern society and to the state as an organised political force. Hence, it follows that not only must Social-Democrats not confine themselves exclusively to the economic struggle, but that they must not allow the organisation of economic exposures to become the predominant part of their activities. We must take up actively the political education of the working class and the development of its political consciousness."
much respect and unity, A. Nony Mous
Thanks for the reply, anonymous. The "famously indecisive and infamously unsuccesful crusader for justice" I quoted, was actually Hamlet, not Luxemburg.
As far as the topic at hand, it looks like we're treading ground already covered by the dispute between Luxemburg and Lenin. But maybe we can add something to the discussion. I tend to side with Luxemburg, you with Lenin. Ultimately we'll have to rely on our own experience, above and beyond their wisdom, because we're living in our world, not theirs.
P.S. I too have the anxiety of the perfectionist. My comments on this topic are as much about my own psychology as anyone else's. But judging from what Luxemburg wrote a hundred and one years ago, I'm pretty sure this anxiety is shared by many an anti-capitalist organizer. That's why it's so worth discussing.
Well, I'm pleasantly surprised that you (Submarino) are more conversant with the big debates of the socialsit left than I am. I've been meaning to read Luxemburg for a while, but haven't been able to get around to it. And Lenin too. So I can't put the quotes into historical context or even into the context of the entire text from which they come, but I am not sure how you are drawing the conclusions you draw from them.
From how I read the quotes, Luxemburg is concerned with the question of effective revolutionary politics, which means being engaged with the masses so as to participate in its political development, and to keep in sight the ultimate goal of social(ist?) revolution and make sure that the proletariats' political development does not in fact undermine that goal. In other words, she's trying to figure out how to fight both opportunism (selling out long-term interests for the short-term) and sterile Left sectarianism, which insists on political purity at the expense of engaging actively with mass movement. It seems like you are swinging hard against left purity but not paying attention to what da Lux is saying about opportunism. Yes, let's put our efforts into building the union mvmt (or whatever mvmt), but if our goal is in fact some kind of total systemic change then we also need to be thinking about whether we are taking us down a path that is not leading in that direction.
The second quote seems to be mostly about the limits of organizational forms, saying that we can't fix the direction of struggle through "FORMAL means" (emphasis mine), I think meaning expelling so-called opportunists. Reading this through the lens of history (the sectarian 60s and 70s in this country), we have to endorse her stand against any group claiming the single correct line on revolutionary practice and expelling all others. But that doesn't mean that we don't fight hard for our own positions and ideas; it means fighting is different from purging (or censorship). And if anything, I would take it as a call for a union culture of vigorous debate on issues of vision and strategy, which to my knowledge doesn't seem to exist anywhere in the official AFL-CIO/CTW world.
Anyway, it's easy for me to play the critic. I have, in fact, been working w/ union staff trying to advance something like political education and to shape how organizing campaigns work. When I have more energy I'll post something about it. I hope more people read this blog, it's very interesting.
Metacom, I think the most relevant form of "opportunism" (in your words, "selling out long-term interests for the short-term") that the American labor movement has struggled with in the last several decades is a preference for bargaining contracts every few years and filing grievances every few days over continuing to press forward by developing leadership and organizing the unorganized, both here and abroad.
The program of Change to Win is the exactly the opposite of that. To organize the 90% of workers in this country who have no union, and to build meaningful international solidarity through real, concrete campaigns. The best thing we can do to work towards real worker control over the economy (and that's what "socialist revolution" is all about) is build workers' organizations capable of taking power. In that respect, we've got a lot of work cut out for us.
The way I see it, the role for us young radicals in the labor movement is to learn as much as we can from our leaders (Wilhelm, Stern, Raynor, etc, etc) about how to organize effectively, and then when it's our turn to take the lead, make sure we never stop pushing forward.
I gather that by putting opportunism in quotation marks, we share a common distaste for what might be called revolutionary jargon. Revisionist opportunism did mean something back in the day, but maybe not anymore.
In any case, let me list some examples of what may be called political short-sightedness in the AFL-CIO/CTW sector of the movement (there of course are workers' centers and unions outside of it).
1) electoral strategy. AFL-CIO's policy of being in bed w/ the Dems has been disastrous to say the least. But CTW's choice of playing ball with the Republicans does not seem like an improvement to me. Republicans may certainly cut deals with unions and advance the interests of a particular union or set of unions, but overall have an anti-working-class politics in terms of free trade, tax policy, budget priorities, privatization. CTW's strategy, if effective, will lead the Dems towards the Republicans politics. (this is the essence of making yourself a player w/ some political leverage -- the group you abandond, you hope, will come to more resemble the group you go for. So the Green party supporters argue that voting Green to the detriment of the Dems would push them more to the left, in an effort to recapture that bloc). In other words, union-friendly in the narrow sense but anti-working class in a broader one. A long-term electoral strategy is needed.
2) A pro-capitalist leadership (meaning in favor of capitalism, not capitalists). I'm obviously targeting Stern here in light of the comments he made at the CTW convention, which I mentioned in my first post. Embracing competitiveness and "efficiency" is a road we've already been down before, during the concession-ridden 80s.
3) top-down decision making structure and lack of culture of debate. IF workers are supposed to run the economy, shouldn't we let them run their unions?
I like how this blog asks you to "choose an identity." There should be an option for "superhero."
--MC
Metacom, thanks for advancing the discussion. As for Stern's alleged love of capitalism, I've posted a very long discussion of that topic on the main page of the blog.
As for "top-down" decision making, my opinion on that topic is summed up by my post ofn October 11, "Some comments on the state of the labor movement and other current affairs," particularly the sections on "Democracy, trusteeship, and building a movement"; "'Staff-driven social movement unionism' vs. 'business unionism'"; and "Internal and external organizing and rank-and-file leadership."
On the topic of electoral strategy, I agree that it's a work in progress. I'm not sure every decision our leadership has made recently has been the right one.
But the point of political independence is to say that workers are going to support the candidates who support us. We're not going to be your tools, you're going to be ours. Right now, the most relevant issue is organizing the unorganized, so we're going to support politicians who support organizing rights. Ultimately that's a lot more forward looking than backing a politician who'll push through a one-time increase in the minimum wage, because the latter does nothing to build our organization.
I also disagree that supporting a Republican here and there will push the Democrats to the right. In the case of the Green party, the theory is that Democrats will move left in order to capture voters that would otherwise go Green. If labor supports a Republican who supports organizing rights, we create an incentive for Democrats to support organizing rights in the future, not to go pro-life or something. The LA County Fed is a perfect example--labor now sets the agenda for the Democratic nominations in local democratic races. As we grow nationwide, I hope we develop a broader and broader electoral strategy.
And as for a "culture of debate" that's what I'm trying to do with this blog. Thanks for helping, and please spread the word. The more the better.
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