Insurgent Notes - N17 Flyer

[Kadir Ateş]

THE NEXT STEP FOR OWS: OCCUPATIONS TO CHANGE THE WORLD


Today, after two months of occupations and the attacks on the occupations in Portland, Oakland and now Manhattan, OWS might be crossing a new threshold--a massive convergence of students in Union Square and a working-class convergence in Foley Square attempting to give reality to the growing calls for a general strike. That new threshold should include the extension of the occupations to buildings for the coming winter and, beyond that, to workplaces, where the working class can make the system stop, as a further step toward taking over the administration of society on an entirely new basis. Whatever happens today (November 17th) and in the coming week of action, it is time to assess the strengths and limits of the occupation movement both in New York and around the U.S.


There is no question that this is the most important movement to hit the streets in the US in four decades. Its wildfire spread to 1,000 cities in a few weeks attests to that. The avalanche of “demands” has suddenly made the social and economic misery of 40 years, largely suffered passively, with occasional outbursts of resistance, a public reality impossible to ignore from now on. Politicians, TV personalities and various experts have been caught flat-footed before a movement that refuses to enter their suddenly irrelevant universe. For all the “grab-bag” quality of what it has said, the movement has been absolutely right to refuse to identify too closely with specific demands, ideologies and leaders. Daily social reality over years has educated it all too well for it to fall into that game. Underneath everything is the reality of what the movement represents: the refusal of a society that places ever-greater numbers of people on the scrapheap. To identify itself too closely with any laundry list of demands would be to fall beneath the movement’s deeply felt sense that everything must change and the certainty that nothing should be as before.


In response, the largest forces with a potential to derail this movement into respectable channels (the Democratic Party and the union officials) are scrambling to control, defuse and repress it, as they did successfully, for example, in Wisconsin in the spring. They are not having an easy time of it.
The realities of occupations in 1,000 cities defy easy generalization. The news media has attempted to portray the core of the movement as young, white, unemployed and “middle class”--the latter tag being a fast-disappearing mistaken identity for the working class. Whatever the case in the early stages, in different cities (most notably in the November 2nd mass march on the Port of Oakland), significant numbers of blacks and Latinos, as well as older people, have expanded the movement in many places beyond the initial core.



Our purpose here is not to dwell on the thousand slogans, something that is to be expected from a very young movement made up to a great extent by people for whom this is the first such experience of their lives. Ideas such as the “1%” or “make the rich pay their fair share” or “make the banks pay” or “abolish the Fed” sit side by side with attacks on “capitalism”. We would suggest that the excessive focus on the “banks” does not recognize that the source of widespread misery is the world crisis of the capitalist (wage labor) system and, as a result, it does not point to the overcoming of the crisis by establishing a world beyond wage labor, namely socialism or communism (although we are well aware of the abuse of those words in far too many cases). To arrive at such a focus requires speaking openly of class. It is clear that the large majority of working-class people in the U.S., while sympathetic to the movement, have not joined it in any active way, if only because they are working and caught up in daily survival.


The occupation movement needs to build on the creative militancy in the streets of thousands of people (as shown in Oakland, Portland, Seattle, New York and elsewhere) to reach out to that large majority which sometimes seems, a block or two from the street battles, to be going about business as usual. The growing number of anti-eviction and anti-foreclosure actions has made that outreach. Taking over buildings for meetings and much-needed living space, as well as for workshops and teach-ins, could be an important next step. Beyond that should be the extension of the movement to work stoppages and occupation of workplaces, posing even more sharply than before the questions of private property and of “who rules”?



The pending contract renewal of Local 100 of the Transit Workers Union is one obvious link here in New York. The ongoing standoff between west coast dock workers (ILWU) Local 21 and the scab-herding EGT Corporation in Longview, Washington, is another. The planned occupation, together with parents and students, of five public schools slated for closure in Oakland, is still another. In such efforts, we believe that the movement will have little difficulty distinguishing between the rank-and-file workers (who have already joined it on occasions) and the trade-union bureaucrats who have passed one toothless resolution after another of “support” without the slightest, or only token, mobilization.

Still less needs to be said about the Democratic Party politicians--most notoriously, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan--who have tried to ride the movement for their own ends--before sending in the riot police.



HOWEVER, OCCUPATION IS ONLY A FURTHER STEP: BEYOND IT IS THE QUESTION OF TAKING OVER THE PRODUCTION OF SOCIETY FOR OURSELVES AND RUNNING IT ON AN ENTIRELY NEW BASIS.


Whatever happens in the immediate future, a wall of silence on the accumulated misery of four decades has been breached. Every day brings further news of attacks on working people as world capitalism spins out of control. Never has it been clearer that capitalist “normalcy” depends on the passivity of those it crushes to save itself, and from Tunisia and Egypt, via Greece and Spain, to New York, Oakland, Seattle and Portland, that passivity is over. The task today is to throw everything we have into approaching that point of no return where conditions cry out: “We have the chance to change the world, let’s take it.”


What is Insurgent Notes?



Insurgent Notes is published by a small collective based mainly in the eastern U.S. We see our task as the creation of a theoretically and practically-armed current assisting in the abolition of capitalism and elaborating the concrete steps for a rapid exit from capitalism.


http://insurgentnotes.com (http://insurgentnotes.com/). Write us at: [email protected]

[Die Neue Zeit]

We see our task as the creation of a theoretically and practically-armed current assisting in the abolition of capitalism and elaborating the concrete steps for a rapid exit from capitalism.

Creation of a current? Yes. "Assisting in the abolition of capitalism"? Yes. "Elaborating the concrete steps"? Sorry, but the history of the paper has demonstrated otherwise. :glare:

[S.Artesian]

Well, FWIW, here are my views on the IN leaflet. First full disclosure: I was, until recently, an editor of Insurgent Notes. I left for several reasons-- the fact that there really was no IN group being one of them. When some of the politics expressed in this leaflet were first proposed for a leaflet in Sept(?) Oct (?) I expressed serious disagreement. The author of the leaflet and I disagreed openly and in communication with the rest of the "group"-- with the so-called group hardly responding.
Another reason I left, or perhaps a different facet of the same reason was the inability of the "group" to maintain a schedule for publication of IN or even provide the bulk of the material to appear in the publication.


The problem with this leaflet is.......that it doesn't say anything, really. Look at it and tell me if there's a single item of actual political, tactical, strategic, programmatic, or even analytic content. None that I can see. It's not analysis intending to clarify and agitate. It's description, determined to sound pretty while pretty much amounting to zilch. It's great weakness is that it intends to amount to nothing, and it fulfills that intention.

Nature abhors a vacuum and so do leaflets-- so what's to be done to fill the emptiness, the vacuous soft-praises sung to vacuousness, i.e.




There is no question that this is the most important movement to hit the streets in the US in four decades. Its wildfire spread to 1,000 cities in a few weeks attests to that. The avalanche of “demands” has suddenly made the social and economic misery of 40 years, largely suffered passively, with occasional outbursts of resistance, a public reality impossible to ignore from now on. Politicians, TV personalities and various experts have been caught flat-footed before a movement that refuses to enter their suddenly irrelevant universe. For all the “grab-bag” quality of what it has said, the movement has been absolutely right to refuse to identify too closely with specific demands, ideologies and leaders. Daily social reality over years has educated it all too well for it to fall into that game. Underneath everything is the reality of what the movement represents: the refusal of a society that places ever-greater numbers of people on the scrapheap. To identify itself too closely with any laundry list of demands would be to fall beneath the movement’s deeply felt sense that everything must change and the certainty that nothing should be as before.
An observant reader will notice that right above this wonderful sounding bit of nothingness there is this:




it is time to assess the strengths and limits of the occupation movement both in New York and around the U.S.
Very little analysis of those strengths and limits follows of course. But that's the way it's intended to be


So anyway how to fill that vacuum? Well of course, in the midst of conflict and struggle, direct clashes with police, don't offer a tactic for directly making the confrontation general--don't do anything so foolish as to suggest, if it's banks you want to target, then target the banks-- go occupy the banks. Don't do anything like actually raise a demand, an actual demand-- how's this? Cancel the Debt. Think that might strike a nerve? Don't target what the unifying policy of the bourgeoisie is-- austerity.



Nope, don't do that-- play that old "capitalism is spinning out of control" card instead. That will work. Sure. Bet on it.



Wish I could say I'm either disappointed or surprised.

[Kadir Ateş]

I appreciate the feedback, and if I may:

First, after spending more hours than I would like to admit at Zucotti Park and my own involvement in the student general assemblies, I can say that without a doubt the most common idea out there is support for the banks, the unions, and the revival of the American dream (although perhaps to a lesser extent). That there is even a claim to having "democracy" or a "golden past" is more symptomatic of how these many formerly middle class-turned-prole Occuipers. Hence, the fetish over the Federal Reserve and the message of the Inside Job in addition to an even more bizarre fascination with the Illimunati, are all intellectual currents which are strongly rooted at OWS.

That said, surely there is Marxist literature, right? Well, sort of. There have been many references but since it comes from a more Leninist orientation, it has less to do with an analysis of capital than to the dire need for a vanguard to guide the good Occupiers out of their blustery and increasingly wet purgatory. Alas, the NYPD answered the call, and led them right out...to? To the streets, where they are now forced to decide whether to return to the park or reconsider in which direction the movement can be advanced towards.

This tract addresses that precise moment, and attempts to have its participants reconsider much of the mythology which has been fed to them over the course of two months (in some cases, longer) on the above mentioned "causes" of the crisis. It is an affirmation of what they have done, and what to perhaps look out for as potential pitfalls in the movement, i.e., liberal parties and bureaucratic trade unionists. To now occupy spaces, to occupy workplaces are concrete suggestions of where to go.

I think that is the spirit of the pamphlet.

[S.Artesian]

I appreciate the feedback, and if I may:

First, after spending more hours than I would like to admit at Zucotti Park and my own involvement in the student general assemblies, I can say that without a doubt the most common idea out there is support for the banks, the unions, and the revival of the American dream (although perhaps to a lesser extent). That there is even a claim to having "democracy" or a "golden past" is more symptomatic of how these many formerly middle class-turned-prole Occuipers. Hence, the fetish over the Federal Reserve and the message of the Inside Job in addition to an even more bizarre fascination with the Illimunati, are all intellectual currents which are strongly rooted at OWS.

That said, surely there is Marxist literature, right? Well, sort of. There have been many references but since it comes from a more Leninist orientation, it has less to do with an analysis of capital than to the dire need for a vanguard to guide the good Occupiers out of their blustery and increasingly wet purgatory. Alas, the NYPD answered the call, and led them right out...to? To the streets, where they are now forced to decide whether to return to the park or reconsider in which direction the movement can be advanced towards.

This tract addresses that precise moment, and attempts to have its participants reconsider much of the mythology which has been fed to them over the course of two months (in some cases, longer) on the above mentioned "causes" of the crisis. It is an affirmation of what they have done, and what to perhaps look out for as potential pitfalls in the movement, i.e., liberal parties and bureaucratic trade unionists. To now occupy spaces, to occupy workplaces are concrete suggestions of where to go.

I think that is the spirit of the pamphlet.

That's fine, but so what? The tract addresses that precise moment? No it doesn't. NHIA in his long report (Nov 15) detailed addressing the moment in the improptu address he made to participants-- addressing that moment in its results, prospects, and limitations.

It didn't sound very Leninist to me and it certainly didn't use the tentative language that characterized the IN leaflet.

Short version: When the situation you are addressing is characterized by vagueness, generalities, etc. , be precise, specific and.........explicit. Not raising the issues of the debt(s) and austerity is pretty much a fatal flaw in a tract trying to address this moment.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

To be fair, people in and around IN were calling for it to be (1) addressed to the people actually participating in this -- with a view to where they are now, and (2) written in language that everyone can understand, jargon free (I think a lot of leftists and militants don't realize, but many/most people in the United States don't know what things like "capitalist overproduction" is, and even what terms like "proletariat" mean).


That's fine, but so what? The tract addresses that precise moment? No it doesn't. NHIA in his long report (Nov 15) detailed addressing the moment in the improptu address he made to participants-- addressing that moment in its results, prospects, and limitations.This part I totally agree with.

That's why -- after having been involved in this off and on, and drafting and distributing some leaflets myself -- I actually argued that leaflets may get even less attention than they usually do in this movement, at times of action, than they would at things like anti-war rallies where people have nothing to do but stand around and read.

Turns out I was half-right.

During times of real action, which has been what I have tried to focus on (because the other times can be extremely boring and sometimes utterly depressing), a certain moment exists when everything is right there in front of you. That's when it really becomes possible for all the theory and knowledge to merge with what's actually going on. No one wants a leaflet then. But if you can grasp what's going on and apply what you know, and say it, you can get a hearing that you would otherwise never receive.

At the student rally yesterday, it was hard to gauge. The people's mic had people focused on what was being said, so it's hard to tell how well the leaflet was received. I will say that at the beginning of the Foley Square march, when I was alongside some IN folks, the flyer was very well received. Many people nodded in agreement, some were vocal that what was on the paper about the need to occupy spaces and workplaces was right on. It seemed to hit a nerve in a vibrant movement.

But soon after it became obvious to me that this was going to be another zombie fest (e.g. "like anti-war rallies where people have nothing to do but stand around and read").

I don't know if the leaflet captured those first people who were unsure what was going to go down, and thus was right for the moment, or if those people knew better than me that was going to turn into "just another rally."

[Kadir Ateş]

That's fine, but so what? The tract addresses that precise moment? No it doesn't. NHIA in his long report (Nov 15) detailed addressing the moment in the improptu address he made to participants-- addressing that moment in its results, prospects, and limitations.

It didn't sound very Leninist to me and it certainly didn't use the tentative language that characterized the IN leaflet.

Short version: When the situation you are addressing is characterized by vagueness, generalities, etc. , be precise, specific and.........explicit. Not raising the issues of the debt(s) and austerity is pretty much a fatal flaw in a tract trying to address this moment.

I was impressed by it was well, and agreed with most of the points he raised. I think again that the point of this flyer was to bring up that the very possibility of the movements limits should be at the fore of people's minds now, especially in light of the eviction. Furthermore, to push the idea of the occupation out of its fetishized conception and into something more synonymous with actual movement and activity--so its translatable to seeing this develop at the workplace, etc.

I hear what you are saying and to a large extent agree that concrete demands should be raised, but I think at the moment unsettling the ideas about what occupation means beyond a tent in the middle of a concrete jungle is also fair game.

I know the student movement, which experiences the crisis in its own way, has already drafted a financial manifesto of sorts to default on student debt and fight tuition hikes. I think we'll heed your advice the next time around, and I think if anything should thought of as a new next, it should be looking at concrete demands in the manner you've suggested, absolutely.

[S.Artesian]

The more I think about it, the more I think NHIA is right. Yesterday was the funeral march for OWS in Manhattan. The day of action should have been 11/15-- but that would have required extensive organization beforehand... and outside of the labor bureaucracies.

The cops made it safe on 11/15 for the union bureaucrats to "call" for "support" on 11/17.

[S.Artesian]

NHIA,

Can I quote some of your report on 11/15, 11/17 etc in an article on OWS? Credit can be given and will be making no editorial comment on what I cite-- other to say that those citations seem to me to be the most accurate and perceptive of the actual events and their meaning.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

As with anything I write -- ever -- here or anywhere else (outside of private correspondence) you can use any or all of it however you see fit, with or without any kind of attribution.

Thanks for asking though.

I'd appreciate a link to the final product too.

[Die Neue Zeit]

To now occupy spaces, to occupy workplaces are concrete suggestions of where to go.

I think that is the spirit of the pamphlet.

No they aren't concrete enough. They have to be coupled with immediate demands aimed at the state, as explained below.

Occupy, indeed! Everything from the more residential Right to the City to the Paris Commune on workplace occupations, particularly on deserted enterprises, should be on the table. But:

1a) No hindrances on tenant associations
1b) Perpetual Occupant possession of residences (i.e., no residential writs of possession and eviction) except for tenant neglect

2) Occupation of workplaces, particularly those under closure threat, to be backed by pro-workplace eminent domain

[Jose Gracchus]

The State is staffed with the creatures of the bourgeoisie and its neoliberal program for decades. Even if you could press some kind of more concrete demands on the State, it would simply attempt to compromise or implement them in a fashion which would do the most to screw labor and assist capital through the backdoor. There is obviously no movement capable of supplying an alternative bureaucracy, or even to keep the State honest in meeting these imaginary demands you want put to it. Its clearly a dead letter, from the outset.

Your politics are extinct.

[Die Neue Zeit]

If "my" politics is really extinct (rather than beginning its overdue revival), then simply put, the working class-in-itself is politically doomed. That's the bottom line, and that's the choice that working-class militants today face.

You no longer understand the dynamics of class struggle as political struggle, inclusive of concrete solutions meant to rebutt the very thing you warn of in your second sentence.

[Jose Gracchus]

So you are not going to bother explaining how your proposals could possibly be implemented successfully today? Why the massive bourgeois apparatus will consistently and faithfully implement passionate demands hurled upon it, in a fashion the workers prefer?

Nope, just more 'I'm right because I say so', and the even more preposterous, 'without me proles have no hope'. I do not even need to resort to the reductio ad absurdum. You have done it for me.

Do you hold out hope that someday you will meet a worker or leftist who will take this seriously, and then the light will emerge through the clouds for you and 'your program'?

[Die Neue Zeit]

So you are not going to bother explaining how your proposals could possibly be implemented successfully today?

I already explained it to you many times, yet it seems I've gone over your clueless head.

Again, many workers will want to "Re-imagine Late Capitalism" (a more proper title for The Nation's recent series of discussions (http://www.thenation.com/article/161267/reimagining-capitalism-bold-ideas-new-economy)), a la Brinton's unfulfilled expectations in his Anatomy of Revolution. However, I see a mix of mass civil disobedience (a la Civil Rights movement), mere regime changes, etc. Re. mere regime changes: here's where your spontaneist take on "revolutionary periods" kicks in, since any worker-class party-movement won't have majority political support from the class.


Why the massive bourgeois apparatus will consistently and faithfully implement passionate demands hurled upon it, in a fashion the workers prefer?

To be extremely "vulgar-Marxist" here, it's the difference between absolute surplus value and relative surplus value (the latter in the form of immediate, intermediate, and threshold demands).

In any event, "revolution" is but a point in the process of class struggle-as-political-struggle. The maintenance of such demands will require this class struggle. The necessity of "revolution" at some point depends on the bourgeois state order.


Do you hold out hope that someday you will meet a worker or leftist who will take this seriously, and then the light will emerge through the clouds for you and 'your program'?

There already are such comrades who take this seriously. It's now a matter of momentum. :)

[Jose Gracchus]

Don't you see these 'left alternatives' of the reformist and The Nation variety are just a 'left' way that the working-class might be demobilized and recuperated to the same old bourgeoisie and class exploitation?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Some of the policy proposals raised there are indeed wishy-washy. That doesn't mean jumping to things like your contemptuous dismissal of the rest of them.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The OP is interesting. Perhaps more of a segue from the recent events in NYC and the rest of the country and world.Perhaps more details on how power has shifted more towards capital during the past 40 years.A bit more historical context.

I would question putting "capitalism" in quotes. I understand the perspective of IN, that they emphasise the immanence of working class power and potentiality but the quotes seem to distance IN from an anti-capitalist critique.People in the # Occupy movement are confused (although I haven't yet heard Illumanati conspiracy theories , I have heard that David Icke spoke at OWS sometime) but perhaps you could emphasise how people are beginning to draw anti-capitalist conclusions.

The advocacy of expanding the Occupy movement into workplaces and foreclosed property is good.Perhaps this could be expanded upon and fleshed out. I would not mention "eminent domain" at all, "the law" is a bourgeoisie construct, we do not want to rely on or appeal to bourgeoisie legality in any form.

The hint of a NYC general strike is very good.

To change the subject a bit.Its interesting watching Rachel Maddow and the Ed Show desperately squirming in their attempt to coopt the movement.Maddow has a few tame OWS "spokesman' have their say, but there is little she can really grab on to. Interestingly both Maddow and Mr. Ed allowed the video to pause a moment on what looked like ISO posters calling for "socialist revolution". Jay Leno has been speaking favorabley of the Occupy movement He brushed aside the attempt of his shallow guest to damn it w/faint praise.. "Yeah, I agree w/the 99% but , you know, all the rapes and crime is giving the movement a bad name" Leno brushed her aside. And he's got Tom Morello on, FWIW.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The advocacy of expanding the Occupy movement into workplaces and foreclosed property is good.Perhaps this could be expanded upon and fleshed out. I would not mention "eminent domain" at all, "the law" is a bourgeoisie construct, we do not want to rely on or appeal to bourgeoisie legality in any form.

Comrade, reform demands by their very nature depend on some sort of bourgeois legality, even those that are pursued by means of civil disobedience and other extra-legal action. [Just look at the Venezuelan worker control movement's struggle for a new labour law.]

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The path of legal reormism can destroy a movement. The worker's movement in Wisconsin was diverted in to a move to recall Scott Walker, and coopted by the Dems in the process.

The NYPD as I understand violated a restraining order in closin off Zuccotti Park. Bloomberg had one of the judges changed. The law means whatever the ruling class wants it to mean.

The role of revolutionaries is toforce open a space beyond that.

Of course sometimes legal reformism can be useful as an educational tool, to show people just how limited it is.

[Kadir Ateş]

No they aren't concrete enough. They have to be coupled with immediate demands aimed at the state, as explained below.

Occupy, indeed! Everything from the more residential Right to the City to the Paris Commune on workplace occupations, particularly on deserted enterprises, should be on the table. But:

1a) No hindrances on tenant associations
1b) perpetual Occupant possession of residences (i.e., no residential writs of possession and eviction) except for tenant neglect

2) Occupation of workplaces, particularly those under closure threat, to be backed by pro-workplace eminent domain

I think you've missed the entire point. We're trying not to channel efforts which began outside of the state back into them, but encouraging Occupiers and other participants on November 17th to consider the transcending the encampment phase into something more. These people are not idiots, they'll figure out ways to creatively defend the Occupation and figure out its dynamics as time goes along. After all, if they could set up and establish a small commune in the middle of the Financial District in Autumn, they're capable of much more.

But I want to get back to another point and make it my last comment: the whole idea that the flyer should have come with an guide to making the next move (or what to say, better yet) was again, not the message we were trying to get out. No one in this world comes into it fully communized and ready to get going. Speaking for myself, I used to hear some pretty radical stuff, but never force one felt it was possible, even as I started to feel my way around politically. Many of the Occupiers may have been sympathetic to left-ish ideas, but are, in their own way, trying to figure out what the hell is going on: "Why doesn't the government just tax the rich?" and "Why are the banks receiving so much profit?" Such questions I think underscore a certain level of political consciousness that needs to be addressed in a way appropriate for them to understand why it isn't "just the banks" and why the state--or unions, or political parties--will never be able to provide the golden years or democracy they thought they had (the more entrenched working class never had a golden year in this sense).

So again: yes, demands which would be impossible to recoup into the capitalist state like eliminating personal debt or something along those lines, will need to be of grave concern for not just IN but any revolutionary current whose aim is to provide tools and context to the current crisis and more. It's just that we wanted to address where we felt people were and whether such an attitude was even existent before we lay them down with the mechanics of "what next".

I look forward to critiques and engagements on RevLeft such as this one, and I hope discussions like this can continue.

[S.Artesian]

So what's happening with the occupy at 90 5th Avenue?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I think you've missed the entire point. We're trying not to channel efforts which began outside of the state back into them

I'm not saying at all that the existing institutions are to be utilized. I am saying that political struggle and genuine class struggle cannot avoid "efforts in the state."


After all, if they could set up and establish a small commune in the middle of the Financial District in Autumn, they're capable of much more.

That's a slippery slope to utopian Lifestylism and Situationism.


So again: yes, demands which would be impossible to recoup into the capitalist state like eliminating personal debt or something along those lines, will need to be of grave concern for not just IN but any revolutionary current whose aim is to provide tools and context to the current crisis and more. It's just that we wanted to address where we felt people were and whether such an attitude was even existent before we lay them down with the mechanics of "what next".

Except that "we felt people were" reeks too much of prognosis and definitely offers little if anything in the way of solutions.

[Cue the howls of "Marketing!" "Poseur!" "Selling Politics as a Product!"]

[Jose Gracchus]

If they aren't aimed at existing institutions, who are they aimed at? Are you just aiming to hurl demands rhetorically, that are known to be a dead-letter when they were first formulated?