Something I've noticed about most full time activist...

[R_P_A_S]

This post is not intended to bash anyone who dedicates a great amount of time out on the streets demonstrating, marching, organizing and sometimes getting arrested. It's just an observation and I wanted to know if others noticed this and if this is a weakness or it has nothing to do at all with anything.

I've started to follow some of the people who are mainly Occupy activist who are NOW "occupying" foreclosed homes. Typically there's 20, 30 maybe even 60 people at any given period camping at the family's home and also organizing community outreach as well as many other actions to bring attention to the issue of criminal foreclosure and the millions these banks have stolen from people... etc.

The majority of the good people who do this happen to be unemployed. This is why they can dedicate full time hours to activism. There were people during the height of Occupy LA period that were pretty active and 100% involved but some have gone out to have jobs now and they obviously can't commit the same amount of hours and dedication to activism. Most remain supportive and do some internet outreach but some fade away.

I guess my observation is; With the majority of these activist who are advocating for a change in the banks and occupying these foreclosed homes being unemployed is that a good "back bone" for a movement? What happens when these people get jobs? Where do we grow in numbers? I've met a dude who had been in activism for decades and he told me he has rarely ever held a job. I just don't see strength if we can't get people WITH JOBS to also contribute to these movements and get involved. Is there way forward with only unemployed workers having the time to be full time activist?

Ultimately we are still weak and divided it feels.

[ed miliband]

i don't think the issue is unemployed people being involved, but people who see their occupation as professional activism. and yes, there's a problem with any movement made up primarily of professional activists.

[l'Enfermé]

"Activism", heh. What the hell does that even mean? It's completely worthless. You can speak of a "movement", but single-issue activism campaigns are not a "movement".

[Sasha]

"Activism", heh. What the hell does that even mean? It's completely worthless. You can speak of a "movement", but single-issue activism campaigns are not a "movement".


ever read this article? http://zabalazabooks.net/2011/09/20/give-up-activism-a-critique-of-the-activist-mentality-in-the-direct-action-movement/
not that i completely agree with it but its an interesting read.

[ed miliband]

s'what i was getting at btw

[R_P_A_S]

ever read this article? http://zabalazabooks.net/2011/09/20/give-up-activism-a-critique-of-the-activist-mentality-in-the-direct-action-movement/
not that i completely agree with it but its an interesting read.


thanks. I'll take a look

[Os Cangaceiros]

Yeah, that was a big talking point of people in the news here in the USA, that "oh, look at all these dirty unemployed bums in Occupy Wall Street. Get a job you hippies!"

It's definitely true though that people with a full-time job can't devote nearly as much time to causes as someone who's unemployed can. Unemployed people can't grab the bosses by the cojones like people with jobs can, though.

[Mather]

I agree with ed miliband on this issue. The problem is more with the culture of professional activism as opposed to the unemployed being politically active themselves. Also, not all professional activists are unemployed either.

Contemporary capitalism, especially in the more industrialised countries, needs a certain level of the working class to be unemployed. It can then simply replace any worker who fights back with another from the unemployed. In times of high unemployment, workers fear for their own positions far more and are then less likely to stand up for their rights and working conditions for fear of being made unemployed themselves. We are also now in the midst of a global economic crisis. The attacks on workers and the austerity that is now being imposed in many of the leading capitalist countries, means that unemployment is going to be a far more common occurrence for many workers. Back in the days of Marx and Bakunin, capitalism was still a progressive phenomenon in that it industrialised the world and increased the productive forces. In 2012, the situation is very different. Capitalism seems to be fast running out of steam.

Given this, I would say that we should work on way to link up the struggles of the unemployed with those of the working class as a whole. Many issues that affect the unemployed (housing, healthcare, jobs, welfare support etc.) are also key issues for the working class as well.

[Jimmie Higgins]

This post is not intended to bash anyone who dedicates a great amount of time out on the streets demonstrating, marching, organizing and sometimes getting arrested. It's just an observation and I wanted to know if others noticed this and if this is a weakness or it has nothing to do at all with anything.

I've started to follow some of the people who are mainly Occupy activist who are NOW "occupying" foreclosed homes. Typically there's 20, 30 maybe even 60 people at any given period camping at the family's home and also organizing community outreach as well as many other actions to bring attention to the issue of criminal foreclosure and the millions these banks have stolen from people... etc.

The majority of the good people who do this happen to be unemployed. This is why they can dedicate full time hours to activism. There were people during the height of Occupy LA period that were pretty active and 100% involved but some have gone out to have jobs now and they obviously can't commit the same amount of hours and dedication to activism. Most remain supportive and do some internet outreach but some fade away.

I guess my observation is; With the majority of these activist who are advocating for a change in the banks and occupying these foreclosed homes being unemployed is that a good "back bone" for a movement? What happens when these people get jobs? Where do we grow in numbers? I've met a dude who had been in activism for decades and he told me he has rarely ever held a job. I just don't see strength if we can't get people WITH JOBS to also contribute to these movements and get involved. Is there way forward with only unemployed workers having the time to be full time activist?

Ultimately we are still weak and divided it feels.

I have noticed this and it is more true of Occupy than most recent movements I've been a part of. I don't think the problem is "full-time activists" but the problem is moralism.

I think part of this is complicated by some of the specific poltics of a lot of Occupy camps where most politics seemed to range from left-liberals to soft anarchism. There were radicals too obviously, but I think a lot of the moralism tended to come from the more liberal oriented people as well as some lifestyle-oriented activists.

In Occupy Oakland there were always tensions between the people who were camping 24-7 and people who just came to GAs and participated only on a polticial level. I think both were necissary for that political movement, because the politics gave the movement direction and the camps provided the physical organizing center and focal point. So my point is not to downplay the people who put in a lot of time cleaning the camp and working at food tents and such, I did some of that as well, but as a worker I also didn't camp there and often GAs and one working group were about the limits of my time. But I think it led to a lot of moralism and created other problems.

In Occupy Oakland after the camp was lost, there was a tendency to focus on street confrontations and this brought a new kind of moralism where - without a united strategy most of the time and no concerete demands - the way to "proove" how revolutionary and dedicated someone was became confronting the police. Those who didn't see the point to that action were sometimes considered "reformist" or lumped in with pacifists. Some people who ended up in jail seemed to expect their opinions to carry more weight in break-out groups because they had put themselves on the line for the movement.

I think this really stems partially from some induvidual-action oriented polticial ideas as well as the rapid growth of the movement and inexperience of most of the particpants (myself included, even though I've been in a number of movements, this was a very unique and exciting terrain). For the anti-forclosure activists, for example, it seems like a weakness in ability to organize and do outreach - to really defy forclosures you need real work involved, you need people to watch for the sherrif you need people to stay in the location and you need people to be able to come to the defense if the Sherrif does come out. So frustration in not having a bigger movement and enough organization and support becomes a moralistic call for people to be "down" with this or that action.

This happened a lot in the US Maoist groups in the 1970s. Emphasis was placed on "revolutionary scarifice" and the will of induvidual revolutionaries to take action, rather than a sort of longer-view about creating self-led working class movements large enough for the tasks we face.

[Rusty Shackleford]

i have a full time job 4 days a week (i work 4-10s which really can be more like 4-11s 4-12s depending on the week) and i spend my spare time doing the activisty stuff. i get less sleep on my 'weekends' than i do during my workweek. though, im also trying to fit in a social life with all of it. :bored:

[Jimmie Higgins]

ever read this article? http://zabalazabooks.net/2011/09/20/give-up-activism-a-critique-of-the-activist-mentality-in-the-direct-action-movement/
not that i completely agree with it but its an interesting read.To be honest I only gave this a skim but it seemed like what they talked about as "the activist mentality" is something I agree is a problem. But I think it's not really "professional activists" that is the problem, but how that activism is oriented and what the goals seem to be.

A rank and file militant and a NGO activist might both be considered "professional activists" but even leaving aside the issue of the role of one as an actual "job" in of itself (NGO) the content and context of that activism are different. For the NGO activist or some of the Occupy activists, it was the action of the activists which was the main thing whereas a rank and file militant's activism is only relevent in being able to help other workers organize themselves. In Occupy one way that the difference could be seen was that often working group meetings were held in the middle of the day during the week - this favors the "professional activists" while it is a barrier for organizing new people to become involved if they work or go to school. This can also be seen in the NGO world where they hold press conferences or protests in the middle of the day because the focus of activity becomes what this NGO group does, not in being able to mobilize or organize a larger and more open movement (which would then be harder for the NGO to set the terms for since most are not run on a democratic basis but more like a business or charity).

[l'Enfermé]

ever read this article? http://zabalazabooks.net/2011/09/20/give-up-activism-a-critique-of-the-activist-mentality-in-the-direct-action-movement/
not that i completely agree with it but its an interesting read.
I've read about a third of it right now and I'll finish it later.

What I meant though was that real worker's class-struggle-ist movements are real parties, and real parties are real movements. All this "activism" is as shallow as the "vanguard parties" of the Stalinists("Marxist-Leninists" - though calling them that makes as much sense as calling Trotsky and his followers "Bolshevik-Leninists"), their offspring(Maoists, Hoxhaists, etc), and the Trotskyists. It's not a real movement. It lacks even the faintest sign of class-consciousness. Only a real movement, that is, a party-movement, can satisfy the need for [working]class-for-itself struggle. Anything else is worthless.



Real Parties as Real Movements and Vice Versa (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1217)


The Merger Formula: Ideology on Why Real Parties are Real Movements and Vice Versa (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=6559)

[R_P_A_S]

Well that's a classic, it's also true. Sadly, I guess it's the choice you have to make. And what's wrong with someone dedicating all their time to a cause?

Personally I wasn't criticizing people who spend all their time on certain political causes. I always applaud that. (longest is a progressive cause for working people lol)

I guess what I should had said was that being an activist, full time even simply because you have the extra time sense you are unemployed isn't the answer and once that person goes back to work he or she most likely forgets all about "the movement".

So in a sense we are still serving our own interest. Our own personal interest to make it and provide for our survival in the capitalist society

[Mather]

I guess what I should had said was that being an activist, full time even simply because you have the extra time sense you are unemployed isn't the answer and once that person goes back to work he or she most likely forgets all about "the movement".

I think the fault rests more with the prevailing material conditions of the last few decades and the piss poor state of the revolutionary left; in terms of their organisation, tactics, theory and their approach to the working class. Your example cannot be applied to everyone who leaves the revolutionary left out of sheer disillusionment. Neither can it be applied to the wider working class, as most of them are not even aware of the contemporary revolutionary left. On this point I think the revolutionary left needs to sort it's own house out and really question themselves on why they remain in most cases insignificant and how this unfortunate situation can be reversed. Without asking these hard questions and challenging old dogmas, we will simply repeat the mistakes of the past.


So in a sense we are still serving our own interest. Our own personal interest to make it and provide for our survival in the capitalist society

Thats correct, from a materialist standpoint.

Material conditions will shape your personal interests and will affect the way in which you pursue them. Hence the interests of a worker and how he/she will pursue it will be different (and in this case the complete opposite) to that of a member of the bourgeoisie. All workers will have interests that they hold in common with other workers and that unites them as a class. They then struggle for their class interests collectively.

[helot]

I guess what I should had said was that being an activist, full time even simply because you have the extra time sense you are unemployed isn't the answer and once that person goes back to work he or she most likely forgets all about "the movement".

So in a sense we are still serving our own interest. Our own personal interest to make it and provide for our survival in the capitalist society

I think the problem with that is how people see their activism and the content of it. As a precarious worker i'm constantly in and out of work. I am capable of doing more when i'm unemployed but when i'm in work it's not that i stop doing stuff but that i focus efforts on my workplace. While i think solidarity actions are important as it can help link struggles i also think the key is engaging in struggle that you're confronted with directly on a regular basis as the possibility of just forgetting to continue to engage due to time constraints drastically reduces as your struggles are then directly linked to bettering your own conditions.