The Anti-War Movement and the Cult of Defeat

[abbielives!]

Damn Near Seven Years of Failure: The Phoenix Anti-War Movement and the Ritual Cult of Defeat



By Phoenix Insurgent
http://www.phoenixinsurgent.blogspot.com (http://www.phoenixinsurgent.blogspot.com/)

In the process of getting ready to write something new about the anti-war movement here in Phoenix, I re-read my past writings on the topic. Looking them over, I realized, why bother? Nothing has changed. Ritual and ineffectiveness still dominate the movement, as do activists who need the war to justify their management of others (to get votes, to build organizations or just to massage their own egos). A fear of shaking things up and a conservative attitude towards tactics prevails.

Failure, rather than success, has become the benchmark for the movement. To continue losing, to continue to stand impotent before the forces of the elite war machine, has in fact become a sort of measure of success in its own right. We're still here, and we're still against the war, seems to be the message, ignoring the fact that as long as that's true, the war must also still churn mercilessly on, devouring both American and Iraqi alike (although one in substantially greater proportion than the other). After all, you can't be against a war once it's over.

Heavy on symbol and low on substance, the movement in Phoenix has become a candle-holding caricature of itself, at war with imagination and as a result completely unable to conceive of any action other than to repeat its own failed mistakes of the past. Nearly seven bloody years of war have passed and still the local liberal anti-war movement has yet to claim anything remotely approaching a victory, having instead allowed itself to be diverted into dead ends like electoralism, petitioning and moral witness.

Literally, the movement here has engaged in the exact same protest almost since the day American bombs started pummeling Iraq: show up at Senator McCain's office, hold some signs and deliver a petition. The movement's success is judged in terms of honking horns rather than concrete results. Initially, there were street protests and some enthusiastic energy, but those days are long gone. The vampires of the liberal left have sucked all the blood from the movement, leaving behind a lifeless, mindless corpse incapable of creative action.

And why not? This was a predictable result of allowing these liberal ghouls to get their cold hands on the movement in the first place. Squash and marginalize the militants, that was their first goal, then manage the rest. And so the fire of the anti-globalization movement went away and the candles of the anti-war movement came out. It was predicted at the time, by anarchists and other radicals in town, who argued against liberal leadership of the movement. And so it has now come to pass and what we're left with is an anti-war leadership morally and organizationally invested in the continuation of the war. To varying degrees they have been duped or acted as enthusiastic movement-slayers but either way, they offer no solutions to our predicament. And how could they? They caused it.

And yet support for the war dwindles along with the attendance, even here in conservative Arizona. This sheer fact alone, that the population is much more anti-war now than ever before while at the same time the numbers showing up at anti-war rallies has generally and noticeably moved in the opposite direction, should give everyone pause. Unsurprisingly, the increasingly marginal rallies and boring tactics have not worked, nor have they inspired new blood to join the movement with fresh ideas. If the goal is to stop the various imperialist wars waged on the world by the United States, then the Phoenix anti-war movement has been a colossal failure. This fact must be faced up to.

My advice now is the same it has been for the last seven years. Either way, at some point we need to start evaluating whether we want an anti-war movement to end the war or just to sooth our consciences. One is based on solidarity with other people and the other is an exercise in First World privilege at best or default imperialism at worst. One empowers people and the other empowers politicians and the other slimy managers of social change. One shakes the halls of power and imposes change on the criminal ruling class, emboldening ourselves in the process, while the other slinks in on all fours and begs for a hearing, further empowering the parasitic liberal activists and their political allies.

So, if you want a good look at the anti-war movement today, have a look at my piece from last year, entitled "So Many Candles, So Little Fire: The Sad State of the Phoenix Anti-War Movement". Truthfully, you could go back and read any of the many articles I wrote or the fliers I handed out on the topic over the past many years and get the same points, because nothing has changed since then either. If anything, the anti-war movement has become even more entrenched in bad habits and bad thinking, its leaders even more managerial and its ideas even more bankrupt.

Further, its analysis has regressed, no longer recognizing the central interests of Capital behind the elite's desperate aggressions abroad. This failure has allowed capitalist politicos like those in the Democratic Party to infuse themselves and exploit and neutralize the movement. Lifestylist, thinly veiled calls for what amounts to a liberal interventionist green empire free of fossil fuels have replaced demands for the dismantlement of the empire.

The gains of the anti-globalization movement, which inspired so many of us not leastwise because it had settled so many of the issues that now bog down the anti-war movement, have faded into the past, both in terms of tactics and analysis. Unlike the anti-globalization movement, the anti-war movement lacks contact with other domestic movements, and as a result it has withered on the vine intellectually, cannibalizing itself and squandering its potential. The truth is, the anti-war movement has become a reactionary force, recuperating past militant movements, neutralizing them and purging them from the collective memory.

Indeed, the obsession of the liberal anti-war movement elite with the coming attack on Iran betrays it's own impotence, as they religiously consult the bones over breaking news of impending attacks, belying their own failure to create a movement capable of stopping them before they begin. The anti-war elites fret over the machinations of their political adversaries and openly plot to replace them. Indeed, if the anti-war movement managers are not able to stop the attack on Iran, it will be hard to come to any other conclusion than to declare the national anti-war movement dead on arrival.

Where are the blockades and destruction of war-related property? Phoenix has plenty of war profiteers. Where is the call for shutting down the whole of elite society until troops are withdrawn (not redeployed) and guarantees for Iran's people are issued? Indeed, where is the generally white and affluent anti-war left when other movements here in town ask for solidarity? Where is the anti-war left when migrants and immigrants take the streets in defense of basic human freedoms? Where was the anti-war left in Jena, Louisiana, not to mention in downtown Phoenix on Mayday 2006?

Further the movement is still mired in infantile anti-Bush and anti-Republican thinking, forgetting the right's many willing accomplices on the left. There are clear reasons why the liberal left prefers to frame things this way, but we have to ask ourselves if it really represents reality and if it's a strategy for stopping America's ongoing war against the world. Indeed, the tendency of the anti-war left to ignore the situation in Afghanistan almost entirely, marking time instead by the invasion of Iraq, betrays the pro-imperialist logic of this mindset by setting Iraq into a special category - a war somehow gone wrong or for the wrong reasons - rather than a continuation of imperial global strategy.

But in the end, if we can't evaluate the anti-war movement on it's ability to hamper or end the war, just what measure should we use? Useless votes? Lip service from politicians? The elevation of local anti-war leaders to elected office, like Kyrsten Sinema, who managed to ride the early anti-war wave for her own personal political gain? Politicos like this can't help us make the kind of radical changes that are necessary to stop the Iraq and other wars. The activists, politicians and other professional managers of social change (after all, whither the anti-war activist without the war?) have had their time. Militance and direct action are the watchwords of the day now.

There is no argument they can make against us. They can't say now is not the time, because it's been damn near seven years and there have been more than a million deaths in that time. They can't say wait for the next election, because we've given them three national shots at the ballot box ('02, '04, '06), including going on two years with liberal control of Congress. They can't say we must persuade more people because more than half the American population want out NOW, not later. It's time for the movement to wake up and realize that when the activists urge passivity, it's not because it's a successful tactic, but because it does not disturb their own positions in the movement. And, in the end, what's the difference between that and supporting the slaughter themselves?

If we have one advantage here in Phoenix, it is the total lack of an organized communist left. Many, many hours of very hard work, often including direct action at their meetings and rallies, consciously directed by anarchist militants, has kept the Valley thankfully free of authoritarians of the leftist variety, and we are all better for it. In other cities, authoritarian communists and socialists destroy movements in ways similar to liberals, with common front tactics and marginalization of militant, critical voices and often direct collaboration with the police. Often, however, their organizing is more insidious because their language is seductive to folks looking for something more radical than what the liberals have to offer. Local anti-war militants should take advantage of this fact and act to make irrelevant, through our own creative action, the liberal anti-war leaders in town.

The time is now for militant action. Pick a target and shut it down. Build solidarity and fight for and with others. Link the war to other local struggles and leave room in your organizing to support them unselfishly. Militants must challenge the dominant cadre in the movement and seek to broaden the space for resistance. Politicians and activists must be driven from the movement (they had their chance) and our actions must develop strict criteria for evaluating our success. Let's take the power into our own hands. The time is now.

http://www.phoenixinsurgent.blogspot.com (http://www.phoenixinsurgent.blogspot.com/)

[Faux Real]

Great blog post. Could replace "Phoenix" with any other US city.

[Wanted Man]

If we have one advantage here in Phoenix, it is the total lack of an organized communist left. Many, many hours of very hard work, often including direct action at their meetings and rallies, consciously directed by anarchist militants, has kept the Valley thankfully free of authoritarians of the leftist variety, and we are all better for it. In other cities, authoritarian communists and socialists destroy movements in ways similar to liberals, with common front tactics and marginalization of militant, critical voices and often direct collaboration with the police. Often, however, their organizing is more insidious because their language is seductive to folks looking for something more radical than what the liberals have to offer. Local anti-war militants should take advantage of this fact and act to make irrelevant, through our own creative action, the liberal anti-war leaders in town.
I don't know much about the situation in the US. Still, I was curious about the antics of the communists over there, so I searched the page for 'communist'. The article from June 2007 was quite 'interesting'.

It advocated cooperation with the libertarian right, against "our traditional enemies, the big-state communists of all stripes". Because, hey, they claim to oppose war and corporations too. :rolleyes: Now I remember why I wouldn't trust you 'individualist', 'neither left nor right' types to park my car.

Article reproduced below, to save people the trouble:


Thursday, June 07, 2007 Anti-war right fights to succeed where the anti-war left has failed

I remember some conversations around 2002 and 2003 about how much many of us anarchists in Phoenix hated the way the liberal left was so anti-libertarian when it came to anti-war organizing. Already sick of the antics of the anti-war left, some of us put forward the idea of an anarchist/libertarian alliance against the war and the curtailing of civil liberties.

However, trapped in their silly left-right crap and aided in large part by the liberal actions of the supposedly radical Bring the Ruckus collective here in town, the liberals who had come to dominate the movement didn't see any value in reaching out to the libertarians. At a demonstration, I once even saw liberal organizers demand that the cops disarm some libertarians who came packing to an anti-FBI PATRIOT Act protest. Those folks never came back, of course. Aside from the hypocrisy of a bunch of supposed pacifists asking the heavily armed and violent cops to disarm someone exercising their constitutional rights, it sure looked like a bad move strategically at the time to a lot of us, as we were short of allies to begin with. But now, with the total failure of the left to stop the war, it looks like some on the left are finally beginning to look right instead of left for allies in the fight against the war.

There are some problems, specifically the electoralism of some politicians (Ron Paul) and elements of the libertarian 9/11 Truth movement. And, we have yet to see the development of a direct action ethic amongst the libertarian right when it comes to the war. Of course, the left suffers perhaps even more from this affliction, having just elected an anti-war congress that they can't seem to get to vote anti-war and having repeated the same boring and ineffective protest tactics (if you can call speechifying about Israel a tactic) for five years now. Also, the libertarian right is quite explicitly capitalist, but it is an anti-corporate, anti-elitist sort, so I think there is room there for anti-capitalist anarchists - at least as much as there is on the left, where we are surrounded by our traditional enemies, the big-state communists of all stripes.

The libertarian right also suffers from an overly optimistic assessment of American history. To keep them honest, one frequently has to follow up their romantic rants about the good old days with the caveat "for white men". Nevertheless, the left has never been a terribly comfortable place for anarchists either, to put it mildly. Not fitting on either side too well, who other than anarchists are positioned to address both sides of this movement? As we see the merging of these two movements (or perhaps the abandonment of the leftist side of it for the right), it offers a prime opportunity for us as a movement. Plus, it offers the possibility of encircling the moderate, pragmatist (and electoral) left, which is really the main impediment to truly challenging the war in a broad way.

So, in that spirit, check this article out. It's written from the perspective of a Green, but I think it is still useful to anarchists opposing the war:

Antiwar Libertarians Put Lefties to Shame (http://www.counterpunch.com/walsh06052007.html)Labels: anti-war (http://phoenixinsurgent.blogspot.com/search/label/anti-war), the right (http://phoenixinsurgent.blogspot.com/search/label/the%20right)


posted by Phoenix Insurgent at 6:14 PM (http://phoenixinsurgent.blogspot.com/2007/06/anti-war-right-fights-to-succeed-where.html) 1 comments (http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=16752876&postID=3697984966231728001&isPopup=true) links to this post (http://phoenixinsurgent.blogspot.com/2007/06/anti-war-right-fights-to-succeed-where.html#links)

[STI]

Excellent analysis, I'll be sending it to folks I know.

Could you give a few examples of what, specifically, effective actions on the part of radical anti-imperialists would be? Chalk it up to a symptom of a movement lacking in creative capacity, but I'm coming up blank.

[KC]

I would agree with this analysis. The anti-war movement has been strangled to death by the liberal petit-bourgeois and bourgeois "leaders" through ineffective tactics (voting democrat, passing around petitions, appealing to the electorate, etc...) which have proven to not work and through the way it works with members of other movements. It takes these movements and treats them as secondary to the anti-war movement, with the sole intentions of getting larger numbers at rallies.

If the anti-war movement was to pick up then we would have to not only work with these other movements, but link them together with the anti-war movement both theoretically and organizationally. They should not be treated as secondary, as they are equally as important.

The only thing that can save the anti-war movement is an all-encompassing mass movement of working and exploited people against capitalism.

[chegitz guevara]

I think this post, while good at describing the conditions we face, lacks a materialist viewpoint. While it's true that the liberal centrists have strangled what antiwar movement there is, the real problems of the antiwar movement are to be found in larger social trends.

First and foremost, there is no draft. That single fact is more responsible than any other for our situation today. All of the soldiers in the military are volunteers. This means that youth today are not facing disruption of their lives or death or dismemberment, unless they volunteer for it. Further, unlike in Vietnam, where the largest single component of the antiwar movement was vets, today most vets are significantly less likely to oppose the war. IVAW is not all that large.

Next, is the demographic change in the U.S. since the 1960s. A far greater proportion of the population is suburban today than forty years ago. The population has nearly doubled in that time, yet the population of the cities remains the same or slightly smaller. The population is more spread out. It is much more difficult for people to attend demonstrations, even as technology makes it easier for us to organize them. Here in South Florida, for example, the metropolitan area extends from Homestead in the South to Jupiter in the North, a stretch of about 150 miles. For this area of 5.6 million, there is no core, no place for us to gather in mass.

Students have less resources today. In the 60s, you could go to school with food and board included and have it entirely paid by government grants. Today, not only do you have to take out loans, you have to work as well. Students risk far more today by being politically active than they did four decades ago. If you drop out or are expelled, you still owe those student loans. In fact, after graduating, the need to pay those loans is a major factor in driving people immediately into the work force. They don't have time to do anything but work, work, work, for nearly a decade, at which point they've likely taken on new obligations, like houses and children. We just don't have the time to be active like we once had, and the risk is much greater.

Workers existence is more precarious today. In the 60s, if you lost a job, another was quite easy to find. Benefits for the unemployed and welfare were a lot better, so losing your job was not the terror that it is today. Today, if you lose your job, it's very likely you'll lose your house. Unemployment benefits only go for 6 months, and in the urban cores, it's not enough to pay your rent unless you live in the worst neighborhoods. Welfare is gone if you're male and almost more trouble than it is worth if you're a woman. And if you get sick? The good news is they're more likely to fix you. The bad news is without insurance, you become a debt peon. Finally, today we have credit cards. The vast majority of us are in debt up to our eyeballs, and with bankruptcy effectively taken away from us, losing our jobs means losing everything. We can't afford to protest, we might lose our jobs.

Next to lastly, the internet has made organizing both easier and harder. On the one hand, it's much easier to connect with like minded folks, on the other hand, there is so much information that we get swamped. It takes me hours to get trough all my political email, and I have more than 600 unread emails on my computer at home. I can't keep up, and so internet "activism" begins to take the place of real activism.

Finally, we have an election this year. Although the Democratic base is furious with the party leadership and elected Democrats, they show every sign of coming out in force and electing them in a landslide at the same time that the GOP is collapsing in on itself. All these liberals focus is on crushing the GOP this year and putting pressure on wayward Democrats. This is going to suck the remaining life out of the antiwar movement.

So is there a glimmer in the darkness? Yes. That same Democratic fury is likely to turn into outright revolt against the party next year, as the party once again betrays its base. I expect to see a resurgence in the antiwar movement in 2009.

Our job this year? Keep the movement alive on the one hand, and through out the moderate leadership that has helped to cripple what movement we do have. United for Peace and Justice needs to be put out of our misery. In Cleveland at the end of June National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation (http://natassembly.org) is having its organizing meeting. It's time to take the antiwar movement back from the Democrats.

[Keyser]

In the process of getting ready to write something new about the anti-war movement here in Phoenix, I re-read my past writings on the topic. Looking them over, I realized, why bother? Nothing has changed. Ritual and ineffectiveness still dominate the movement, as do activists who need the war to justify their management of others (to get votes, to build organizations or just to massage their own egos). A fear of shaking things up and a conservative attitude towards tactics prevails.

Failure, rather than success, has become the benchmark for the movement. To continue losing, to continue to stand impotent before the forces of the elite war machine, has in fact become a sort of measure of success in its own right. We're still here, and we're still against the war, seems to be the message, ignoring the fact that as long as that's true, the war must also still churn mercilessly on, devouring both American and Iraqi alike (although one in substantially greater proportion than the other). After all, you can't be against a war once it's over.

Heavy on symbol and low on substance, the movement in Phoenix has become a candle-holding caricature of itself, at war with imagination and as a result completely unable to conceive of any action other than to repeat its own failed mistakes of the past. Nearly seven bloody years of war have passed and still the local liberal anti-war movement has yet to claim anything remotely approaching a victory, having instead allowed itself to be diverted into dead ends like electoralism, petitioning and moral witness.

Literally, the movement here has engaged in the exact same protest almost since the day American bombs started pummeling Iraq: show up at Senator McCain's office, hold some signs and deliver a petition. The movement's success is judged in terms of honking horns rather than concrete results. Initially, there were street protests and some enthusiastic energy, but those days are long gone. The vampires of the liberal left have sucked all the blood from the movement, leaving behind a lifeless, mindless corpse incapable of creative action.

And why not? This was a predictable result of allowing these liberal ghouls to get their cold hands on the movement in the first place. Squash and marginalize the militants, that was their first goal, then manage the rest. And so the fire of the anti-globalization movement went away and the candles of the anti-war movement came out. It was predicted at the time, by anarchists and other radicals in town, who argued against liberal leadership of the movement. And so it has now come to pass and what we're left with is an anti-war leadership morally and organizationally invested in the continuation of the war. To varying degrees they have been duped or acted as enthusiastic movement-slayers but either way, they offer no solutions to our predicament. And how could they? They caused it.

And yet support for the war dwindles along with the attendance, even here in conservative Arizona. This sheer fact alone, that the population is much more anti-war now than ever before while at the same time the numbers showing up at anti-war rallies has generally and noticeably moved in the opposite direction, should give everyone pause. Unsurprisingly, the increasingly marginal rallies and boring tactics have not worked, nor have they inspired new blood to join the movement with fresh ideas. If the goal is to stop the various imperialist wars waged on the world by the United States, then the Phoenix anti-war movement has been a colossal failure. This fact must be faced up to.

My advice now is the same it has been for the last seven years. Either way, at some point we need to start evaluating whether we want an anti-war movement to end the war or just to sooth our consciences. One is based on solidarity with other people and the other is an exercise in First World privilege at best or default imperialism at worst. One empowers people and the other empowers politicians and the other slimy managers of social change. One shakes the halls of power and imposes change on the criminal ruling class, emboldening ourselves in the process, while the other slinks in on all fours and begs for a hearing, further empowering the parasitic liberal activists and their political allies.

So, if you want a good look at the anti-war movement today, have a look at my piece from last year, entitled "So Many Candles, So Little Fire: The Sad State of the Phoenix Anti-War Movement". Truthfully, you could go back and read any of the many articles I wrote or the fliers I handed out on the topic over the past many years and get the same points, because nothing has changed since then either. If anything, the anti-war movement has become even more entrenched in bad habits and bad thinking, its leaders even more managerial and its ideas even more bankrupt.



I totally agree with what he has said so far.


Further, its analysis has regressed, no longer recognizing the central interests of Capital behind the elite's desperate aggressions abroad. This failure has allowed capitalist politicos like those in the Democratic Party to infuse themselves and exploit and neutralize the movement. Lifestylist, thinly veiled calls for what amounts to a liberal interventionist green empire free of fossil fuels have replaced demands for the dismantlement of the empire.

Again I agree.

Where I live in London, the anti-war movement (the Stop the War Coalition-StWC) is guilty of the same thing.

Instead of using a materialist (ie; a class based analysis) understanding of why the bourgeois state and capitalist class wage wars and the very nature of imperialism, the anti-war movements in the USA and Britain have fallen for liberal 'lesser evilism', simply asking people to rally around social democrats and liberals as the 'better' alternative to the Republicans and neo-conservatives.

The narrative that the anti-war movement of both Britain and the USA is that instead of capitalism being interlinked with imperialism, the wars of Afghanistan and Iraq are simply a result of a group of war-mongering neo-conservatives who have taken control of the White House and the British Labour Party and who have ignored the mechanisms of parliamentary democracy to wage the wars they want to.

This liberal and social democratic narrative will not stand up to real materialist analysis, given that both wings of the bourgeoisie, the liberal wing and it's conservative wing have both been eager supporters of imperialist wars and the naked and brutal exploitation of billions of oppressed workers, farmers and people in the global south.

All genuine communists, anarchists and anti-imperialists should reject this approach and stand for a militant and revolutionary struggle against the war and to link all the wars to question of imperialism and bourgeois class rule. Add to that the task to link up opposition to the war and imperialism to the struggles of the working class and oppressed, as only a movement based around the working class and those US and British soldiers who reject the war and imperialism and resist by fragging, going AWOL or other acts of resistance.

No other methods of organising has ever shown to work, least of all the tried and failed methods of liberals, social democrats and infantile middle class pacifists and utopians.


The gains of the anti-globalization movement, which inspired so many of us not leastwise because it had settled so many of the issues that now bog down the anti-war movement, have faded into the past, both in terms of tactics and analysis. Unlike the anti-globalization movement, the anti-war movement lacks contact with other domestic movements, and as a result it has withered on the vine intellectually, cannibalizing itself and squandering its potential. The truth is, the anti-war movement has become a reactionary force, recuperating past militant movements, neutralizing them and purging them from the collective memory.

Again, without linking up to the working class and it's short term and long term struggles against their own oppression and the struggle of those soldiers who reject the wars they have been given orders to fight and imperialism itself, no anti-war movement can achieve the aim of stopping wars.

This point is crucial and central to anyone or any group that wishes to build a geniune, effective and revolutionary anti-war/anti-imperialist movement.

The example of Russia during WW1 and the methods of the Bolshevik Party and Lenin clearly show us the way there, as the struggle against imperialist war in Russia was won only when the common soldier and the worker linked up in resistance.

The USA in the 1960s and 1970s during the Vietnam war also had a large number of cases of soliders who started attacking their officers, fragging them and going AWOL as well as soldiers who started to show their solidarity with their fellow Vietnamese workers and soldiers, this shook the American ruling class and was crucial, along with the success of the heroric and brave resistance of the Vietnamese resistance (the Vietcong), in finally stopping the American imperialist war against Vietnam.



Indeed, the obsession of the liberal anti-war movement elite with the coming attack on Iran betrays it's own impotence, as they religiously consult the bones over breaking news of impending attacks, belying their own failure to create a movement capable of stopping them before they begin. The anti-war elites fret over the machinations of their political adversaries and openly plot to replace them. Indeed, if the anti-war movement managers are not able to stop the attack on Iran, it will be hard to come to any other conclusion than to declare the national anti-war movement dead on arrival.


If indded there are any concrete plans hatched by the bourgeoisie and imperialism to attack and/or invade Iran, then this is an opportunity for communists, anarchists and anti-imperialists to build an work on a new, geniune and revolutionary anti-war and anti-imperialist movement, one that links the root cause of wars to the rule of capital and puts forward a materialist analysis on the nature of imperialism.

The time is now to do just that!



Where are the blockades and destruction of war-related property? Phoenix has plenty of war profiteers. Where is the call for shutting down the whole of elite society until troops are withdrawn (not redeployed) and guarantees for Iran's people are issued? Indeed, where is the generally white and affluent anti-war left when other movements here in town ask for solidarity? Where is the anti-war left when migrants and immigrants take the streets in defense of basic human freedoms? Where was the anti-war left in Jena, Louisiana, not to mention in downtown Phoenix on Mayday 2006?


Direct action is needed, no debate there.

Again, as both the above quoted paragraph and myself have both said, the link between a geniune anti-war and anti-imperialist movement to the struggles of the working class and the oppressed in all areas of political, social and economic struggle is crucial.

Without the working class politics is nothing and with the working class politics is everything.


Further the movement is still mired in infantile anti-Bush and anti-Republican thinking, forgetting the right's many willing accomplices on the left. There are clear reasons why the liberal left prefers to frame things this way, but we have to ask ourselves if it really represents reality and if it's a strategy for stopping America's ongoing war against the world. Indeed, the tendency of the anti-war left to ignore the situation in Afghanistan almost entirely, marking time instead by the invasion of Iraq, betrays the pro-imperialist logic of this mindset by setting Iraq into a special category - a war somehow gone wrong or for the wrong reasons - rather than a continuation of imperial global strategy.

But in the end, if we can't evaluate the anti-war movement on it's ability to hamper or end the war, just what measure should we use? Useless votes? Lip service from politicians? The elevation of local anti-war leaders to elected office, like Kyrsten Sinema, who managed to ride the early anti-war wave for her own personal political gain? Politicos like this can't help us make the kind of radical changes that are necessary to stop the Iraq and other wars. The activists, politicians and other professional managers of social change (after all, whither the anti-war activist without the war?) have had their time. Militance and direct action are the watchwords of the day now.

There is no argument they can make against us. They can't say now is not the time, because it's been damn near seven years and there have been more than a million deaths in that time. They can't say wait for the next election, because we've given them three national shots at the ballot box ('02, '04, '06), including going on two years with liberal control of Congress. They can't say we must persuade more people because more than half the American population want out NOW, not later. It's time for the movement to wake up and realize that when the activists urge passivity, it's not because it's a successful tactic, but because it does not disturb their own positions in the movement. And, in the end, what's the difference between that and supporting the slaughter themselves?

Again I totally agree.


If we have one advantage here in Phoenix, it is the total lack of an organized communist left. Many, many hours of very hard work, often including direct action at their meetings and rallies, consciously directed by anarchist militants, has kept the Valley thankfully free of authoritarians of the leftist variety, and we are all better for it. In other cities, authoritarian communists and socialists destroy movements in ways similar to liberals, with common front tactics and marginalization of militant, critical voices and often direct collaboration with the police. Often, however, their organizing is more insidious because their language is seductive to folks looking for something more radical than what the liberals have to offer. Local anti-war militants should take advantage of this fact and act to make irrelevant, through our own creative action, the liberal anti-war leaders in town.

It is sad to see an otherwise good and coherent article taint itself with this sectarian jibe and a rather simplistic sectarian jibe at that.

I do not deny that there are many groups that carry the socialist and communist banner that have held an incorrect, innefective or otherwise reformist political line with regards to the anti-war movement.

The same can be said for some anarchists groups too, this problem is not limited to any one set of ideology, but rather is a problems that is apparent in communist, socialist, anarchist and other political movements.

The truth is that there are decent and genuine communists and socialists who oppose the reformism, class collaborationism, liberal, pacifist and social democratic content of the anti-war movements in both Britain and the USA.

Instead of a sectarian rant, the author of this article would have been more honest if he did make the point as outlined above.

I have been on numerous anti-war demonstrations in London, from the 1 million plus strong demonstration on Febuary 15th 2003 to the latest one only just two weeks ago. I have spoken to many communists and socialists (trotskyists/castroites/marxist-leninists/left communists) and a good number of them are fed up with the social democratic and liberal domination of the anti-war movement and it's misleadership, they are fed up with the anti-war movement tailing and support one section of the imperialist and bourgeois Labour Party (the so-called Labour Left) and they all want a new and more militant direction for the anti-war movement.

Again a lot of anarchists I have spoken to also agree.

The real truth is not a one sided story.

If we are going to get together to unite and build a real and geniune anti-war and anti-imperialist movement, that means all political tendencies, be they socialist, communist and anarchist are going to have to admit that all of them have made mistakes and at times did the wrong thing. This should be done not becuase of some guilt trip or for one faction to admit to it's short comings so that another faction can use that for their own sectarian ends, but becuase without an honest and open analysis of what went wrogn and what needs to be done, no one, not any one group or individual, will ever get anywhere.

[IronColumn]

The sad thing is that so many act shocked that an anti-war movement is so hopelessly reformist. Anti-war movements, just like "anti-fascist" or "anti-imperialist" movements, are only undertaken by the liberal bourgeoisie in cooperation with the organized left. The anarchist(s) in question reveal they are little more than social democrats unable to grasp that the movement remains reformist because it always was, and must always be, reformist.

[Keyser]

The sad thing is that so many act shocked that an anti-war movement is so hopelessly reformist. Anti-war movements, just like "anti-fascist" or "anti-imperialist" movements, are only undertaken by the liberal bourgeoisie in cooperation with the organized left. The anarchist(s) in question reveal they are little more than social democrats unable to grasp that the movement remains reformist because it always was, and must always be, reformist.


On what basis did you make that innacurate and wrong conclusion?

By actually being involved and talking, debating and working with the people involved in the anti-war movement, becuase if the answer is no then your not in any real position to say that.

And the idea that anti-war movements, anti-fasicst movements and anti-imperialist movements somehow magically come into existence at the click of the fingers of the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie is again wrong and history has shown that view of yours to be wrong.

The Vietnam anti-war movement started with the drafted working class men who made up the base of soldiers in Vietnam and throught their militant actions of desertion and fragging.

Hardly the methods or ideals of the liberal bourgeoisie.

If you said that todays anti-war movement is led (mislead) by social democrats and reformists and that intentionally they have pacified activists to not use militant methods of struggle and tie the movement to liberal politics, then I will agree.

But to accuse everyone in the anti-war movement (including the anarchists) of social democracy or reformism is nothing but sectarian slandering.

Furthermore, if your view is that anti-war movements are doomed to a failed conclusion of reformism, what solution do you propose then?

[IronColumn]

Your logic is absurd. Only if I have taken part in the anti-war movement am I allowed to criticize it. Hence, I also can't criticize fascism since I've never been a fascist. This is the common language and mindset of "movement" types, a viewpoint which is directly tied into 'reforming' a, by definition (i.e. the prefix "anti"), reformist movement.

A working class revolution is against capitalist wars, but its means and methods are totally different from the parliamentary reformist struggle of the "antiwar movement". Indeed I would expect any real workers struggle to be opposed by the people making up the movement currently-Leninists, social-democrats, libertarians, (in the right wing sense of the word), Democrats, etc. I don't expect any revolution for a long time in America, hence I predict the US will still be killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan for many years until it is able to establish relatively stable puppet regimes or until they lose from attrition (or a combination of these two, making a defeat look like a withdrawal), regardless of how much some segments of the population march in circles.

Of course our differing perspectives on the movement are only a result of our different politics. You've thrown your lot in with Maoism it seems. Good luck with that.

[Partisano]

Pretty much sums it up. The true opposition didn't think that voting in democrats in 2006 was going to stop the war. The media publicized the 06 elections are a referendum on the war, but look, almost 2 years have past and we've gone nowhere quickly. Its been a complete wast of time, and if people think Obama or any of those other lackys are going to do something, they are sadly mistaken. Popular organizations, building mass movements are the only way to stop the war, it was during Vietnam and it is now. We need popular democracy by getting in the streets to demand it. They don't care if we are against it as long as we keep quiet. We need to start smashing things up a bit.

[Saorsa]

If we have one advantage here in Phoenix, it is the total lack of an organized communist left. Many, many hours of very hard work, often including direct action at their meetings and rallies, consciously directed by anarchist militants, has kept the Valley thankfully free of authoritarians of the leftist variety, and we are all better for it. In other cities, authoritarian communists and socialists destroy movements in ways similar to liberals, with common front tactics and marginalization of militant, critical voices and often direct collaboration with the police. Often, however, their organizing is more insidious because their language is seductive to folks looking for something more radical than what the liberals have to offer. Local anti-war militants should take advantage of this fact and act to make irrelevant, through our own creative action, the liberal anti-war leaders in town.


Sectarian arsehole. You like to break up the meetings of leftists who disagree with your ideas? It seems that "individual liberty" and "total freedom of expression" only applies to anarchists! Fuck you, it's people like you who destroy any attempt between leftists of various political shades and organisations to work together in a principled manner.


Militants must challenge the dominant cadre in the movement and seek to broaden the space for resistance. Politicians and activists must be driven from the movement (they had their chance) and our actions must develop strict criteria for evaluating our success. Let's take the power into our own hands. The time is now.

Ahahaha, I laughed out loud at your absurd assertion that "activists must be driven from the movement". You are such an idiot. YOU are an activist, an anarchist activist, and I assume you apply the statement that "activists must be driven from the movement" to yourself? Because otherwise, this is just another attempt to prevent people with different political ideas to you from operating on the same level as you do... hand on a sec, doesn't that kinda contradict the basic tenets of anarchism? How's that letting everyone "do their own thing"? Fucking hypocrite.

This whole article is just emtpy rhetoric, devoid of any dialectical materialist analysis of reality and devoid of any concrete, meaningful suggestions on where to go from here. Instead, you snipe at people who disagree with you in a sectarian manner and satisfy your grandiloquent urges with a whole lot of soaring, beutiful but utterly empty rhetoric. Egads, anarchists piss me off.

[bcbm]

Sectarian arsehole. You like to break up the meetings of leftists who disagree with your ideas? It seems that "individual liberty" and "total freedom of expression" only applies to anarchists! Fuck you, it's people like you who destroy any attempt between leftists of various political shades and organisations to work together in a principled manner.One doesn't need to look very far back in history to see why anarchists would be distrustful of authoritarian leftists. Beyond that, anarchists clearly don't fight for "individual liberty and total freedom of expression" for all people in the context of a capitalist society. They don't care about fascists "liberty," they beat them down in the streets. That some anarchists would see the value in preventing other leftist sects from attempting to dominate any movement isn't too difficult to understand.

Please note I am not supporting it, just pointing out that it is pretty obvious why some anarchists would feel that way. And really, it isn't like other sections of the rev left don't do the same things with their opponents. The list is long...


Ahahaha, I laughed out loud at your absurd assertion that "activists must be driven from the movement". You are such an idiot. YOU are an activist, an anarchist activist, and I assume you apply the statement that "activists must be driven from the movement" to yourself?The distinction being drawn there was between "militants" and "activists," I believe. Presumably the author considers himself/herself a "militant."


hand on a sec, doesn't that kinda contradict the basic tenets of anarchism? How's that letting everyone "do their own thing"?When was that ever a "basic tenet" of anarchism? :rolleyes:


Egads, anarchists piss me off.Now, now. I don't assume all Maoists are fuckbags just because MIM notes is insane.

[Ultra-Violence]

Comrade Alastair (http://www.revleft.com/vb/member.php?u=15425)
^^^^^
????????

#1 WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU!
#2 Have you even participated in the Stuggle let alone the Anti-War Movement?

[chegitz guevara]

I'm going to have to agree with Comrade Alastair. If it weren't for the organized left, there would be no antiwar movement worth speaking of. The only reason it exists at all in most places is because of the hard-headed commies who refuse to give up, even though no one is attending meetings anymore.

[Keyser]

Your logic is absurd.


Again I will ask you, what do you propose then?

You still have not answered that, instead you seem to spend time just criticising everything for the sake of it, without anything to back it up.



Only if I have taken part in the anti-war movement am I allowed to criticize it.


What I meant was that unless you actually took part in it, interacted with people who are active in the anti-war movement and from such interactions you gain an insight into the views and actions of all of those people and different tencdencies (the anti-war movement is not one monolithic bloc, but a diverse range of groups, people, theories and strategies) you would see that you cannot just make such judgements based on one section or the reformist misleadership of the anti-war movement.



Hence, I also can't criticize fascism since I've never been a fascist.


A really stupid analogy.

All communists and socialists can criticise fascism, me and you included as it's a theory.

What your criticising about the anti-war movement is everything, from theory to tactics to the people who take part and even worse, you lump everything together and ignore the differences in opinion and tactics that do exist (no matter what you seem to ignorantly believe) in the anti-war movement.



This is the common language and mindset of "movement" types, a viewpoint which is directly tied into 'reforming' a, by definition (i.e. the prefix "anti"), reformist movement.


You don't personally know me and I have already stated my own criticisms of the current tactics and leadership of the anti-war movement and what I think should change and be done in the anti-war movement.

I don't know you and thus I am not going to make vague assumptions about you, and unless you are simply trolling out of sectarianism, I ask of you that you stop making assumptions about myself and others.



A working class revolution is against capitalist wars,


I totally agree with you. Unlike some people who hold a simplistic view of imperialism, I view imperialism with a materialistic analysis and imperialism, along with all it's misery, wars, coups, oppression and murder will only come to and end when capitalism to comes to an end.


but its means and methods are totally different from the parliamentary reformist struggle of the "antiwar movement".

Again, if you actually read my first post on this thread, you will see that I oppose parliamentarianism, reformism and any collaboration with bourgeois, bourgeois liberal and social democratic forces.

From your posts, and correct me if I am wrong, you seem to think that anti-war or anti-imperialist work is a complete waste of time and that we should simply organise for an outright workers revolution on the basis of stopping war.

Do you take the same view on issues like workers pay, trade union rights, striking rights, living conditions, police oppression and brutality, opposing racism etc...?

If that is your view, then if things did work out that way then we would all be working for that, but no one person and no organisation can just make revolution at the click of their fingers, if it was that easy then capitalism would have be wiped out a long time ago.

You seem to sneer at Lenin, but his tactic of organising a working class and revolutionary opposition to the imperialist war that Russia was that it worked. It worked in stopping Russia involvement in WW1, it worked in abolishing and overthrowing Russian imperialism and it worked in finally overthrowing Russian capitalist rule and in the establishment of a socialist society and a working class republic.

Given that Lenin's tactic of linking war and imperialism to the rule of capital and his tactic of a revolutionary and working class opposition to the war worked, it is the tactic I urge and will always advocate for opposing war and imperialism today.


Indeed I would expect any real workers struggle to be opposed by the people making up the movement currently-Leninists, social-democrats, libertarians, (in the right wing sense of the word), Democrats, etc.

Why do you keep insisting that every person and every group is at noe on their ideas and their activism? The anti-war movment is not a monolithic bloc. I will not deny that there are social democrats, liberals, bourgeoisie, pacifists and others who have only done nothing but damage to the anti-war movement, they must be opposed and removed from it in order for any opposition to be really effective.

But there are decent people with revolutionary, materialistic and class based views in the anti-war movement and who do good work.

Your dismissal of them is sectarian, no matter how much you may deny it.



I don't expect any revolution for a long time in America, hence I predict the US will still be killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan for many years until it is able to establish relatively stable puppet regimes or until they lose from attrition (or a combination of these two, making a defeat look like a withdrawal), regardless of how much some segments of the population march in circles.


What are you saying then?

That if activism is useless, if political work is useless and there is nothing anyone can do, and that even if they can do anything, they should not for fear of having the 'wrong politics', we should all just sit back and do absolutely nothing?

That we should just let millions of innocents get slaughtered, whole nations invaded, who workforces exploited into a neverending cycle of slavery and just sit back as the revolution is not going to happen for a long time.

If people took that attitude, there will never be a revolution.



You've thrown your lot in with Maoism it seems. Good luck with that.


I am not a Maoist.

I do not agree with the 'Three Worlds Theory' or the idea of a People's War being suitable for a good number of countries or Mao's elevation of the peasant class over the working class. Furthermore, I do not consider Maoism to be in any way and extension of the theory laid down by Marx, Engles and Lenin, so no Marxism-Leninism-Maoism for me.

If you made that assumption based on the RevLeft discussion groups I belong to, then you will see that my own politics is not really in line with any of the groups I am a member of. I simply join those groups to discuss with others, nothing more.

[Saorsa]

One doesn't need to look very far back in history to see why anarchists would be distrustful of authoritarian leftists. Beyond that, anarchists clearly don't fight for "individual liberty and total freedom of expression" for all people in the context of a capitalist society. They don't care about fascists "liberty," they beat them down in the streets. That some anarchists would see the value in preventing other leftist sects from attempting to dominate any movement isn't too difficult to understand.

A point of clarification - I was slightly innacurate in my claims about what anarchist theory is. I've read the prison diaries of whats-his-face, that russian anarchist who moved to the US and got sent to jail for shooting some capitalist in the neck (didn't kill him, anarchists are notoriously poor shots! :P) and a bit of Bakunin. Mostly I go by conversations I've had with RL anarchists and the awful example of their everyday practice. However, I admit that some anarchists elsewhere are probably a great deal better than this (e.g. class-struggle anarchists who actually believe that getting out on a picket line and supporting workers is more important than "liberating" a couple of battery hens, unlike the anarchists here).

Those are fair points you've made.

However, surely even the most stupid anarchists (and I accept, grudgingly, that not all anarchists are stupid...;)) can see a major difference between fascists and communists? Does the author of this turgid piece of writing really see no essential differences between them?


The distinction being drawn there was between "militants" and "activists," I believe. Presumably the author considers himself/herself a "militant."
Enlighten me on the difference between the two. I consider myself to be both.


When was that ever a "basic tenet" of anarchism?

All the anarchists I've ever spoken with have summed up their theory (or the lack of) with that statement.

Now, now. I don't assume all Maoists are fuckbags just because MIM notes is insane.

Lol, the world is a worse off place now that MIM has wrapped itself up (I guess it's three members have dedided to grow up and get real jobs).

While anarchist theory does piss me off regardless of who's spouting it, I recognise the fact that not all anarchists are as retarded as the ones in my city and the guy who wrote this extended piece of vomit.

[IronColumn]

Here is the fundamental difference between our politics. You want to capture the anti-war movement so it stops being "misled", just as presumably you want (or at least Leninists in the past wanted) to capture the trade unions, parliament, the state, the national liberation struggles, the anti-fascist movements, etc. Based on history, what I would say is that it's extremely unlikely any "red" groups will gain control of these things anymore (lacking the Russian funding) or even if they did, what history has shown us it that these movements are fundamentally bourgeois in conception, and even if one did take over the movement one would only inherit a bourgeois movement, only good for carrying out bourgeois tasks.

You claim that there are those (presumably Leninists) who do hold a revolutionary, materialist outlook in the anti-war scene. I don't deny this, the issue is simply that these groups have a bourgeois revolutionary, bourgeois materialist outlook. I would give a particular example in that you claim Lenin "organized" a working class opposition to WW1. This is perfectly in tune with the idea that the working class is merely a passive object, to be acted upon by great men. Then you claim that he created a socialist society, when as you must know Lenin repeatedly stated the country was state-capitalist. Finally you seem to be unable to conceive of activity outside the movement, counterposing working within the movement to doing nothing; and then being so unimaginative as to demand I tell you what to do, or lay out some sort of schema for you to follow. I will only wish you luck and say: keep working within the movement, I highly doubt you will ever get control of it, and moreover it is visibly dying because the liberal bourgeoisie has already used it for electioneering and they don't need it anymore.

[bcbm]

However, surely even the most stupid anarchists (and I accept, grudgingly, that not all anarchists are stupid...http://www.revleft.com/vb/../revleft/smilies/wink.gif) can see a major difference between fascists and communists? Does the author of this turgid piece of writing really see no essential differences between them?

There are many differences between different authoritarian groups and most anarchists see them all. But when the end result of their victory is a bunch of anarchists against a wall with guns pointed at them, making those clarifications is perhaps little more than mental masturbation.


Enlighten me on the difference between the two. I consider myself to be both.

I don't know what the author has in mind precisely. I would guess "activists" are those who want to simply build larger reformist movements with liberal tactics, etc and identify with single issues, whereas "militants" want to build towards destroying this society. Or some shit like that.


All the anarchists I've ever spoken with have summed up their theory (or the lack of) with that statement.

Well they would presumably be referring to a future anarchist society based around a statement like that, though even then it isn't the best summation. It has little application under bourgeois rule.


Lol, the world is a worse off place now that MIM has wrapped itself up (I guess it's three members have dedided to grow up and get real jobs).

The world of comedy, perhaps. ;-)


While anarchist theory does piss me off regardless of who's spouting it, I recognise the fact that not all anarchists are as retarded as the ones in my city and the guy who wrote this extended piece of vomit.

That's all I ask.

[Saorsa]

There are many differences between different authoritarian groups and most anarchists see them all. But when the end result of their victory is a bunch of anarchists against a wall with guns pointed at them, making those clarifications is perhaps little more than mental masturbation.


Not necessarily. But if these anarchists are cooperating with White Guards and are in communication with the French and British imperialists with the aim of overthrowing the dictatorship of the proletariat (such as in Krondstadt), they deserve to be shot.


Well they would presumably be referring to a future anarchist society based around a statement like that, though even then it isn't the best summation. It has little application under bourgeois rule.

More or less what I told them, but they disagreed. I don't think the local anarchist types are very good examples of their creed...


The world of comedy, perhaps. ;-)

http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/art/animation/wwc.html

LOL!