Fetishizing Decentralized Social Movements and So-Called “Spontaneity”

[Die Neue Zeit]

Fetishizing Decentralized Social Movements and So-Called “Spontaneity”

“People talk about stikhiinost. But the stikhiinyi development of the worker movement goes precisely to its subordination to bourgeois ideology […] because the stikhiinyi worker movement is tred-iunionizm, is Nur-Gewerkschaftlerei – and tred-iunionizm is precisely the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie.” (Vladimir Lenin)

This particular rendition of one of the “scandalous passages” in What Is To Be Done?, courtesy of historian Lars Lih and his lengthy analysis of the historical context of that pamphlet, better illustrates the history of “spontaneity,” back then in the form of so-called “trade unionism.” Before continuing, his remarks on translation problems should be reiterated:

"Spontaneity" seems like a plausible translation of stikhiinost because both words revolve around lack of control - but stikhiinost connotes the self's lack of control over the world, while spontaneity connotes the world's lack of control over the self. Thus, our attitude to stikhiinost is usually hostile, or at least wary, while our attitude toward spontaneity is usually positive.

Lih also commented on the first form of stikhiinost in the history of worker movements, specifically in the German worker movement itself:

The technical term within [German] Social-Democratic discourse for the effort to keep the worker-class struggle free from socialism was Nur-Gewerkschaftlerei, "trade-unions-only-ism."

This tred-iunionizm of a distinctly “yellow” type (“yellow” referring to class collaborationism and the fetish for mere collective bargaining, as opposed to “orange” and “red”) is the prevalent ideology of the trade union movement today, ranging from the organizational enslavement of the AFL-CIO to the “Democratic” Party in the United States to similar relationships in the United Kingdom and its liberal “Labour” Party, as well as to similar relationships nurtured by the emerging, trans-Atlantic Workers Uniting union (the name of the planned union discussed in my earlier work’s section on union globalization).

What, then, does collective bargain-ism (note the usage of English here, given the extremely narrow scope of this term when compared to “trade unionism”) share with “horizontalism,” the “movement of movements” phenomenon, the fetish for the structure of today’s non-government organizations (NGOs), and other forms of what should be called “social-movements-only-ism”? Consider once more the post-modernist radical Ben Trott, himself indicating the end result (shared by the various, naïve worshippers of stikhiinost, himself included):

Simultaneously, the 'movement of movements' finds itself in crisis too. We would seem to have run up against our own limits. The current cycle is drawing to an end; entering a 'downturn', if not necessarily quantitatively, then certainly qualitatively. The movements' beginnings (the time when 'we were winning') were characterised by a tremendous celebration of our 'unity in diversity' […] However, a movement as broad and contradictory as ours was always going to have to ask (and try to answer): 'Walking where, actually?' and 'What sort of world?' [...] If the challenge, then, is to move beyond a relatively uncritical celebration of unity in diversity, without slipping back into the 'old' (tried, tested and failed) ways of doing things, surely the question is as follows: How do we set in motion a process by which one group (most often, but not always, a party) is no longer able to dominate all the others, seeking to remake them in its own image; and where, at the same time, we are able to move beyond merely existing indifferently alongside each other?

It is for this reason that “directional demands,” in order to be properly articulated, can neither “emerge from, and are taken up by, the movement of antagonistic subjectivities” nor "seek to open up unlimited and undetermined possibilities for another world" by rejecting "the teleology of Hegelian and Leninist Marxisms" and "predetermined destinations." The latter, ill-informed suggestion is rejected in the latter two directional demands raised [here] (and especially in the highlighted text below):

1) The suppression of all public debts and of the excessive capital mobility associated with capital flights, the end to imperialist conflicts (not just wars) as vehicles for capital accumulation, and the preclusion of all acts of legalized predatory lending to the working class – all by first means of monopolizing all commercial and consumer credit in the hands of a single transnational bank under absolute public ownership; and
2) The extension of litigation rights to include class-action lawsuits and speedy judgements against all private employers who extract any sort of surplus value from their workers, thereby recognizing in law that human labour (both manual and manual) and its technological, labour-saving equivalent are the only non-natural sources of value production (as established by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and of course Karl Marx).

One more note must be made, and it is with regards to that last form of “social-movements-only-ism” that makes a fetish out of the structure of today’s NGOs. A highly critical article appeared in the September-October 2008 edition of International Socialist Review (a Cliffite magazine in the United States) titled “Funding for activists, and the strings attached”:

The rise of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the non-profit sector in the developing world has been the subject of several studies over the last twenty years. Revolutionaries have taken a highly critical view of this phenomenon, and this interpretation seems to be gaining credence in the broader radical left.

Curiously, however, these studies have largely not been carried over into the developed (imperialist) countries, even though the role of non-profits is substantial. In the United States, “charitable” foundations control $500 billion in assets, and there are over 830,000 registered non-profits, excluding religious organizations. The national leadership of several social movements, for instance the antiwar movement, is effectively in the hands of NGOs.

The “NGO-ization” of the U.S. Left has been a cause of distinct unhappiness—even dismay—amongst radical activists, but no accessible literature has attempted to address it. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is a welcome initial contribution to the discussion, although it exhibits several serious weaknesses that must be criticized. The contributors […] coin the term “non-profit industrial complex” (NPIC) to suggest the penetration of the non-profit sector by big business and the state.

[…]

The rise of the NPIC has allowed the neoliberal ruling class to achieve three interlocking goals: first, it has provided them with a monumental tax dodge; second, it has given cover for the retreat of the state from social welfare goals; third, it has increased the penetration of bourgeois ideology into all areas of social and political life—including the Left.

[…]

Also problematic are the solutions offered by the essays in Part III of [The Revolution Will Not Be Funded], which attempt to articulate alternatives to the NPIC model. All four essays in Part III endorse the anarchist program of “horizontality,” which situates the failures of the non-profits in their hierarchical, or “vertical,” decision-making structures.

[…]

Indeed, the concept of horizontality, which rejects the “old Left” notions of political program, political parties, and the centrality of class, enabled the rise of the NPIC. James Petras notes “NGO ideology depends heavily on essentialist identity politics.” Clarke elaborates: “[L]arge-scale social movements that once were ideologically and organizationally cohesive, fragmented amid a shift in the ‘themes’ of social mobilization [...] Lehmann argues, ‘In the place of large formal organizations, we find a myriad of small-scale dispersed movements engaged in an enormous variety of conflicts.’”

Without denying the problems of the “old Left,” or the tragedy of Maoist “party-building” efforts, it is beyond dispute that the fragmentation of the Left into the various “New Social Movements” helped foundation capital to co-opt it “piece by piece.” As Eric Tang writes, “These [New Social Movements] would […] become the social justice silos that guided the funding strategies of philanthropic foundations.”

[Note: A better summary quotation of the aforementioned ISR article may be found here: http://www.revleft.com/vb/fetishizin...791/index.html]

In short, all these expressions of stikhiinost, the organizationally defeatist worship of the self’s lack of control over the world, is a dead end!



REFERENCES:

Lenin Rediscovered: What Is To Be Done? In Context by Lars Lih [http://books.google.ca/books?id=8AVU...ummary_r&cad=0]

Walking in the right direction? by Ben Trott [http://www.turbulence.org.uk/index.php?s=fumagali]

Fetishizing social movements: a tred-iunionizm relative [http://www.revleft.com/vb/fetishizin...791/index.html]

Funding for activists, and the strings attached by Shaun Joseph [http://www.isreview.org/issues/61/re...otfunded.shtml]