Naomi Klein: "The Vision Thing"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> >Protest politics (in the absence of
> >mass-based left-wing political parties) has been the mainstay of U.S.
> >politics.  The same goes for "coalitions of coalitions."  It's just
> >that with "the explosion of NGOs" and issue-oriented groups &
> >grouplets, the already existing tendency (what Klein calls
> >"paradoxical culture of extreme narcissism coupled with an intense
> >desire for external connection") has become intensified.  Another
> >difference is that now this mode of politics may be becoming (or may
> >have already become) global, not just American or even "Western," in
> >the absence of two former alternatives (social democracy or
> >revolutionary Marxism and/or nationalism).  It's a sign of the times,
> >so it's pointless to bemoan it, but it's also nothing so exalted as
> >"the poetics of now."
>
>I'm only marginally involved with the Movement, but I actually feel 
>pretty elated about its form. And not just because of my anarchist 
>leanings. Capital that's becoming decentralized and 
>internationalized--by which I mean that trade and investment are 
>becoming more diffuse and that capital is increasingly operating 
>through international institutions--should, it seems to me, be met 
>with a movement that's "radically decentralized" and international. 
>To bastardize H---l (as Ken M. might type it), it's the perfect 
>blending of subject and object.
>
>Eric

I share the elation, but not because of the form, but because of the 
number of youthful participants.  Is it really true that "what is 
needed is further radical decentralization," as Klein suggests?  She 
writes:


>The compromise the council came up with was telling. "OK, everybody 
>listen up," Kevin Danaher shouted into a megaphone. "Each 
>intersection has autonomy. If the intersection wants to stay locked 
>down, that's cool. If it wants to come to the Ellipse, that's cool 
>too. It's up to you."
>
>This was impeccably fair and democratic, but there was just one 
>problem--it made absolutely no sense. Sealing off the access points 
>had been a coordinated action. If some intersections now opened up 
>and other, rebel-camp intersections stayed occupied, delegates on 
>their way out of the meeting could just hang a right instead of a 
>left, and they would be home free. Which, of course, is precisely 
>what happened.
>
>As I watched clusters of protesters get up and wander off while 
>others stayed seated, defiantly guarding, well, nothing, it struck 
>me as an apt metaphor for the strengths and weaknesses of this 
>nascent activist network. There is no question that the 
>communication culture that reigns on the Net is better at speed and 
>volume than at synthesis. It is capable of getting tens of thousands 
>of people to meet on the same street corner, placards in hand, but 
>is far less adept at helping those same people to agree on what they 
>are really asking for before they get to the barricades--or after 
>they leave.

"Each intersection" having autonomy and some of them ending up 
"defiantly guarding, well, nothing" seems to me to be a humorous 
emblem of serial protest culture.  How far do you want to go in a 
pursuit of "further radical decentralization," beyond the autonomy of 
each intersection?  Isn't the end point of this tendency radical 
individualism (each person dreaming total autonomy and "defiantly 
guarding, well, nothing"), as opposed to, say, anarcho-syndicalism? 
Moreover, is it really the case that more decentralization = more 
democratization?

I'm not saying that there is nothing good in the present form, 
though.  The present form does probably go very far in preventing, 
for instance, the AFL-CIO's vision of what is to be done becoming a 
hegemonic one (phew!), and in the meantime, lots of new activists are 
gaining valuable experience.

Yoshie