>I think you're omitting something here. Since many individuals
>in contemporary society, including very poor people pretty
>much disconnected from immediate bourgeois influence, carry
>on social relations in a peaceful and constructive manner
>independent of the State, it is clear that State power is not
>necessary for such behavior. Such relations often include
>relations across group boundaries, even when these have been
>sharpened and deepened (if not, indeed, created) by class
>war elsewhere.
Let's get back to the beginning of this and related threads: how to properly evaluate a *direct action* taken by the Brown students of color (as opposed to a hypothetical action by a government). I think it makes sense to remember Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (16 April 1963, at <http://www.almaz.com/nobel/peace/MLK-jail.html>):
***** I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. *****
It is always the case, whenever organized blacks take actions on their own behalf, that they get accused by "white moderates" for "playing into the hands of the Right."
The rhetoric of avoiding "playing into the hands of the Right" at all costs -- seen in the writings of those who bemoan the Brown student activists' tactic -- basically boils down to a counsel of passivity (= preference for "a negative peace which is the absence of tension"). Blacks have the right to reject this rhetoric.
It is not just blacks who should reject the fear of "playing into the hands of the Right." As long as this fear dominates the minds of leftists in the USA, we'll never crawl out of the shadow of the Democratic Party, for anything else we support -- anarchism, socialism, the Nader campaign, the Green Party, whatever -- may help "put a Republican into the highest office," "put right-wingers into the Supreme Court," etc.
The same goes for those outside the USA. Palestinians have been berated by the Israeli doves & the Zionist Left for starting the second Intifada, which "helped to elect Sharon," etc., but they are right to reject the "negative peace" (which wasn't even peaceful to begin with).
When fear dominates politics, what you get is a Leviathan.
Yoshie