Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2002 19:13:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Alec Ramsdell <aramsdell at yahoo.com> Subject: Re: a critique of the march on Sandton
At the level of the subject, fantasy is an organizing principle, period. This is neither right nor wrong. It's what new organizing the protest makes possible that matters.
Having zero organizing experience in these matters, of course, I see it from an arm-chair theoretical point. But I do see what Carrol is saying when he talks about black bloc-style -
These are some interesting points. What I'm surprised to find is that the critiques of irresponsible violence seem to come mostly from those who would be much in support of movements and tendencies that have practised armed propaganda and other forms of guerilla activity and terrorism. The urban violence practised by the BB etc. seems to me to have a certain similarity to the activities of those movements that have dominated the 'anti-imperialist struggle' throughout the 20th C and beyond.
Let us imagine a couple of scenarios here: 1. Guerillas merge into peasant villages; same villages get immolated by government forces who know that guerillas are hiding there. 2. Suicide bomber blows self up in crowded urban street killing and maiming boys and girls, mothers, children, workers. 3. Guerillas break into a church and machine gun the congregation and throw grenades into their midst.
The last of these three scenarios once happened in a church 100 metres away from where I happened to be sitting watching TV in my flat. Similarly guerillas burst into a pub and strafed the public inside with AK47s. That pub, now closed down was 100 metres from where I now live. Let me offer in passing a comment on these two examples: the church and the pub were both known centres of multi-racial mixing; the movement in question had dubbed multi-racialism as part of the ideological problem. Thus an effective propaganda statement was made by force of arms.
Let us rehearse the names of some of these movements: Shining path, FARC, PLO, IRA, ANC, PAC..... To what extent does this work of armed propaganda, which sacrifices the lives of workers, peasants, civilians, etc. differ qualitatively and quantitatively from that of the BB et al? (genuine question)
Next question: to what extent is it not true that Che, Mao and Ho were living out their own fantasies and that the precise nature of these fantasies and their outcomes alienated huge numbers of people from the left (besides recruiting many others who shared the fantasy?)
Direct action is the violent edge of the new movement. I have some problems with this. Armed propaganda and terrorism was/is the violent edge of the old movement. I have much greater problems with this, not least being the POLITICAL facts that: (a) such quasi-military (or pseudo-military) struggles bring the generals to power - and generals are people who give everyone else orders, or (b) they are simply about bringing the enemy to the negotiating table where the petty bourgeois leaders of the movement quickly strike up a class identification with the former enemy.
Am I wrong here? Do tell me where.
Tahir