Part 1.
It seems like an oxymoron. An anarchist – someone who by definition is anti-government – working on a presidential campaign. How the hell did that happen? What does that say about me? About anarchism? About Kucinich?
First, let’s start by talking about anarchism.
Anarchism is a belief in a society without rulers. It is anti-authoritarianism. Generally it stands outside the false dichotomy of corporate authoritarianism vs. governmental authoritarianism – the breakdown of modern Republican vs. Democrat or Liberal vs. Conservative debate.
As an anarchist, I have no desire to allow someone else to make my decisions for me – whether it is a political representative I “elect” or a boss I “choose” to work for. Both of these are exercises in submission with a veneer of freedom painted on them. Regardless of what textbook theory might state, there is no option for real people to choose not to be submissive (except for trying to climb to the top and be a boss or politician – but that’s like saying slavery is freedom because you might someday get to be a slavemaster). If you choose not to elect someone to rule over you, you are simply labeled “apathetic” and subject to the tyranny of government anyway. If you choose not to sell your freedom for the majority of your waking life just to make someone else rich you are labeled “lazy” and usually thrown out of your home to starve or wind up in prison.
Only to someone who lived in a fantasy-land would choosing between starvation, imprisonment, or submission be considered “freedom.”
It is because I am a realist that I am an anarchist. I do not want to look at textbook theory of how Capitalism is supposed to work and pretend that is the reality. I live in the real world, and in the real world none of this shit works like the libertarians think it does. At least not for folks that live in my neighborhood.
Yet it is also because I am a realist that I am pragmatic. While I firmly believe a better world is possible (and don’t tell me that we can put men on the moon, beam information instantaneously around the globe, and create movies as good as The Lord of the Rings but we can’t come up with an social/economic system that works the way we want it to) – we’re not going to achieve it in the next few years. There are too many really powerful people that would have to work and wait in line like the rest of us regular folks if we brought about a society based on freedom, equality, and mutual aid. You’d better believe that those pampered assholes will do everything they can to keep their positions of privilege. I mean, just look at the supermarket chains Albertsons and Ralphs locking out their employees in solidarity with the bosses at Vons – when by all Capitalist “theory” those three competitors should never be showing solidarity with one another.
So in order to fight the bastards, we need to build a mass movement – a real mass movement – and create “dual power” institutions that can both meet our needs today and fight for a freer tomorrow. Essentially, if we ever want real freedom we have to organize for social revolution. Hopefully, as we’ve seen in South America and Eastern Europe it can be a largely bloodless revolution – but only a real revolution will bring us real freedom. A slightly nicer boss, a slightly less evil president, a bit of tinkering here and there will only make our slavery a bit less unbearable.
We can do better than that.
So with everything I’m saying, why the hell would I want to get involved in a presidential campaign? Why would I want to do the very thing I just said would be little more than making slavery slightly less unbearable?
Well let’s face it; we’re nowhere near the point of social revolution right now. As disgusted as many people are with George Bush, I can’t see the USA going the way of Bolivia or Argentina in the next few years. The people are not going to rise up, overthrow the government, and create popular assemblies that meet on street-corners and make real decisions. Nor are workers going to take over factories that have been mismanaged into the ground by useless businessmen.
Since we’re nowhere near revolution right now, someone is going to be President. To pretend that not voting or not being involved in the political process will make the Presidency disappear is to be more foolish than the libertarians who pretend that by working to make someone else richer your freedom, individuality, dignity, and basic rights should disappear.
So as a pragmatic anarchist, I think that we should be working towards a free society, but we also need to deal with the political realities of today. The reality is that we will have a President, and the reality is that who that President is matters.
Now, I am not going to claim for a moment that we can legislate our way to freedom. I don’t think that any President is going to replace wage-slavery with worker control and then dismantle the State – putting themselves out of a job. I have no illusions that Kucinich is a closet revolutionary. I know that while he might put in place programs that will mitigate the suffering of the majority of poor and working class people – he will in no way attack the basic foundation of Capitalism or the State. If there is one thing we should have all learned from the horrors of Bolshevism its that power protects itself.
So although I do not think that getting Kucinich into office would bring us closer to the social revolution I would like to see in my lifetime – I do recognize a few basic facts that sadly seem to elude the grasp of many of my fellow radicals.
The first, and simplest, is that there is a difference between George Bush and Dennis Kucinich. Simply saying “Republicrat” does not change the facts, it just makes you someone unwilling to face them.
The second is that Dennis Kucinich is not Bill Clinton. Too often I’ve had radicals try to use straw-man arguments about how Bill Clinton would have gone to war in Iraq too. I’ve had people constantly remind me of Bill Clinton’s opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians, his dismantling of welfare, and his bombing of Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Kosovo. I’m aware of all of these things. I protested Clinton’s job-killing economic policies and his people-killing military policies. But I’m not campaigning for Clinton. I’m not campaigning for Gore. I’m not campaigning for Lieberman. I’m not saying “vote for anyone with a ‘D’ in front of their name.” I’m campaigning for Dennis Kucinich. I’m campaigning for a guy who grew up in an ethnically diverse working-class neighborhood in Cleveland not unlike my ethnically diverse working-class neighborhood in Providence. I’m campaigning for a guy who didn’t go to Yale like Clinton and Bush and Lieberman and Dean. I’m campaigning for a guy who did lead the fight against the war in Congress when that was considered political suicide, who voted against the Patriot Act only a few weeks after September 11th, who threw away his political career by standing up to big corporations as mayor of Cleveland in the 70s. If all of that makes him sound like Clinton to you, then you belong in a psych ward, not a social movement.
The third is that who is President of the United States affects the majority of people on the planet. While it is true that a Progressive President would face many challenges from the media, Capital, and the political establishment within their own party, it is the absolute height of irresponsibility to pretend that it does not matter who occupies the Oval Office. While Kucinich may not be able to push through many of the programs he would like (such as creating a cabinet-level Department of Peace or an end to capital punishment) he would at least do much less damage than Bush and his cronies. To claim that it is inconsequential whether we go to war with Iran and Syria, whether U.S. workers have overtime protection, whether workers even have jobs to put food on the table, whether people can bring their kids to the doctor, and whether octogenarians can pay their bills is to flatly state that you do not care about the living conditions of your brothers and sisters in the working class. This is not behavior befitting a revolutionist, or even a decent human being.
The fourth is that it makes us incredible hypocrites to have spent so much time and energy organizing to stop the WTO, only to oppose a man who joined us in Seattle and has pledged to give us the very thing we claim to want.
Finally, the simple truth is that the progress of the Movement is affected by who is in power. Anarchism, radicalism, progressivism, and the labor movement made no great gains under Reagan. Nor did they under Bush. They moved forward somewhat under Clinton, not because he helped us along, but because we were able to move forward. Then Bush II got in office and instead of fighting to move forward, we were fighting to only lose half of our past gains instead of all of them. Reactionary rulers force us to fight defensive battles, while reformist rulers allow us to fight offensive battles. It’s that simple. And though some might believe that it is better for the Movement to have Bush in office because it will radicalize “the masses”, I think that it is disgustingly immoral to hope that others will be miserable so that you may profit. Furthermore, I think such ‘logic’ is easily disproved by looking at the German Communist Party’s early 1930’s slogan: “First Hitler, then us.”
So that’s why as an anarchist I think it is still important to recognize the realities of electoral politics and have neither illusions about a savior from above nor delusions about revolution by dropping out. In the next part I’ll talk about how I specifically got involved with the Kucinich campaign.
www.davidgrenier.com
Source: http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/12/18/7930317