Nathan Newman wrote:
> Chuck-- I didn't say you did nothing useful, just that what you do is not
> movement building. It's the promotion of your own networks in a way that
> undermines useful coordination of broader forces.
-Almost everything I do is predicated on the work helping movement -building. I want to build movements, just not movements that promote -liberal goals.
But who gets to decide what the goals are, liberal or radical? You reject any democratic control or even aspiration of democratic decision-making over those goals, but secede from cooperation automatically when your Black Bloc groups wants to pursue its own agenda.
>You attack others for demanding
> any group subordinate its own goals to a joint message and instead demand
> the right of groups like the Black Bloc to promote its own actions and
> message, regardless of the desires of other groups.
-I've attacked specific movements, groups, and political tendencies. -Being against the do-nothing vanguardism of the WWP/ANSWER is not the -same as being against coordinated movements such as the anarchist, -anti-capitalist and direct action antiwar movements. I work with some -liberal movements such as the media reform movement.
You know we agree on the WWP/ANSWER folks, but my criticism of them is that they reject democratic-decisionmaking just as much as your anarchist tendency. Their anti-democratic tendency operates in a different way-- and I obviously believe that the anarchist ideals are less noxious than the Stalinism of the ANSWER folks.
But both versions are fundamentally against building real mass movements where democratic coordination is allowed and strategic action is deepened by real coordination.
-When I attack other groups for insisting that my group of movement -subordinate itself to their authority, I do so our of the common sense -understanding that there are different groups and movement with -different goals, strategies and tactics.
Exactly. You fetishize strategies and tactics as equivalent to goals, and would rather undermine cooperation than subordinate your own tactics to coordination with other groups.
-Would the liberal wing of the anti-war -movement subordinate its goals to anarchist ones?
The point is for no organization to subordinate to other organization, but for all to subordinate themselves to democratic decision-making by the members of a broader movement.
Now, you may prefer complete organizational independence, which is a valid position, but don't say you promote movement-building. You promote individual groups doing their own thing and occasionally doing them at the same time. But that's not a movement, just a bunch of individualists.
Nathan Newman