[lbo-talk] Boots Riley on Occupy the Hood

[Carrol Cox]

There is one key feature of OWS on which there is rather general agreement:
It has changed the nature of the national discourse. (This can be worded in
various ways.) In my terminology, the terrain of struggle has changed
radically: the change _began_ with Wisconsin (though one can always go back
& back & back, which is the pint of Marx's mole metaphor). It was
Wisconnsin, I suspect, and its impact around the country that made the
_spread_ of OWS so dramatic. And sticking, for the moment, to this change of
terrain as central, the _results_ of OWS may well not be any direct
development 'inside' OWS but in the work of various groups 'inspired' by the
opening of new agitational possibilities brought about by OWS. I'm glad
various people (shag in particular on this list) have been actively
exploring the inernal potential and/or 'meaning' of OWS, but the importance
of OWS does not depend on where OWS itself goes (or doesn't go). When the
heavy repression began to take hold, the end of OWS being in fact virtually
taken for granted momentarily on this list, I argued that that was
irrelevant: that OWS was already triumphant. 

The concrete goals of left movements can never be theorized in advance.
(That was the error that generated the FHP* paper a decade or so ago and the
hysteria about "demands" in the early weeks of the NYC OWS.) And the present
renewal of left reach has not yet developed to the point where its goals can
be clearly identified: they are still being forged in hundreds or thousands
of local actions and national conversations. As to communization, I am in
pretty complete agreement with Jordan here. It is, for the reasons Jordan
gives, a dead end -- but interstingly a dead end that keeps coming back.
(Doug gets hives in the presence of "localists," and I get a bit irritated,
but we have to learn to live with them as one  component of the movements
underway. We find it necessary in B/N to relate to the local group of Vision
20/20, Jan & one other Solidarity member attending its meetings.) 

Things are happening; they can't yet be theorized, though the temptation to
do so is probably part of the development.

Carrol

*FHP: Featherstone, Henwood, Parenti.

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Jordan Carroll
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2011 12:02 PM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: [lbo-talk] Boots Riley on Occupy the Hood

The second point (a stable, formal institutional structure of Occupy) was
what I thought would be the sticking point.

I find communization theory interesting, but I'm still not sure on the
specifics. Other than the fact that it's new, cool, and more overtly
antagonistic to capitalism, how does this strand of communization differ
from traditional communalism? And how does it avoid communes' age-old
problem -- i.e., their vulnerability and dependence upon the capitalist
outside? Nobody has demonstrated that communizationist communes are able to
provide their own adequate healthcare (bonesetting aside) or fend off the
police.

It's one thing to say that we can escape all repercussions because
communism is waiting for us tomorrow, but there's little concrete evidence
that we've reached the end of capitalism or even the flourishing of a
large-scale movement to withdraw from it. Organizing workers is going to
take years of work and telling Wal-Mart workers, "Hey, fuck it, if you
illegally strike and lose your job, you can come sleep on a cot on my farm"
is not going to endear many.

shag carpet bomb wrote:

well, that's the point of Communization to begin with.

The idea is to create a feasible alternative way to live for exactly these
reasons. Why not bail on your debt? Who gives a shit if you default on your
loans if you create a small society where you can live and not suffer the
repercussions bankruptcy supposedly puts on you? (this was in a piece Eric
forwarded here written by one of the communard anarchists who is part of
Occupy Oakland). Following, why not strike? If the repercussions are no way
to live, communization is a way to live.

Out of curiosity, why would it be verboten to discussion pooling resources
and donations for this purpose?
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