[lbo-talk] Black Blocs & Other Peerennials

Joseph Catron jncatron at gmail.com
Wed Feb 8 09:17:02 PST 2012


On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 1:40 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:

Lou & Hedges aren't serious. They just like the sound of their own voices.
>

I chalk it up to bitterness. These types are clearly resentful that, for better or worse, their old-school Marxist-Leninist approach has had little to do with Occupy (or much of anything else these last few decades). From what I can tell at this distance, OWS grew out of the political and organizational fragments of the old New York City Direct Action Network more than any other single thing. (By way of trivia, that's how and where I first met Graeber.) NYC-DAN was an implicitly anarchist grouping that sometimes threw its considerable organizational weight behind black bloc tactics, like at the 2000 inauguration. And those affiliated with, and later inspired by, it continued to develop new, innovative resistance strategies over the long decade between the September 11 attacks and OWS, often involving occupations of public space that paved the way for the recent, unprecedented wave of them. They probably broke some windows, too.

Meanwhile, from party types, we're left with sad, grandfatherly reminiscences like Marv's below. "Back in my day ..." Well, excuse me, but what the fuck have those preferring this approach done SINCE the 60s? These guys dropped the ball; someone else picked it up. How seriously am I supposed to take their bellyaching about how much better it was in some imagined glorious past? If you like orthodox Marxism better, go organize a fucking orthodox Marxist movement. I cam imagine some benefits, and I certainly don't see anyone standing in your way.

-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."



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