[WS:] This is what I call participatory rituals - series of motions that demonstrate the participants' commitment, dedication, ideological purity etc., but otherwise totally inconsequential. You can only keep believing that direct action leads anywhere when you become totally oblivious to history, which demonstrates time and again that in industrialized countries direct action leads absolutely nowhere politically, except for a few rare occasions when it is a part of a much broader political movement that involves major institutional players. In this latter case, direct action is the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. But believing that direct action alone - i.e. without the already overwhelming burden on the system - can achieve anything is, well, like believing that the straw alone can break the camel's back.
I think that the anarchist/radical movement is weak and insignificant today and it does not really matter what they do or do not do - as all they can possibly do amounts to a fart in the wind. Graeber is clearly delusional thinking that a bunch of rag tag anarchists brought capitalism to its knees. But it did not used to be that way. The uncompromising belief in a Soviet-style revolution on the radical part of the German left, which let it believe that it is social democrats rather than militarists and conservatives that is the main obstacle to the revolution, was one of the key contributing factor to the rise of nazism. The direct action and factory occupation (biennio roso http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biennio_Rosso) did not bring Italy closer to socialism, but paved a way to fascism that wiped out everything left of the center. Today, it is water under the bridge, but the fact that people who should have known better do the exact same thing and expect different results is pretty sad. Uprising, occupation style or otherwise? It would be laughable if it were not for the fact that in the past similar attempts of a left wing putsch invariably accomplished one thing only - providing a convenient pretext for unleashing reactionary terror to cripple, and sometimes even wipe out the entire left that otherwise might have had a chance for some political success.
As a point of clarification - I do believe that maintaining the "activist culture" is important and I respect people who devote their time, talent, and energy to this task. It is commendable. But it is one thing to do dry runs and quite a different thing to think that these dry runs are the way to go to change the world. It is one thing when boy scouts trail blaze through a difficult terrain. Such an exercise can teach useful survival skills. But it is quite different thing to believe that trailblazing is the way to go in real life and refuse to take the "establishment" bus instead.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."