The wave of global popular protests that erupted in 2010 and lasted a decade were extinguished. This means new tactics and new strategies, as Vincent Bevins explains in his book “If We Burn."
"Revolutions are long, difficult projects that take years to make, slowly and often imperceptibly eating away at the foundations of power. "
While many traditional sources use the term anti-vaxxer as a pejorative and try to attach it to anti-science conspiracy it is in fact a revolutionary force years in the making. The informed base understands the deadly regulatory capture & opposes the Pharma Mafia that has transformed America into the fattest, sickest population in human history. Mounting victims of toxic food and rubber stamped, unsafe drug approvals is the revolution in the wings. Expect us.
Having read all the comments it appears nothing works! Nothing is pure. Every form of protest and of revolutionary intent contains a lousy element. Which ultimately rules. Geesh. No wonder things are getting worse! I guess we should all sign up for the best deal to pay for our funeral expenses and in the interim watch grade B and D films on Netflix. Cooperation? Naw. Competition for the best of what’s worse? You betcha. Meanwhile. Tread water. If you can find any through the smoke and fire.
The myth is that bottom-up uprisings are only bottom-up uprisings. Successful revolutions are always supported by and fomented by the powerful elites that have an agenda. That agenda might be moral, but is often just in support of competition over other powerful elites.
If we look at all the American left "uprisings" since the Occupy movement, they are largely perpetrated by educated youth. These are kids programmed by a tribe of elites, that also use their media and non-profit control to gin up anger with the poor, to rebel... often without even being able to articulate what they are rebelling to achieve.
The US had a similar situation for where we are today... the Gilded Age. Similar to Jan-6, Coxey's Army march on Washington to advocate for the working class over the monopoly of the monied elites. When the group of around 500 arrived, Coxey and other leaders of the movement were arrested for walking on the grass of the United States Capitol.
Similar to Jan-6, a real grass-roots movement was put down by power yet again.
I can speak to the truth of what is being said here by my experience with Occupy Astoria-LIC, one of the many local offshoots of the Occupy Movement. Over the course of a year or so, we went from having local assemblies with standing room only crowds of enthusiastic people, ready to do something, to those so under attended there was no point in having them anymore. The problem was a prevalent strain of thought within the group, which held that demands were not necessary and that we should just hold demonstrations outside of the big banks and “occupy space,” like vacant store fronts, though what exactly this would accomplish - w/out a more coherent organization, leadership and specific political goals - was never clear to me.
It's a shame because these local groups, which appeared all over the country, were bringing people together in communities/neighborhoods, who had never known each other before, who all shared the same outrage over how Wall St., the banks and the complicit U.S. government had wiped out trillions in wealth that was reflected in the loss of homes, jobs etc., while their solution was to enrich themselves further off of govt bailout funds with austerity for the rest of us. It could have formed the basis for a new, independent political movement or even a party. If anyone is interested in learning more of my experience, I have posted a link to an article I wrote on the Occupy Movement that was published by Counterpunch below.
I would also recommend Aric McBay's two volume work, Full Spectrum Resistance because he echoes a lot of what is being said here but also lays out in detail exactly how to recruit and build an effective movement, as well as a lot on effective strategy and tactics. He also provides a lot of great history on effective resistance, revolutionary, civil rights and political movements of the past.
It's too bad that there was no discussion about worker self directed enterprises. Until we accept that there must be an economic revolution, hand in hand, with a political revolution, we will continue to be crushed.
"Revolutions require skilled organizers, self-discipline, an alternative ideological vision, revolutionary art and education... The successful revolutions of the past, along with their theorists, should be our guide, not the ephemeral images that entrance us on mass media."
I would not consider "revolutionaries" such as Marx, Lenin, or Mao as successful. They certainly engaged in monumental movements but as far as promoting human happiness all three were abject failures. The most successful revolutionary of modern times was Adam Smith. Arising within the Scottish Enlightenment, he certainly influenced one revolution, the American Revolution. Never once employing the word capitalism he is proclaimed as its father. Not really, he was simply describing an environment which best created human happiness. The depredations of capitalism during the early Industrial Revolution had little to do with Adam Smith's observations and were entirely due to the human behavioral patterns which have existed since humans created agriculture and civilization.
An alternative ideological vision, oh dear, that sounds like theory which then requires theorists. Did Marx come up with anything more original that the Seven Deadly Sins of Medieval Times? Vanity and Avarice have been with us since time immemorial. Wrath is all too often a result of real or imagined injustice. His theories were embraced by power elites who then succeeded in murdering millions all in the name of a human ideal. How was that any different from the Reformation, the Inquisition, or any number of jihads?
America is certainly ripe for a new progressive period and not the faux progressivism centered in our so-called elite universities. All the emphasis on LGBTQIA+, DEI, and Critical Race Theory is excellent misdirection from the core issues of economic insecurity, subsidizing the 0.01% of the wealthiest members of our civilization, a dysfunctional healthcare system, and the tremendous disparity in income across our civilization. These so-called elite institutions provided us with almost all the so-called leaders during the Age of Reagan and looking back can anyone consider them to have been successful? Successful for themselves to be sure but having a riot at the Capital on January 6th, 2021 is hardly a ringing endorsement.
The best model which eventually tamed the excesses of the Gilded Age was the Labor Movement in the US. It created the organization and infrastructure to challenged entrenched power groups. It had simple demands which were achieved in part by good luck: A member of the patrician class who did not see American Greatness in his "Class" but rather in the ideals at the foundation of this country. Both Roosevelts were revolutionaries of their time just as Lincoln was during his time. All three assailed unaccountable power structures and employed the power of centralized government to mitigate those structures.
Let us not waste time on "new" ideologies or theorists. Theory outside of hard science only has a foundation in human desire and not in the real world. Like many of our economists all that is created is a lot of arcane nonsense that can be sold for the validation of very venal political interests. Whether it is reward in heaven or a utopia on earth neither address the here and now and both can be dramatically misused.
Chris would be well served to support and extol the virtues of the current UAW strike and the various labor movements in this country. There are two burning concerns which all humanity faces: 1) Climate Change; and 2; How to share the abundance that arises from new technologies. Climate Change is new. Sharing the abundance is as old as humanity itself.
#cornelwest2024 or #strikethevote. Also, #juststopoil & #stopcopcity.
Here's a brilliant "theory and analysis" discussion featuring Dr. West and economist Richard Wolff ... as truthful today as it was when it was recorded 8 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zYAH-BZZTs
Going off on a bit of a tangent here but I read "Banality of Evil" and the real revelations in that book hit me kind of slowly I think. It's so infuriatingly simple. I, you, we suffer cause someone somewhere has a plesant little life that depends on it in someway or another. I work for a bank that deliberately understaffs it's branches. Obviously that means everyone has to work alot harder. This takes it's toll on the mind and body overtime. It is no mystery what stress does to people. The sscience is in! Yet I have reigonal managers who get a bonus for cost cutting. They have a financial incentive to slowly grind us down. And not even a very big one relatively speaking. Maybe a few BMW payments? I suppose that's worth your empathy.
You got it right. "There was a decade of popular uprisings from 2010 until the global pandemic in 2020". But you missed what happened. You mentioned the pandemic BUT that is where you end the thought. What happened during the pandemic. Or have you forgotten. There was a massive take over by big fascist government and pharmaceutical control. Mandates for a procedure that didn’t work. Censorship of both you and doctors, politicians etc who had a different approach. And I have heard NOTHING from you on this.
I am 83 I took 3 jabs and then I saw what they we doing-I read RFK Jr's book. I then offered the book for free to friends and I was ignored. Not just ignored but chastised. None of my friends opened the book. And none have read it. I remember saying to my wife after reading the book "It was one of the best books I have read". No comment and she still refuses to look at the book.
I have been very disappointed in you and Noam my heros.
When will you address the issues raised by Kennedy's book and ideas? When will you discuss them? And if so why not.
If the Establishment is good at nothing else, it is very good at determining whom to buy off, whom to co-opt, whom to neutralize, whom to ignore.
This is how Civil Rights-Era leaders, men and women who once did genuinely heroic things, wound up as garden variety machine politicians.
This is how fire-eating Sixties radicals were neutered and became tenure-seeking academics and mild-mannered proponents of "working within the system".
For that matter, the Tea Party started off as opposition to bailouts, and became a wholly-owned Team R subsidiary.
The observation about the failed movements never questioning their neoliberal indoctrination is an important point. A chief characteristic of capitalism and neoliberalism is the destruction of imagination. People have lived so long with both that they can no longer imagine any alternatives. Thus the status quo is preserved, because there's never a real revolution.
The idea that Anarchism is antithetical to Organizing is very reductionist. As Chomsky points out, the Spanish revolution of 1936 was "not a spontaneous upsurge, but had been prepared in many decades of education, organization, struggle, defeat, and sometimes victories" Bringing down the wrath "of every major power system." And that's what largely lead to its defeat, not a lack of skillful oganizing due to a non-hierarchical approach.
Anarcho-Syndicalism carries the clue in the name, syndicalism is afterall, simply French for "Union".
The black bloc is but one small tendency, and one that many other Anarchists, especially outside of the US, find highly problematic and counterproductive. It's often macho and egocentric too, but It's not particularly representative of the whole body of thinking or acting over the many decades of Anarchism. It is, however, exactly that to its many enemies.
"Revolutions are long, difficult projects that take years to make, slowly and often imperceptibly eating away at the foundations of power. "
While many traditional sources use the term anti-vaxxer as a pejorative and try to attach it to anti-science conspiracy it is in fact a revolutionary force years in the making. The informed base understands the deadly regulatory capture & opposes the Pharma Mafia that has transformed America into the fattest, sickest population in human history. Mounting victims of toxic food and rubber stamped, unsafe drug approvals is the revolution in the wings. Expect us.
Having read all the comments it appears nothing works! Nothing is pure. Every form of protest and of revolutionary intent contains a lousy element. Which ultimately rules. Geesh. No wonder things are getting worse! I guess we should all sign up for the best deal to pay for our funeral expenses and in the interim watch grade B and D films on Netflix. Cooperation? Naw. Competition for the best of what’s worse? You betcha. Meanwhile. Tread water. If you can find any through the smoke and fire.
The myth is that bottom-up uprisings are only bottom-up uprisings. Successful revolutions are always supported by and fomented by the powerful elites that have an agenda. That agenda might be moral, but is often just in support of competition over other powerful elites.
If we look at all the American left "uprisings" since the Occupy movement, they are largely perpetrated by educated youth. These are kids programmed by a tribe of elites, that also use their media and non-profit control to gin up anger with the poor, to rebel... often without even being able to articulate what they are rebelling to achieve.
The US had a similar situation for where we are today... the Gilded Age. Similar to Jan-6, Coxey's Army march on Washington to advocate for the working class over the monopoly of the monied elites. When the group of around 500 arrived, Coxey and other leaders of the movement were arrested for walking on the grass of the United States Capitol.
Similar to Jan-6, a real grass-roots movement was put down by power yet again.
I can speak to the truth of what is being said here by my experience with Occupy Astoria-LIC, one of the many local offshoots of the Occupy Movement. Over the course of a year or so, we went from having local assemblies with standing room only crowds of enthusiastic people, ready to do something, to those so under attended there was no point in having them anymore. The problem was a prevalent strain of thought within the group, which held that demands were not necessary and that we should just hold demonstrations outside of the big banks and “occupy space,” like vacant store fronts, though what exactly this would accomplish - w/out a more coherent organization, leadership and specific political goals - was never clear to me.
It's a shame because these local groups, which appeared all over the country, were bringing people together in communities/neighborhoods, who had never known each other before, who all shared the same outrage over how Wall St., the banks and the complicit U.S. government had wiped out trillions in wealth that was reflected in the loss of homes, jobs etc., while their solution was to enrich themselves further off of govt bailout funds with austerity for the rest of us. It could have formed the basis for a new, independent political movement or even a party. If anyone is interested in learning more of my experience, I have posted a link to an article I wrote on the Occupy Movement that was published by Counterpunch below.
I would also recommend Aric McBay's two volume work, Full Spectrum Resistance because he echoes a lot of what is being said here but also lays out in detail exactly how to recruit and build an effective movement, as well as a lot on effective strategy and tactics. He also provides a lot of great history on effective resistance, revolutionary, civil rights and political movements of the past.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/09/23/reminiscences-of-a-wall-street-occupier/
It's too bad that there was no discussion about worker self directed enterprises. Until we accept that there must be an economic revolution, hand in hand, with a political revolution, we will continue to be crushed.
"Revolutions require skilled organizers, self-discipline, an alternative ideological vision, revolutionary art and education... The successful revolutions of the past, along with their theorists, should be our guide, not the ephemeral images that entrance us on mass media."
I would not consider "revolutionaries" such as Marx, Lenin, or Mao as successful. They certainly engaged in monumental movements but as far as promoting human happiness all three were abject failures. The most successful revolutionary of modern times was Adam Smith. Arising within the Scottish Enlightenment, he certainly influenced one revolution, the American Revolution. Never once employing the word capitalism he is proclaimed as its father. Not really, he was simply describing an environment which best created human happiness. The depredations of capitalism during the early Industrial Revolution had little to do with Adam Smith's observations and were entirely due to the human behavioral patterns which have existed since humans created agriculture and civilization.
An alternative ideological vision, oh dear, that sounds like theory which then requires theorists. Did Marx come up with anything more original that the Seven Deadly Sins of Medieval Times? Vanity and Avarice have been with us since time immemorial. Wrath is all too often a result of real or imagined injustice. His theories were embraced by power elites who then succeeded in murdering millions all in the name of a human ideal. How was that any different from the Reformation, the Inquisition, or any number of jihads?
America is certainly ripe for a new progressive period and not the faux progressivism centered in our so-called elite universities. All the emphasis on LGBTQIA+, DEI, and Critical Race Theory is excellent misdirection from the core issues of economic insecurity, subsidizing the 0.01% of the wealthiest members of our civilization, a dysfunctional healthcare system, and the tremendous disparity in income across our civilization. These so-called elite institutions provided us with almost all the so-called leaders during the Age of Reagan and looking back can anyone consider them to have been successful? Successful for themselves to be sure but having a riot at the Capital on January 6th, 2021 is hardly a ringing endorsement.
The best model which eventually tamed the excesses of the Gilded Age was the Labor Movement in the US. It created the organization and infrastructure to challenged entrenched power groups. It had simple demands which were achieved in part by good luck: A member of the patrician class who did not see American Greatness in his "Class" but rather in the ideals at the foundation of this country. Both Roosevelts were revolutionaries of their time just as Lincoln was during his time. All three assailed unaccountable power structures and employed the power of centralized government to mitigate those structures.
Let us not waste time on "new" ideologies or theorists. Theory outside of hard science only has a foundation in human desire and not in the real world. Like many of our economists all that is created is a lot of arcane nonsense that can be sold for the validation of very venal political interests. Whether it is reward in heaven or a utopia on earth neither address the here and now and both can be dramatically misused.
Chris would be well served to support and extol the virtues of the current UAW strike and the various labor movements in this country. There are two burning concerns which all humanity faces: 1) Climate Change; and 2; How to share the abundance that arises from new technologies. Climate Change is new. Sharing the abundance is as old as humanity itself.
#cornelwest2024 or #strikethevote. Also, #juststopoil & #stopcopcity.
Here's a brilliant "theory and analysis" discussion featuring Dr. West and economist Richard Wolff ... as truthful today as it was when it was recorded 8 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zYAH-BZZTs
Going off on a bit of a tangent here but I read "Banality of Evil" and the real revelations in that book hit me kind of slowly I think. It's so infuriatingly simple. I, you, we suffer cause someone somewhere has a plesant little life that depends on it in someway or another. I work for a bank that deliberately understaffs it's branches. Obviously that means everyone has to work alot harder. This takes it's toll on the mind and body overtime. It is no mystery what stress does to people. The sscience is in! Yet I have reigonal managers who get a bonus for cost cutting. They have a financial incentive to slowly grind us down. And not even a very big one relatively speaking. Maybe a few BMW payments? I suppose that's worth your empathy.
Thanks so much for writing this - lets hope people read it, think, and organize and act accordingly.
You got it right. "There was a decade of popular uprisings from 2010 until the global pandemic in 2020". But you missed what happened. You mentioned the pandemic BUT that is where you end the thought. What happened during the pandemic. Or have you forgotten. There was a massive take over by big fascist government and pharmaceutical control. Mandates for a procedure that didn’t work. Censorship of both you and doctors, politicians etc who had a different approach. And I have heard NOTHING from you on this.
I am 83 I took 3 jabs and then I saw what they we doing-I read RFK Jr's book. I then offered the book for free to friends and I was ignored. Not just ignored but chastised. None of my friends opened the book. And none have read it. I remember saying to my wife after reading the book "It was one of the best books I have read". No comment and she still refuses to look at the book.
I have been very disappointed in you and Noam my heros.
When will you address the issues raised by Kennedy's book and ideas? When will you discuss them? And if so why not.
Richard Romano
If the Establishment is good at nothing else, it is very good at determining whom to buy off, whom to co-opt, whom to neutralize, whom to ignore.
This is how Civil Rights-Era leaders, men and women who once did genuinely heroic things, wound up as garden variety machine politicians.
This is how fire-eating Sixties radicals were neutered and became tenure-seeking academics and mild-mannered proponents of "working within the system".
For that matter, the Tea Party started off as opposition to bailouts, and became a wholly-owned Team R subsidiary.
Brilliant. I wrote something similar a while back:
America's Intifada Must Dig Deeper
https://bit.ly/Americas-Intifada
The observation about the failed movements never questioning their neoliberal indoctrination is an important point. A chief characteristic of capitalism and neoliberalism is the destruction of imagination. People have lived so long with both that they can no longer imagine any alternatives. Thus the status quo is preserved, because there's never a real revolution.
The idea that Anarchism is antithetical to Organizing is very reductionist. As Chomsky points out, the Spanish revolution of 1936 was "not a spontaneous upsurge, but had been prepared in many decades of education, organization, struggle, defeat, and sometimes victories" Bringing down the wrath "of every major power system." And that's what largely lead to its defeat, not a lack of skillful oganizing due to a non-hierarchical approach.
Anarcho-Syndicalism carries the clue in the name, syndicalism is afterall, simply French for "Union".
The black bloc is but one small tendency, and one that many other Anarchists, especially outside of the US, find highly problematic and counterproductive. It's often macho and egocentric too, but It's not particularly representative of the whole body of thinking or acting over the many decades of Anarchism. It is, however, exactly that to its many enemies.
Believe it or not, another Civil War will have to be stopped by the 1%. https://youtu.be/27Q17eO1B7Y?si=uqQLHPhgVIJ7qVLs
Chris I just want to say this to you:
IF you want to get your message across to the average possibly 'working class' citizen you need to start talking in SIMPLE words.
This begins with A:...........
B:...........
I am fed up with intellectuals trying to talk to uneducated people. Even I am having trouble with your pages and I am far from stupid.
YOU teach in University.right?
Try talking simple to the working class. It might work?