Dear Occupiers: A Letter from Anarchists
pfm | 09.10.2011 07:58 | Occupy Everywhere | Analysis | Free Spaces | Other Press | Social Struggles | World
Starting with the occupation of a park next to Wall Street on September 17, a new movement is spreading across the country in which people gather in public spaces in protest against social inequalities. We’ll present a full analysis of this phenomenon here shortly; in the meantime, here’s an open letter to the occupation movement, engaging with some of the issues that have arisen thus far. Please forward this widely and print out versions to distribute at the “Occupy” events!
Dear Occupiers [online viewing version]
Dear Occupiers [print version]: A two-sided flier intended to be folded down the middle, longways.
Dear Occupiers
A letter from anarchists
Support and solidarity! We’re inspired by the occupations on Wall Street and elsewhere around the country. Finally, people are taking to the streets again! The momentum around these actions has the potential to reinvigorate protest and resistance in this country. We hope these occupations will increase both in numbers and in substance, and we’ll do our best to contribute to that.
Why should you listen to us? In short, because we’ve been at this a long time already. We’ve spent decades struggling against capitalism, organizing occupations, and making decisions by consensus. If this new movement doesn’t learn from the mistakes of previous ones, we run the risk of repeating them. We’ve summarized some of our hard-won lessons here.
Occupation is nothing new. The land we stand on is already occupied territory. The United States was founded upon the extermination of indigenous peoples and the colonization of their land, not to mention centuries of slavery and exploitation. For a counter-occupation to be meaningful, it has to begin from this history. Better yet, it should embrace the history of resistance extending from indigenous self-defense and slave revolts through the various workers’ and anti-war movements right up to the recent anti-globalization movement.
The “99%” is not one social body, but many. Some occupiers have presented a narrative in which the “99%” is characterized as a homogenous mass. The faces intended to represent “ordinary people” often look suspiciously like the predominantly white, law-abiding middle-class citizens we’re used to seeing on television programs, even though such people make up a minority of the general population.
It’s a mistake to whitewash over our diversity. Not everyone is waking up to the injustices of capitalism for the first time now; some populations have been targeted by the power structure for years or generations. Middle-class workers who are just now losing their social standing can learn a lot from those who have been on the receiving end of injustice for much longer.
The problem isn’t just a few “bad apples.” The crisis is not the result of the selfishness of a few investment bankers; it is the inevitable consequence of an economic system that rewards cutthroat competition at every level of society. Capitalism is not a static way of life but a dynamic process that consumes everything, transforming the world into profit and wreckage. Now that everything has been fed into the fire, the system is collapsing, leaving even its former beneficiaries out in the cold. The answer is not to revert to some earlier stage of capitalism—to go back to the gold standard, for example; not only is that impossible, those earlier stages didn’t benefit the “99%” either. To get out of this mess, we’ll have to rediscover other ways of relating to each other and the world around us.
Police can’t be trusted. They may be “ordinary workers,” but their job is to protect the interests of the ruling class. As long as they remain employed as police, we can’t count on them, however friendly they might act. Occupiers who don’t know this already will learn it firsthand as soon as they threaten the imbalances of wealth and power our society is based on. Anyone who insists that the police exist to protect and serve the common people has probably lived a privileged life, and an obedient one.
Don’t fetishize obedience to the law. Laws serve to protect the privileges of the wealthy and powerful; obeying them is not necessarily morally right—it may even be immoral. Slavery was legal. The Nazis had laws too. We have to develop the strength of conscience to do what we know is best, regardless of the laws.
To have a diversity of participants, a movement must make space for a diversity of tactics. It’s controlling and self-important to think you know how everyone should act in pursuit of a better world. Denouncing others only equips the authorities to delegitimize, divide, and destroy the movement as a whole. Criticism and debate propel a movement forward, but power grabs cripple it. The goal should not be to compel everyone to adopt one set of tactics, but to discover how different approaches can be mutually beneficial.
Don’t assume those who break the law or confront police are agents provocateurs. A lot of people have good reason to be angry. Not everyone is resigned to legalistic pacifism; some people still remember how to stand up for themselves. Police violence isn’t just meant to provoke us, it’s meant to hurt and scare us into inaction. In this context, self-defense is essential.
Assuming that those at the front of clashes with the authorities are somehow in league with the authorities is not only illogical—it delegitimizes the spirit it takes to challenge the status quo, and dismisses the courage of those who are prepared to do so. This allegation is typical of privileged people who have been taught to trust the authorities and fear everyone who disobeys them.
No government—that is to say, no centralized power—will ever willingly put the needs of common people before the needs of the powerful. It’s naïve to hope for this. The center of gravity in this movement has to be our freedom and autonomy, and the mutual aid that can sustain those—not the desire for an “accountable” centralized power. No such thing has ever existed; even in 1789, the revolutionaries presided over a “democracy” with slaves, not to mention rich and poor.
That means the important thing is not just to make demands upon our rulers, but to build up the power to realize our demands ourselves. If we do this effectively, the powerful will have to take our demands seriously, if only in order to try to keep our attention and allegiance. We attain leverage by developing our own strength.
Likewise, countless past movements learned the hard way that establishing their own bureaucracy, however “democratic,” only undermined their original goals. We shouldn’t invest new leaders with authority, nor even new decision-making structures; we should find ways to defend and extend our freedom, while abolishing the inequalities that have been forced on us.
The occupations will thrive on the actions we take. We’re not just here to “speak truth to power”—when we only speak, the powerful turn a deaf ear to us. Let’s make space for autonomous initiatives and organize direct action that confronts the source of social inequalities and injustices.
Thanks for reading and scheming and acting. May your every dream come true.
pfm
Homepage:
http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2011/10/07/dear-occupiers-a-letter-from-anarchists/
Comments
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Absolutely hits the button.
09.10.2011 17:22
I've been increasingly uncomfortable with some comments associated with the worldwide occupation movement; that peaceful protest is the only solution and that those who sometimes employ different tactics are 'agents provocateurs' or juvenile trouble makers or whatever. Not so.
There's room for a diversity of tactics; depending on the situation and the participants. Not everyone is comfortable with direct confrontation for all sorts of legitimate reasons, but be aware that corporate capital willingly gives away nothing. They will be quite happy to let you march about from A to B on an agreed, heavily policed route; they will be quite happy to let you camp out in some convenient spot, (convenient to them - eg Peace Sq. not Albert Sq. in Manchester). But they won't concede an inch. Nada.
Now, some of these comments have been coming from people genuinely new to protest, genuinely new to taking action to change the world; with those people we genuinely seek dialogue, common ground and a willingness to back each other up. But we should also be aware that those who seek to frustrate us have learned a lot about using social media since the Arab Spring. They have become adept at sowing division. Don't fall for it.
'They won't concede an inch' I said, but maybe they will. Maybe they have a plan B that consists of making minor concessions due to overwhelming public pressure - a slightly less nasty form of capitalism in other words. How they will be able to deliver that when the social/economic system that they run is completely screwed is beyond me. Don't fall for that either.
Capitalism is not the answer, nor is some sort of state capitalist/communist hierarchic system controlled by the 'central committee'. What do we replace it with? Any, (well, at least most), anarchists will give the same answer: 'It's not up to us, it's up to YOU'. Scary stuff, but it's getting to the point where so many of us actually have nothing to lose by taking the plunge and jumping in the deep end.
I mean do you seriously want your children/grandchildren to be living through this shit in 50 years time? I fucking don't.
An anarchist in Newcastle, UK
Hello anarchists! Do you have a practical proposal?
09.10.2011 18:42
I just wanted to ask, do you have a practical alternative to society being centrally organised?
And, more important, supposing there is a revolution, do you have any ideas for how to make sure it doesn't result in a power vacuum that a dictator could - and almost certainly will - step right into as has happened in so many previous revolutions, starting with the Russian revolution? The only revolution I know of where this didn't happen was the Sandinista revolution. They reproduced a social democratic voting system and gave up control of the government when they were voted out ten years after they overthrew Samoza. But maybe the ultimate result wasn't all that revolutionary.
Then there was the Spanish revolution, but that was subject to factional divisions between Comunists and Anarchists and then got bombed to hell by the Nazis before it had a chance to develop.
What seems to be missing from all left wing theories, not just the anarchist one, is a theory of how power works from the personal level upwards, and a model of how power could be spread widely across different groups of people so that it is impossible for it to be concentrated in any one group, faction or class so that they can impose their will enough to exploit others or form a new elite. Or get tight control of most of the resources (all types of resources) in the way the state has now.
Despite its many shortcomings what I see in British society now is that political and social power is spread around several factions and locations so that, however much they would like to have a lot more of it, there are limits on how much power politicians - and so the state - can gain.
Think of this: if Guy Fawkes wanted to stage a coup now, he'd have to do a lot more than plant gunpowder in the Houses of Parliament because that's not where most power resides. He'd also have to take over the key government departments, Broadcasting House and other media outlets including the national newspapers, the banks, and he'd have to be sure the military was onside. Hell of a job!
Any ideas? I ask in a spirit of exploration.
pinkolady
Homepage:
http://owlsotherblog.blogspot.com
@Pinkolady
09.10.2011 19:33
If you were to read any Anarchist theory you would find that the important issues you raise are dealt with by our classic texts. Left thinkiers outside the Anarchist movement, excepting the council communists or libertarian marxists, do not have answers to your questions.
The land in the UK is mostly owned by those who stole it in the Norman conquest. Revolutionary Anarchism can be summarised that we seek to achieve an equal society by redistributing the land, by occupying our workplaces, through the practice of direct democracy and by defending our class.
thank you for your interest.
(X)
Sowing division
09.10.2011 21:34
"The police and the mass-media have repeatedly tried to intensify existing separations between violent and non-violent demonstrators."
I am not taking sides in their dispute with Aufheben as I know little of the circumstances, but this seems a pertinent point in any case.
If revolutionary anarchists can loosely support a wide range of less radical initiatives because we can see they're at least taking non-politicised people in vaguely the right direction, why the outright hostility from the fluffy brigade to our way of thinking?
Revolting peasant
Homepage:
http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2011/10/07/tptg-an-open-letter-to-the-british-internationalistanti-authoritarianactivistproteststreet-scenes-and-to-all-those
to X, I've read loads
10.10.2011 02:25
As to the subject of 'violent' protestors and 'fluffy' protestors, I think this is a very old division. It occurred among the Sufragettes and the Chartists. Me, I say the same thing about both pacificism and political violence: "Good as a tactic, bad as a strategy".
pinkolady