💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › joel-olson-struggle-on-three-fronts.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 11:28:04. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Struggle on Three Fronts
Author: Joel Olson
Date: 1998
Language: en
Topics: anti-statism, Dual Power, Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, white supremacy, anti-authoritarianism
Source: Love and Rage Federation Bulletin, May 1998. From *A New World in Our Hearts: Eight Years of Writings from the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation* edited by Roy San Filippo.

Joel Olson

Struggle on Three Fronts

The current split in Love and Rage has so far appeared as a struggle

between two hostile camps, the “What We Believe” side and the anti-WWB

side. (Although the majority position is probably in the “Who Cares I’m

Outta Here” camp.) I believe it is a serious error to think of the

present split strictly in terms of pro- and anti-WWB. Instead, the

debate needs to focus on the key political issues that people are

struggling over. While there is no hope whatsoever of saving Love and

Rage, for those of us who remain committed to the idea of building a

strong revolutionary organization (I do not consider the suggestion to

go back to a network to be a serious one), we need to hash out our

individual positions on these key issues and then see if we can build

new political formations based on shared politics.

Other people have recognized the need for us to move forward after the

conference. However, the biggest problem with the proposals for a new

organization, whether it’s a revised Love and Rage (see Suzy and James’s

“Proposal for a New Love and Rage” as well as Laura’s “Draft Resolution

on Membership” in the April, 1998 Fed Bull) or a post-Love and Rage

organization (see Chris’s proposal in this issue as well as Brad’s

writings on cadre organization in the April, 1998 Fed Bull) exclusively

focus on the structural problems of Love and Rage and do not address the

political problems. This is exactly backwards. While I support the move

of any anti-authoritarian revolutionary organization toward a tighter,

cadre-type organization that is both more effective and accountable than

Love and Rage’s current structure, the heart of the split is over

politics, and that’s what we need to keep front and center.

There are three key political issues at stake, in my opinion. These

three issues are anti-statism, a correct analysis of white supremacy,

and the need to commit ourselves to dual power strategies in choosing

and developing political projects. In the rest of this article I want to

explain these three positions, the debates as they’ve been played out so

far, and what I think is the best position on each. My vision of a new

revolutionary organization should be clear from the positions I take on

these three issues.

I. Anti-Statism: The Core of Anti-Authoritarianism

The center of the debate over building a “multi-tendency” organization

is not about the ideological beliefs of imaginary members who might or

might not join Love and Rage in the future. Rather, it is about existing

members’ definition of anti-authoritar ianism. For my part, the key

elements that define anti-authoritarianism are a) a belief in the

relative autonomy of oppressions (ie. there is no one form of

oppression, like class or social hierarchy, that all other forms

“really” boil down to), b) opposition to vanguardism and support for

directly democratic models of political organization, c) a belief in the

self activity of the masses, and d) opposition to the state, either as

an “intermediate” stage in the struggle for a classless society or as

the permanent politi cal form of the new society. To me anti-statism

must be a core element of any defini tion of anti-authoritarianism.

Anti-statism is at the center of this dispute: WWBers rightly insist on

it as the core of anti-authoritarian politics, while Brad and Carolyn

have been mum on whether anti-statism is a part of their definition of

“anti-authoritarian.” (Chris and Jessica have been explicit in their

anti-statism, but no one who signed WWB will believe them. I do believe

them.) But instead of seriously debating this question, we get arrogant

assertions of the superiority of “old time anarchism” from WWBers and

equally dogmatic assertions of the superiority of Marxism from Brad

(“Anarchism, Marxism, and Love and Rage,” April 1998, Federation

Bulletin). WWB essentially amounts to an anarchist loyalty oath:

anarchism is the truth at its core, Marxism is authoritarian at its

core, therefore all persons in Love and Rage must pledge allegiance to

anarchy and shake their fists at any hints of creeping Marxism. But

Brad’s supposed defense of the multi-tendency” position just flips the

good guys and bad guys around: now it’s Marxism which is the only

element of Love and Rage that has been structured, coherent, organized,

and effective, while anarchism has been nothing but tlaky, ineffective,

and bourgeois.

The only way out of this mess is to completely reject the dichotomy that

WWB establishes (anarchy good, Marxism bad) and that Brad ultimately

shares (Marxism good, anarchy bad). The way out is to focus on the real

issue at hand, the differing conceptions of anti-authoritarianism and

the role of the state in each. The WWB signers are correct to point out

that the critique of the state is traditionally an anarchist tenet

(though anarchists have no monopoly on critiques of the state). They are

also right to point out that Brad and Carolyn have conspicuously evaded

the question of anti-statism. I agree with them that our opposition to

the state must be unambiguous and that it is reasonable and appropriate

to challenge comrades who in some way feel that a state is part of the

long term revolutionary struggle.

But it is wrong to make this a dividing line issue when a full debate

has not even begun on the question. WWB emerged in the context of a

broiling split within the New York local. Those of us not in New York,

however, didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on there. Some of us

knew there were problems but few of us outsiders knew the political

differences at hand because no one in New York reported them in the Fed

Bull. So, when WWB did come out it was an unexpected bombshell. The

consequence, intended or not, was to cut off debate on the question of

anti-authoritarianism and to make it a “dividing line question without a

full and free debate before-hand. Thus, what WWB amounted to for many of

us was a loyalty oath, not an invitation to debate.

What a revolutionary organization needs, then, is not a pledge to

anarchy nor a watered-down definition of “anti-authoritarianism’ but a

collective agreement about the content of anti-authoritarianism. This

content, I maintain, must contain the elements I outlined above (though

my definition is probably not exhaustive). In particular, it means a

resolute opposition to the state and an agreement that any activism we

engage in will work to weaken state power. Once we have that, whether

one comes to such politics through anarchism, council communism,

indigenism, anti-imperialism, or a creative interpretation of Star

Trek’s Prime Directive is irrelevant. These politics imply a

“multi-tendency” organization in the sense of bringing together multiple

ideologies and orientations all unified by a common definition of

authoritarianism and an agreement that it has nothing to do with

freedom.

II. A Correct Analysis of White Supremacy

Wayne thinks that questions of race are “negotiable” (see “What We

Think” in this Fed Bull). I disagree. A revolutionary organization in

the US absolutely needs unity on two matters relating to race. First,

its members must agree on a political analysis that places white

supremacy at the center of American history. Second, members must agree

that developing strategies to fight white supremacy must be at the heart

of all our key political work. Agreement on these two principles is not,

in my mind, negotiable. Instead, they form the basis of the politics of

the organization I want to help build after Love and Rage. Wayne

disagrees on both counts. He does not believe that an analysis of white

supremacy should be at the center of our politics beyond a general

critique of “authoritarianism,” of which racism is one form. As a

consequence, he sees no compelling need to make the struggle against

white supremacy central to our activism. I’m sure he’d be happy if

someone took the work on, but it’s one sphere of struggle among many,

which members may or may not choose to focus on.

My general position on white supremacy is spelled out in the “Draft

Resolution (on White Supremacy)” published in the last Fed Bull, so I

won’t repeat it here. However, I want to respond to recent criticisms of

my position on white supremacy by Wayne (“What We Think Are the Issues,”

this Fed Bull) and Bill Meyers (“Multi-racial Muddling,” April 1998 Fed

Bull). Both Wayne and Bill are intelligent people, so I cannot believe

that they have grossly misrepresented my (and others’) analysis of white

skin privilege because they don’t understand it. I must assume that they

deliberately choose to distort and disregard the analysis of white

privilege because it challenges their essentially class-reductionist

position that divisions among the working class ain’t all that strong

and that racism, however evil, is a secondary issue in the broad scheme

of things.

For example, Bill claims that the theory of white skin privilege is

aimed only at white people. This is flat-out wrong. If anything, it’s

people of color who have done the bulk of the work analyzing the system

of white privilege and agitating against it. White folks are the

newcomers. As numerous people from Sojourner Truth to W.E.B. Du Bois to

Malcolm X have pointed out, the struggle against white supremacy is the

central task facing all Americans, of whatever race.

For his part, Wayne claims that I argue that white workers are better

off because of racism and that I imply that fascism would be good for

the white working class. I have never argued either position. That Wayne

chooses to grossly, almost hilariously — “Racists say that your [white

workers’] interests are against Black people, and... [the “Draft

Resolution” signers] do too” — distort the theory of white skin

privilege is a result of ideological blinders that he puts on himself.

There are two ways to refer to white privileges as “petty.” On the one

hand, when compared to a truly free world, having first crack at the

best jobs (all of which stink), being last hired and first fired (for a

shitty job), living in the better neighborhoods (most of which are still

no good), giving one’s kids the best public education (so they can be

well-paid worker drones when they grow up, too), etc. are “petty”

indeed. No privilege held can compare to a world in which privilege does

not exist. I think Wayne and I agree on this point. On the other hand,

however, to call white privileges “petty” is also a way to dismiss the

role of white supremacy in the construction of our unfreedom as

relatively unimportant. From what Wayne has written, I believe he

considers the wages of whiteness to be “petty” in this sense too, and

here I could not disagree more. White supremacy has been absolutely

crucial in the construction and development of every major political,

economic, and social institution in this country, from the creation of

the two-party system to the weakness of labor unions to the

impoverishment of the South to popular attitudes toward birth control to

women’s liberation to the length of the working day to the songs we

listen to on the radio.

White unanimity is both the secret to American capitalism’s success and

its weak link. Smashing white supremacy will not mean that all other

forms of oppression will magically disappear afterward, not at all.

However, history shows that the struggle against white supremacy also

creates political space to challenge other forms of oppression from a

position of strength. It creates situations and possibilities to build

new social relationships and institutions that we can only dream of now.

There is nothing “petty” or “stagist” or “reductionist” about this

analysis of history. It is the cornerstone of revolutionary work.

One other point: when the “Draft Resolution” reads that the struggle

against white supremacy “will mean a quantitative reduction in the

standard of living for many workers in imperialist countries in general

and for white workers in the US in particular,” it doesn’t mean that we

have to tell poor workers to embrace their poverty or to try to “win

over” better-off workers by threatening to take what they have. It

simply means that the world cannot support six billion people with two

cars and 300 channels. Revolutionaries who try to win people over with

such promises a) are liars and b) treat freedom like a commodity more

than the bourgeoisie does. People have to be won over to a vision of a

completely new world in which one’s “standard of living” is judged by

the creative control they have over their own lives, not by how much

stuff they have. The struggle against white supremacy is a struggle

against this impoverished conception of freedom. If the language of the

resolution does not reflect that then the language should be changed,

but the political point still stands.

Unfortunately, however, it’s not just Wayne and Bill who don’t take the

criticism of this second notion of “petty privileges” to heart. Many

members who probably oppose most of WWB also consider “doing

anti-racist” work as one choice among a variety of types of activism we

could be doing. But this viewpoint of “relatively autonomous forms of

oppression, relatively autonomous struggles against them, so pick and

choose which oppression you want to fight ignores how, in the United

States, white supremacy structures the way all forms of oppressions —

even though they are all relatively autonomous-operate and the way in

which various factions struggle around them. What we need to do is

figure out how racial privilege is at work in these “other” struggles —

even if they usually go under the name of union organizing, reproductive

freedom, rent control, tuition hikes, school financing, welfare

organizing, or community policing and figure out ways to attack it,

recognizing that smashing white privilege is a necessary prerequisite of

not just winning that particular struggle but clearing the way for a

more radical struggle.

As an example, let’s take the work the Vermont local is doing around the

Living Wage Campaign, union issues, and other “class issues.” To begin,

with I want to say that, from the reports they submit to the Fed Bull

and the articles they write for the newspaper, I think the work they did

for the livable wage campaign was incredi ble. The door-to-door work,

the coalition building, the strategizing — all of it seems to me to

epitomize effective, influential political work with a radical bent that

is done in a directly democratic manner. They have certainly gone far

beyond any successes I can claim with my own activism. Nevertheless,

several things about their work troubles me. At the Lansing conference,

Jason reported that because Vermont was 98% white, race wasn’t really a

good issue to organize around there, so instead they decided to focus on

“class issues.” Now, without accusing the #10 folks of racism or

anything like that, it seems that what focusing on “class issues” really

comes to mean in this context is focusing on the white working class.

This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if the aim of the work was to get

white workers to recognize that the struggle to uplift workers of color

is a struggle to uplift whites as well, even if it undercuts some of

their “petty privileges” (here the term is appropriate). But the

struggle for a livable wage, as good as it is, doesn’t do that. Sure, it

raises the minimum wage of all workers regardless of race, in that sense

it is a progressive measure that we should all cheer. But when Black

unemployment levels are historically always double that of whites in the

US, how does raising the minimum wage unify the working class when Black

workers won’t be able to enjoy it because they can’t get jobs? If white

workers actively or passively defend this disparity in unemployment

rates, we still have a breach in the class. Thus, the prospects for

radical political movement in such a campaign hit a white wall. To

repeat, a livable wage is a progressive measure that we should all

support, but because it leaves white privilege intact it cannot, I

believe, ultimately provide the basis to create a unified working class,

which is the prerequisite for more radical struggles, such as the

abolition of wage labor itself. Thus, the most such a campaign can do is

win social democratic reforms, educate radicals for later struggles, and

(hopefully) radicalize folks who previously weren’t active. I do not

want to dismiss these benefits at all; they are important. But by

themselves they cannot threaten official society. That requires a

campaign that gets to the heart of what keeps capitalism functioning,

and that heart, in the United States at least, is the wages of

whiteness.

I use the Vermonters as an example because their work has generally been

so successful, not because they are any more chauvinist or shortsighted

than the rest of us. (I also apologize to the #10 folks for not raising

this issue with them right after Lansing as I intended.) The Vermont

local is by no means the only crew to make this mistake. By and large, I

think the entire anti-austerity working group has worked according to

the same incorrect logic. The editors of Race Traitor made a similar

critique of this logic in their critique of the CUNY work by the New

York local (See the Aug./Sept. 1997 Love and Rage). Unfortunately, New

Yorkers responded defensively and dismissively rather than seriously

considering the critique. Such defensiveness is understandable when

you’ve poured your soul into a struggle only to have it chal lenged at

its core, but it’s unfortunate when that defensiveness refuses to give

way to self-criticism, especially when the defensiveness is expressed

publicly in the newspaper.

Placing white supremacy at the core of our activism won’t necessarily

make activism any easier. The Vermont folks are right: it is tough to

get an angle on how to fight white supremacy in a state that is 98%

white. However, this doesn’t mean we abandon our analysis of American

history. (After all, there are reasons why Vermont, one of the few

states that allowed Black suffrage in the pre-Civil War era, is 98%

white-white folks did all they could to prevent free Black persons and

fugitive slaves from settling there.) It means we have to be innovative

in figuring out how to apply it. It might mean that struggles that are

currently “popular” or attract more people (to the extent that any left

wing struggle is popular in the 1990s) might not be the best ones for us

to engage in. But if our analysis is right, twelve people can do more

damage in a crucially strategic campaign than 1200 in campaign with

politics that limit it to social democratic outcomes. It might mean we

have to abandon some struggles or radically alter their aims and

tactics. But that shouldn’t be too big a problem because we’re committed

to freedom, not issues.

Wayne contends that the question of white privilege is only being raised

to distract people from “the Stalinist issue.” I can’t speak for anyone

else, but I have been raising this question well before WWB, and I ain’t

hiding no Stalin statue in my coat anyway. In my opinion, the politics

of the “Draft Resolution on White Supremacy,” whatever its wording

problems (hey, it’s a draft resolution) isn’t “negotiable.” It is a

dividing line issue. I have no desire to be in a group that doesn’t take

these politics to heart, because I know it will be an organization

destined to failure. It may be an efficient, disciplined organization

that wins reforms and manages to build a modest membership, but it will

pose no revolutionary threat to the powers that be.

III. A Commitment to Dual Power Strategies

I keep pushing the white privilege analysis for two reasons. First, a

free society has no room for racial discrimination or the system of

“race” as we know it, so it must be smashed. It is evil and keeps all of

us, regardless of skin color, from being free. But second, I am

convinced that the struggle against white supremacy has the best chance

of creating a situation of dual power in the US. While I do not believe

racism is the “primary” form of oppression that, once conquered, will

magically eliminate all other forms of oppression in its wake (which is

what many socialists believe of class), I do believe that the peculiar

history of the United States and its systems of racial slavery, Jim

Crow, and white democracy means that white supremacy is the cotter pin

that holds American capitalist society together, and that in the process

of removing that pin we clear the table for a struggle against all forms

of oppression, and clearing the table can begin the process of building

a totally new society.

I’ve discussed dual power numerous times in the Fed Bull so I’ll simply

restate my definition here: an action or campaign that directly

challenges the existing institutions of power in this world and — even

if in just some small way — prefigures the new society we want to build.

Chris’s excellent article, “Dual Power in the Selva Lacondon” on dual

power and the Zapatistas fleshes out this definition in a much better

way than I ever have, so I’ll refer the reader to that article for more

explanation.

As Chris argues, a situation of dual power is like the Zapatistas

setting up parallel administrations in forty “liberated zones”

throughout Chiapas, but it also has relevance to the mundane and much

less exciting activism we are all engaged in. Doing activism is vital

but it isn’t enough. What we as revolutionaries must constant ly ask

ourselves is, what is the content of our activişm? What implications

does it or could it have on the society at large? Does it challenge the

powers that be or does it in some way, consciously or unconsciously, end

up strengthening the hand of one of our enemies, whether it’s the state,

the right, or the “progressive” but essentially bourgeois left? I am not

saying that fighting for reforms is inherently reactionary or bourgeois

— not at all. What I am saying is that the reforms we do win should

weaken the power of official society rather than strengthen it.

For example, pro-choice groups recently celebrated the lawsuit they won

against radical anti-choice groups based on RICO, a set of laws that

were originally established to use against the Mafia. But by using these

laws, the pro-choice groups have strengthened the hand of the state at

the same time that they’ve weakened the right. What they’ve essentially

done is given the state another weapon they can use against both the

left and the right in their quest to ensure the peaceable and steady

accumulation of capital. As revolutionaries, we never want to make the

mistake these progressives made in using RICO, even if it makes our

struggle against the right more difficult.

A dual power strategy is about building campaigns that no institution of

offi ial society — whether it be the state, capital, conservatives, or

liberals-can seize upon and steer toward their ends. In so doing, we not

only destabilize official society, we show that the self-activity of the

working class is the seed from which a truly free society will grow and

flower. Unfortunately, such thinking does not seem to guide our

activism. Instead, we have tended to choose our activism based on what

many of us are already doing (such as prison and Zapatista and

antifascist work in ’95) or by what seems to be “hot” issues nationally

(such as “anti-austerity” work in ’97).

One result of this is that the debate over activist strategy surrounding

WWB has focused on a false dichotomy between the “mass line” strategy

versus the “just equals” strategy. The debate between these two

positions is partly over how we as activists relate to the masses of

“ordinary people (i.e. non-revolutionaries). On this question I think it

is obvious that whatever our organizational or leadership skills (such

as they are), we are of the masses and not apart from them and should

look at everything from that perspective. I don’t think anyone even

disagrees with that. But the debate is also about how to build a

revolutionary organization, and on this question both sides are wrong.

Each, in their own way, skirts around the real question of activism: how

to build an anti-authoritarian dual power that has the potential to

build a classless, stateless society.

For an example of the mass line side’s errors, take Carolyn’s articles

“Road to Nowhere” and “Strategy Without Teeth” in the last two Fed

Bulls. Carolyn argues that the revolutionary task is to figure out which

reforms can be extracted from the system, to fight to win them (acting

in tandem with reformist groups such as unions and liberals when

appropriate), and to link reform struggles to a broader revolutionary

strategy. The mass line perspective says we should determine our

position on various struggles (strikes, student movements, national

liberation struggles, etc.) based on the desires of “the majority” of

the masses involved in the struggles. In other words, how we intervene

in such struggles should be based on our assessment of what the masses

want. But revolutionary politics are by definition minority politics.

The revolutionary is in the minority until the barricades go up, the

police attack, and the people who had been “neutral” choose to fight for

the new society rather than cling to the old one. When one organizes

based on what the majority “wants,” what one generally ends up doing is

supporting “the politics of the possible.” Hence Mike E’s criticism that

the end result of such a strategy is social democratic liberalism is on

point here. In that what we revolutionaries want is something much more,

it is also (potentially, at least) deceptive to work on behalf of the

“majority position” in order to undermine it. Hence Kieran’s criticism

that mass line is manipulative is on point as well.

You might also notice that the content of the revolutionary struggle is

something Carolyn’s articles hardly touch on, even though we all know

that “revolutionary movements” often have as much to do with winning

freedom as ice skates have to do with winning basketball games. To their

credit, the content of the revolutionary struggle is precisely Kieran

and Mike E’s concern. However, their “just equals” approach suffers from

other flaws. Mike and Kieran argue that we should judge all struggles

according to a set of basic anarchist principles. We intervene by

locating a group or tendency that most closely approximates these

anarchist principles or, if none exists, we go in there and try to

establish a beachhead of such principles to appeal to the

“anti-authoritarian spirit” present in the peoples’ hearts.

I am sympathetic to the principles Kieran and Mike use to critique

popular movements. I am especially sympathetic to the “ruthless

criticism of everything existing” (to steal a phrase from Marx) that

such principles tend to produce: if anyone can find an authoritarian and

anti-democratic streak in any movement, it’s [Kieran]. But their

application of these principles to every struggle is formulaic and

ahistorical. Because social formations (including, alas, the Zapatistas)

hardly ever fight on behalf of all the anarchist principles Kieran and

Mike uphold, Kieran and Mike end up call ing for the creation of such

formations. Thus, the principles really offer no effective guide as to

the practicalities of how to intervene in a struggle. Kieran and Mike

end up with a series of platitudes about how a struggle should build

“independent, direct action groups” without any meaningful suggestion

how to do it, without indicating which actual players in the struggle

are most likely to build them, and without any explanation for why such

anti-authoritarian groups haven’t been built yet — or if they have, why

they’re so small. The “just equals” position on strategy tends to end

up, as Carolyn points out, as a moral principle simplistically applied

to every situation.

Kieran argues that the anti-authoritarian spirit is within all of us.

That may be true, but his organizing strategy does not explain why the

“egoistic“ side of human nature, as he puts it, (I personally don’t

believe in the anti-authoritarian/egoistic split he does, or in a “human

nature,” period) seems to win out over the anti-authoritarian spirit

every time. Nor does he offer a way to help the anti-authoritarian

spirit win next time. Without a strategy that helps us choose our

struggles according to our best judgment of what has the best chance of

building a democratic dual power, we’re going to end up either taking

the lonely moral high road, as Kieran and Mike do, or the crowded

reformist low road, as Carolyn does. From a revolutionary perspective,

both — manto steal a line from Carolyn — are roads to nowhere.

For example, take the Palestinian struggle in Israel. Carolyn

essentially argues that we should support the PLO’s strategy because the

majority of Palestinians do. Our task as revolutionaries, then, is to

support the PLO-led peace process while trying to figure out a way to

advance the revolutionary struggle further. Kieran, on the other hand,

argues (correctly, in my opinion) that the PLO is really just another

gang of elites setting themselves up to be the new Palestinian ruling

class. Instead, he says, we should support the creation of a renewed

Intifada, one that would seize upon and further develop the

anti-authoritarian spirit of the 1980s uprisings. Unfortunately, as

Carolyn (correctly, in my opinion) points out, there is no social force

calling for, or working toward, an anti-authoritarian Intifada. The

outcome of Kieran’s strategy is that we either end up supporting the two

anarchists in Palestine (we’ll probably only support one-they’ve likely

had a bitter split) or howling in the wind about the need for

anti-authoritarian direct action groups to overthrow the Israeli and PLO

oppressors.

A dual power strategy would start by asking different questions. First,

it would ask what is the precondition of the end of Palestinian

oppression and freedom for all Israelis whether Jewish, Palestinian or

Arab? Answer: the destruction of the Israeli state, which is essentially

an apartheid state. Second, which social forces out there are calling

for this? Answer: the PLO (at least they used to) and Hamas, the Islamic

fundamentalist organization. Third, of these two forces, do either

represent the potential to build a revolutionary dual power? Answer: not

the PLO, who are setting themselves up to be the new ruling class in

what will probably resemble a neocolonial relationship between a

Palestinian “statelet” and Israel, but quite possibly Hamas, who

resolutely call for the destruction of Israel by any means necessary.

Fourth, would a struggle initiated by Hamas against the Israeli state be

a struggle for freedom? Here’s where we as revolutionaries have to make

some judgments. Clearly, Hamas itself is no friend of anarchism. Its

vision of a just world is something all of us would oppose for one

reason or another. So we have to ask ourselves, are there other

tendencies within the broader movement that Hamas heads that are more

politically advanced? What class base is behind Hamas? Most importantly,

do any historical forces exist that would strip a revolutionary

situation out of Hamas’s hands and into the hands of the people,

clearing the way for a broad struggle against all forms of oppression?

Figuring this out, and developing programs to build such forces, would

constitute a dual power strategy in Palestine.

It’s similar to the Civil War in the United States. Neither the North

nor the South was even for the abolition of slavery, much less for a

classless society. Yet as Marx himself recognized, the key to building a

unified working class then was the struggle against slavery and to

recognize Black people as part of the working class, Thus, he supported

the North against the South, not because he wanted to help the Northern

capitalists but because he recognized that the historical forces at play

would likely spin out of the Northern elite’s control, creating the

conditions that would not only force the North to make the war an

antislavery war but that would challenge the rule of capital itself. As

a result, the Civil War was one of America’s golden opport nities to end

racism and to potentially build a society run by the working class, only

the opportunity was tragically snuffed out with the ending of

Reconstruction. (This argument is spelled out beautifully in Du Bois’s

Black Reconstruction, if you’re interested.)

Now, let’s apply this to our own situation. What are the preconditions

for an anti-authoritarian revolution in the United States? A unified

working class. What is preventing the creation of such a unified class

today? Many things, but the number one reason historically has been

white supremacy and the system of privileges that capital grants to

white workers in exchange for their loyalty to the system. (A side note:

contrary to Mike E.‘s claims, I absolutely include the white middle

class in this devil’s bargain. What is the 20^(th) century middle class

but, by and large, those persons whose parents or grandparents escaped

from the working class, usually through the system of racial

preferences?) What must be done to break up this deal between capital

and one section of the working class? The destruction of the white race,

or if you prefer, the destruction of white supremacy and its system of

petty privileges. Figuring out specific programs and campaigns to do

this would constitute a dual power strategy in the United States. As

revolutionaries, that is the task that faces us.

When it comes to building a dual power, the size of the organization or

the numbers of people participating in a campaign doesn’t matter; it’s

the potential that matters. If our strategy is sound, the numbers will

follow. (This is why building a movement of thousands isn’t inherently

better than building a movement of dozens. What counts is what each

movement is doing and how they are doing it.) Whatever the advantages

the anti-cop working group had over the anti-austerity working group

(and this might be its only advantage!), it was a working group that was

proposed based on an analysis of the crucial role of whiteness in

preventing the creation of a unified working class and it was defended

on the basis that it represented a dual power strategy.

I’m not claiming that a dual power strategy will solve all problems and

end all debates. Quite the contrary: there will be all sorts of

discussion, disagreements, mistakes, and blunders. When is a strategy a

dual power strategy? Does this particular project have dual power

potential or not? Whose analysis of history is correct? There are also

situations in which we will need to engage in work that can’t build a

dual power, such as solidarity work. But what a revolutionary group

needs to do is to ask the right kinds of questions, and to do that we

need the right kind of orientation. The “mass line” and “just equals”

orientations ask the wrong questions, so their answers are inevitably

wrong, too.

Conclusion

Regardless, Love and Rage is gone. In their anger, both camps have

mostly been talking over each other. The WWB side is right to point out

that the accusation that most of them aren’t activists is a poor

substitute for a real political critique. At the same time, they engage

in the same sort of sniping by class baiting the anti-WWBers, calling

them the “NYC student crew,” etc.

You can’t build a political organization without politics. The only

thing that can help us anarchist or anti-authoritarian revolutionaries

is a shared set of political principles and a willingness to put these

principles in practice through propaganda, activism, error, and

self-criticism, Unfortunately, neither side has set out a position on

all three issues consistent with the one I have outlined here. To have

any chance at building a free society, a revolutionary organization

needs to struggle on all three fronts. One can have a situation of dual

power without the counterpower being anti-authoritarian or even with it

being white supremacist. (A slogan of the Rand Rebellion in 1921 in

South Africa was “White workers of the world, unite!”) Likewise, one can

be against white supremacy and anti-authoritarian without working toward

a dual power. I welcome proposals for forming a new organization based

on the positions I’ve set out here and with a commitment to test out

these positions in the streets.