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Title: Towards Mass Movements Author: Pablo Barbanegra Date: 2012 Language: en Topics: Black Rose Anarchist Federation, Especifismo, mass movements Source: Retrieved on 2020-04-11 from https://blackrosefed.org/towards-mass-movements-intermediate-analysis/
Below we present a transcribed talk by Pablo Barbanegra on the concept
of āintermediary analysis.ā Pablo was a member of Miami Autonomy and
Solidarity (MAS) which was one of the several groups that merged to
found Black Rose/Rosa as a national political organization in 2014.
While MAS did not originate the concept of the intermediate or
intermediary level (which is used interchangeably as Pablo does within
the talk below), the group contributed to developing the analysis and
arguing for the level as a strategic site of struggle for the time
period. While some of the political context has shifted since this was
talk was presented in 2012, this piece provides context, definition, and
the arguments around itās strategic importance.
The following is an audio transcription of a presentation by Pablo at
the Los Angeles Anarchist Bookfair on September 8, 2012.
---
Hi, well, thank you guys for coming and definitely thank the organizers
of the LA anarchist bookfair for inviting me here. Itās a real honor to
be present here and be part of the LA anarchist scene and what you guys
are doing.
Today, what I wanted to discuss a bit is, Iām a member of a specific
anarchist political organization, like [event MC] said. And the
organization Iām a part of ā Miami Autonomy & Solidarity ā has been
together since 2008. Many of us came together after a long time of being
involved in social movement work. I started off doing student
organizing. And then some kind of paid organizing, community organizing,
but after a while of doing that kind of stuff, you know, I kept on
running into certain walls, right, certain walls with bureaucracy,
certain walls with you know, the idea of where the executive directors
of some of the organizations wanted to go. You know, all the limits that
exist in trying to work in that world. So I was introduced by a couple
of comrades to this idea of especifismo, which is a tradition that
originates in South America, starts largely in Uruguay, and has spread
out to several different countries in Latin America ā Chile, Argentina ā
definitely has made its way around the continent, and it definitely
emerges out of their particular situations dealing with dictatorship and
repression and, you know, anarchists for a long period of time, you
know, suffering from that kind of repression dealing with competing
tendencies and all those challenges and sort of coming back in the 1990s
and trying to regroup and once again become a social force in the social
movements that exist.
So those ideas kind of inspired me to start thinking about: well, what
can we do as anarchists to ensure that we donāt just become just a
subculture, just a hobby, you know, just like a lifestyle, or a personal
interest, but to actually have an impact and effect on social movements
and to build with them and to grow with them. That was the purpose of
forming a group like Miami Autonomy and Solidarity and taking that
approach; but one of the things that we are starting to see as we formed
this organization is that the context of the United States and of course
of a city like Miami, which is renowned for its kind of reactionary,
right-wing politics, makes it very difficult to operate like a specific
anarchist organization. Whereas in some other parts of the world or even
some other parts of the country, you have infrastructures of what we
might call the left where people can plug into. You have a stronger
history of mass movements and that memory of strong social movements is
there. In Miami, thatās largely non-existent, right? So we have to
really think hard about how are we as anarchists going to begin to play
a role in the almost either really small or non-exist mass organizations
in Miami. How do we begin to work so we can have an impact and start to
spread around more libertarian ideas, anarchist ideas, and become
relevant again to the class struggle.
Part of what weāve been thinking about for the past couple of years,
since Iād say 2010ā11, weāve been thinking hard about how to do that.
One of the things that weāve identified where weāre at and we think this
is also relevant to many parts of the United States: there exists a
layer which we recognize as the intermediate layer (and Iāll explain
what that is in a second). Just to give a little back story or you know
theory, or sorry, an explanation of how many anarchists have been
involved in mass movement work tend to think about how to go about
carrying out that work. We tend to think about thereās a revolutionary
level, and then thereās a mass level right? And as far as these two
levels are concerned, we tend to express within the especifist tradition
and other traditions that run concurrent with that particular tendency,
we tend to think that anarchists have to be involved in both levels. So
thereās a need for revolutionary anarchist organizations; but we also
need mass movements and these two things have to go together. Right? You
canāt just have a revolutionary organization without any mass movements
and mass movements without revolutionary organizations who are in there
working, agitating, you know, creating propaganda and kind of growing
side by side with these movements, at times they can take many different
directions ā directions which we might feel are going to take us to that
level of social revolution and eventually something like an anarchist
communist society. So we begin from that point.
What Iām going to talk about today is looking a little bit at the nature
of the period that weāre in, and then thinking about some of the
objectives that we would like to carry out and bring into effect, talk a
little bit about the different levels that we see existing, and talk
about why the intermediate level might be the most strategic site of
struggle for movements in North America today. And then we can have some
discussion about what peopleās experiences have been with things like
that [asking if] this kind of analysis and proposal makes sense? We can
talk about that stuff after the presentation.
Whatās the nature of the period? If weāre going to categorize the nature
of the period in the United States, we are currently living through what
we might describe as a period of low level of mass struggle and
militancy, right? We donāt exist, we donāt live in a time where there
are burgeoning social movements, where there is this very sharp class
struggle that can be exhibited. So this is the condition that I think we
are dealing with in the United States and especially in a city like
Miami, where I live. In regards to mass movements, the mass movements
that do exist during this time period, we find that either at times they
are non-existent (again Miami is a good example of that) or they are
highly bureaucratized mass organizations, right? So here we have a
picture of course of SEIU, Obama, kind of one hand washes the other.
Critiques of the non-profit industry have been something that have been
put out with more and more force lately and thatās definitely a good
development. But we still havenāt overcome that yet; weāre still dealing
with this issue of non-profit bureaucratized struggles, struggles that
are largely co-opted or cooperativist, that work with capital instead of
trying to overturn it. So often times the level of consciousness is also
there. Itās also like a funny, you know, kind of portrayal of the left
in these times you know, everybody will talk shit about how the system
sucks and, you know, lesser of two evils, but at the end of the day, you
know, weāre still going to vote for them; weāre still going to support
that, and thatās what we have to do, right, to stay connected with the
mass movements again that largely are either non-existent or very
bureaucratized.
As far as the left and many revolutionary traditions, I think that
definitely anarchists will fall within this: there seems to be a
disconnect in terms of being able to influence, being able to have an
ongoing dialogue and discussion with mass movements or mass
organizations. Often times the activities of anarchists and
revolutionaries seems to be very disconnected from the daily lives of
struggle of average people; you know, working class people.
Alright, so as class struggle revolutionary anarchists which is how MAS
sees itself, our objectives are to at some point work towards this point
where we will have something like a social revolution initiated by the
popular classes, by the working classes, by those most oppressed in a
capitalist, in an imperialist system. So we definitely think that if a
revolution is to happen and if something like anarchist communism is
ever something that we might see or work towards, then we need to start
thinking strategically. We need to start thinking strategically about
how we do our work, how we come to have an influence, how we come to
play a larger role, in mass struggles or mass organizations. So the
primary goal of revolutionary organizations in the short, medium and
long-term is to contribute to building an autonomous, self-managed,
libertarian revolutionary consciousness, capacity and power of these
movements so that they can create that revolution in the long term.
Most of us have the analysis that revolution of this sort isnāt going to
happen overnight, itās a long term struggle. Most of us will probably ā
I donāt like to say this, I donāt like to think about this ā but we may
not even see it within our lifetime. So we have to be committed to a
long term struggle to keep on pushing and in order to do that we
definitely need to be strategic.
So we think that in these moments where mass organizations are in the
state that theyāre in, class struggle is in the state that itās in, we
need to figure out a way in which again anarchists and anarchism can
become relevant within these mass struggles and mass movements. What MAS
is going to propose is that instead of just thinking about thereās a
revolutionary level and thereās a mass level and that revolutionaries
should be working within the mass level, we might even have to just
start thinking about: how do we build up a mass level, right? And if
mass organizations arenāt in existence, then how do we do that? How do
we as revolutionaries not become detached, disconnected, simply becoming
a populist group, [or] a group that sits around just talking theory and
not being able to create an action that actually challenges capitalism
or being involved in struggles that actually challenge capitalism?
So this intermediary level, itās not necessarily a new analysis. If we
look at the history of many different revolutionary groups, theyāve come
to similar conclusions, theyāve identified that we see not only a mass
level and a revolutionary level; but thereās also what Iād describe as
an intermediary level and the intermediary level is basically the level
where people are definitely more conscious, theyāre more militant; but
they many not necessarily be united around a particular set of beliefs
or ideology. But they are capable of working together for mid-term and
short-term goals. So we see that largely as an intermediate level. And
we want to be able to develop this level more, so that this level can in
turn help to build up mass movements and build them up in a direction
where you know, theyāre not going to become bureaucratized or theyāre
going to try to fight those tendencies that are trying to co-opt them.
So that little graphic is supposed to kind of show the complexity and
interplay that exists between mass level, intermediate level and the
revolutionary level. Of course reality is messy and, you know, we find
that there are revolutionaries in the mass level, there are
revolutionaries in the intermediate level, there are people who are from
the mass level in the intermediate level. Itās not necessarily kind of
like a clean-cut situation.
Now, each level exists regardless, right, of whether thereās an
organization there. So the mass level exists, whether the mass level is
organized is a different story, right? Same think with the intermediate
and revolutionary level. These levels exist. There are people who are
thinking about these things; there are people who are trying to fight
for certain needs; but they may not be organized themselves yet. So itās
important to draw that distinction between that and try to unify the
level with organization. So the level as a theoretical concept
definitely is full of a lot of gray areas and one thing Iād like to
point out is that this is more of an analysis at this point that we are
trying to develop into a practice and that is part of the reason that I
am doing this talk today; because I want to hear what people to think
about this and to see if folks have experience with this and are
thinking about this on the same terms because weāre still developing a
strong practice that can either prove or disprove this analysis.
So the mass level, right, is the broadest level. At the mass level,
usually it can include people from all types of backgrounds, all types
of ideological backgrounds, right? You have people who are thinking very
much within the system, Republican/Democrat, and you also have people
who are thinking outside of it as well maybe in a more radical
direction. So mass level organizations are open to anybody in those
sectors, anybody who is trying to fight around particular needs usually
can be part of a mass organization. A good example of this, of course
historically, has been labor unions. Labor unions for the most part,
members did not have to belong to a specific party. Again, you can be a
democrat, you can be a republican, you can be no party affiliation, you
can be an anarchist, a communist, it didnāt matter. But the whole point
of the mass level is that youāre fighting around these struggles that
affect your day to day life, it could be wages, it could be anything of
this sort.
Now at this time, the mass level, is mostly associated with these very
short term objectives. When we look at mass organizations, weāre usually
talking about short term objectives: a wage raise, you know, certain
securities at work, for the most part mass level organizations at this
point are not discussing a longer term strategy, are not at the point
where theyāre talking revolution yet. So this is where we find ourselves
in this moment.
Alright, now, when it comes to the intermediate level, we find people
that tend to be more committed to struggles and are unified around a
certain set of objectives. They may not have theoretical unity with each
other. That means that they may not all seek the revolution in the same
way; they may not all see it ultimately happening in the same way; but
at least they have currently some unity around these short term and mid
term strategies.
Now in the intermediary level, you could have multiple intermediary
level groupings or organizations within a mass organization, right?
Again, like I said, a good example would be unions. In a union you can
find people of all stripes. So what are the kind of purposes for
something like the intermediary level: to work on short term objectives
as well as medium term objectives. And this can be struggling around
wages; struggling around some job site grievances. It could be longer
term, it could be related to bringing together people of different
industries, right? So like for example, you have a workplace youāre
organizing in; maybe that struggle is successful, maybe it died down.
What do you do with those people? Where do those militants go? Theyāve
just engaged in a struggle which has altered their consciousness and
made them feel more empowered. They recognize that: alright this is
limited, I need to go further. Where do they go? Do they go straight
into a revolutionary organization? Maybe, maybe not. So the intermediate
level can serve as a space where people can develop themselves further
as theyāre going along that process and trying to figure themselves out.
Now the revolutionary level, right, is, itās a level where, when we say
itās a āhighā level, it doesnāt mean that itās in a hierarchy above the
mass level. Itās simply that the level of unity required to exist within
a revolutionary organization is usually higher. So people who are in
revolutionary organizations tend to be on an ideological level, on a
theoretical level, on a strategic level, and usually on a tactical
level. So thatās the people weāre talking about. But again, in that
revolutionary level, youāre gonna have a variety of tendencies, youāre
gonna have anarchists, youāre gonna have, you know, socialists, youāre
going to have all types of different groups. So thatās what the
revolutionary level is referring to. It just refers to that higher kind
of level of commitment to coherent theoretical positions, coherent
strategic positions and tactical coordination.
Ok. Now when it comes to the revolutionary level, the revolutionary
level is going to try to push for these kind of longer term goals. So
for the revolutionary level, itās important that we start looking again
at this intermediary level in order to start to build towards that
longer term struggle and start engaging folks in those conversations
about not just the changes that we want today but the changes theyād
like to see in the future. So the revolutionary level can meet within
the same intermediary level organization. So what this is basically
talking about is that as revolutionaries, right, the revolutionaries
that may be of different tendencies may still be able to fight together,
may still be able to work together at this intermediary level, where
they would not be able to work together at the revolutionary level
because of significant differences in the way that you ā how these
social struggles should be formed; how the revolution should come about.
So this becomes a space for that kind of activity to happen as well,
which we think that is important, that is necessary. And thatās
something that, you know, needs to be happening amongst revolutionaries
of different stripes.
Alright, so why is the intermediate level a strategic focus for our
revolutionary tendency at this time? It goes back to this issue that
thereās this disconnect between long term and short term, right? Thereās
a lot of disconnect between what revolutionaries are advocating for in
the long term and then whatās actually happening in the short term. We
want to be able to bridge that gap, we want to be able to close that gap
between our long term visions and how we operate and what weāre doing at
the short term level and mid term level.
Ok, now when we think about the intermediary level, it can also serve as
a kind of autonomous force within social movements, one that can build
mass level organizations or activate militants within the mass level or
militants in mass organizations. To kind of put that into more concrete
terms: Iām a member of a union, right? My union, politically speaking,
is very conservative, sometimes downright reactionary. So in that space,
sometimes our activity is going to be quite limited because when we try
to push for certain things in the union there could be very serious
repercussions to our jobs, to our livelihood. So we may not be in the
type of space where we can push for what weād like to see in the midterm
and the long term. But the intermediary level, can operate
independently, from that mass organization while still engaging people
at the mass level. So in my case, what Iām currently trying to work on
as a teacher is: Iām a member of my union, right, Iām a member of my
union because I feel like even though I feel like the union for the most
part, the leadership is pretty whack, they suck, you know, they donāt
back us up; at the same time thereās people who joined that union who
want to fight. So Iām going to try to find those people and group up
with those people so that together we can start building up a tendency
and start pushing within our union and we can do this both within and
outside of the union. So where the union is limited by, say, legal
questions these autonomous organizations, if theyāre powerful enough, if
theyāre large enough, can potentially either push those contradictions
to the forefront, right, and show them to the union membership ā that
ok, our union has these limits, we need to break beyond them ā or simply
act where the union or where the mass level organization would not be
able to act.
Part of the goal or purpose of the intermediary level is for us to be
able to build connections to broaden the dialogue to become pretty much
a force multiplier because we need to be able to do that if we hope
anarchism to once again become a relevant ideology, a relevant you know
a relevant approach to revolution. If weāre not able to do that, if
weāre not able to broaden these conversations to become a force
multiplier, we become disconnected and often times wither away and die
out. So thatās why thatās relevant and important.
So at the intermediary level, activists and militants that we meet, we
get to know them, we build relations, and we learn to struggle together.
I think a big part of building mass movements and building this type of
work is about building relations. So we always have to be conscious of
how we build relationships with other militants. And again, I feel like
if we are going to be able to attract working class people to anarchism
again, itās critical that we build relationships over a period of time
so that when struggles do erupt, when things start to heat up, people
see us as individuals who can be trusted, who are disciplined, who they
can count on, and who they know are going to fight with them side by
side when times get hard.
In order for popular class movements, theyāre going to be those
responsible for really making a social revolution, the revolutionary
organization needs to be able to connect and engage with the mass level
and the intermediary level. This is an important point. Without mass
level work, without mass organizations, revolutionary organizations or
intermediary organizations pretty much are useless. If we cannot
connect, if we cannot build relations, if we cannot, you know, activate
militants in these struggles, if we cannot help push for our points of
view and also grow ā have our views grow alongside those who are
actually engaged in struggle, we run the risk of becoming irrelevant. We
run the risk of becoming, as it shows there, a head without a body,
right? A theory group, a group that doesnāt do much, talks a lot but
doesnāt get much done.
One thing to keep in mind is that these levels arenāt static. So what is
possible to a large extent will depend on whatās happening at that
current moment historically and we do have to keep that in mind. So
again the intermediate level, the revolutionary level, and the mass
level are always going to look different depending on where weāre at
historically, where the class struggle is at.
One thing we should do is try not to confuse the intermediary level for
the mass level. Recognize that the intermediary level, weāre talking
about individuals who are starting to think more in the mid-term and
long term, there are people who are actively involved in struggles,
there are people who are looking to expand the struggles. Theyāre
starting to recognize the limitations of the mass organizations that
theyāre involved with. So we shouldnāt confuse that intermediary level
for the mass level.
We have to also be careful with kind of becoming distracted by simply
mobilizations, and starting to think that if weāre able to mobilize lots
of people weāre actually doing something to build up the mass level, we
may not be. And sometimes mass mobilizing can be very powerful but it
can quickly disappear and we still have to ask ourselves what are we
left with when that does happen. So we have to make sure that weāre not
just thinking in terms of mobilizations. This is not a question of
numbers right, at least not only about numbers, itās a question about
how are these mass struggles becoming more combative, how are they
becoming radicalized? So a way that we find it useful to explain that
distinction is massification vs. mobilization. And massification would
be the kind of work that Iām talking about: which is deepening those
struggles at the mass level and not just mobilizing a lot of people and
having a lot of warm bodies, you know at a protest or at an event or
something like that.
What weād like people to consider is how this relationship is supposed
to work and what weāre saying is that, the um, kind of again, the
purpose is to get people who are at the intermediate level to work at
the mass level right, so we identify folks who are at this intermediate
level then we should be trying to work together to get involved at the
mass level and in mass organizations. I come back to the example of the
union that I gave earlier. Which is you know, I identify teachers who
are disillusioned with the union, that are disillusioned with the way
things are working. Um so weāre going to go and try to fight within the
union but weāre also open to working outside of the union if necessary.
For MAS we think that itās very important to try to get mass level
militants to join the intermediary level or to kind of move up into that
intermediary level and begin engaging other folks at the mass level, at
the level of the mass organizations. Though, of course, the other one
from intermediary to mass level is still important. So some examples of
what weāre talking about: workers networks, we see this often times in
groups like IWW have played this role where there have been mass
struggles at a particular workplace and for whatever reason, either
because they were successful and they gained things or because the
struggles were too prolonged, started falling out, but you still had
folks who became radicalized through that process: what do you do with
them? What can they do? So building up a network of militants across an
industry, potentially, is one example of how that intermediary level
might work. Again the teacher example I gave earlier, taking teachers
who are members of the union and then fighting with them both inside and
outside with teachers who have become more politicized is another
example of an intermediate level.
So in a nutshell the intermediate level for us is the strategic sight
for struggles today because again, weāre facing a time period where
class struggle in the united states even though recently there has been
resurgences, there has been what we might call āmomentsā, weāre not in
the time where we have āmovementsā yet perhaps. And so I think weāre
still in that process of building. So the question of how we build them
and how we participate in the building up of movements so that they
maintain an independent autonomous character, so that they donāt become
simply co-opted by you know, bureaucratic forces. Itās a critical
question and this is the type of question that weāre trying to grapple
with and we think that building up this intermediate level to do work at
the mass level is perhaps the most strategic work that revolutionaries
and members of anarchist political organizations can be doing today.
---
Pablo āBarbanegraā AvendaƱo (1983ā2018) was Argentinian-American born
and raised in Miami, FL. He became active in student organizing and
occupy before joining Miami Autonomy and Solidarity, which would merge
to form Black Rose/Rosa Negra. In 2013 he moved to Philadelphia and
became active in struggles around police violence and joining Philly
Socialists. Tragically in 2018 he was involved in a fatal bicycle
accident while working for a food delivery app service. #RestInPower