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Title: From Spectacle To Empowerment Author: Murray Bookchin Date: 1983 Language: en Topics: the spectacle, empowerment, situationist, situationism, post-situationism, peace, peacebuilding, Direct Democracy, democracy Source: http://www.revoltlib.com/anarchism/from-spectacle-to-empowerment-grass-roots-democracy-and-the-peace-process/view.php
Will the present-day peace movement repeat the errors of the 1960s
anti-war movement by placing its primary focus on carefully orchestrated
and highly centralized national actions in cities like Washington or New
York? Or will it try to percolate into the localities and neighborhoods
of the country -- into the body politic itself -- and become a genuinely
popular movement that reaches deeply into America as a force for
education as well as action, for a broad view of the causes of war as
well as the dangers of war, for a vision of a harmonized society as well
as a demilitarized society?
These questions, I think, are crucial and our response to them may well
determine the quality of the movement as well as the "quantity" of
people it can influence and "mobilize."
The Vermont town meeting process of initiating the freeze was as
important as the result it achieved. People meeting in a face to face
democratic arena were using a richly libertarian way of empowering
themselves...
Great demonstrations and rallies in the urban centers of the United
States make for splendid theater. Expressions of our fears and the
problems that concern us have the attraction of simplicity, of clear-cut
visceral responses, of sudden if episodic "successes" and "quick
results." This, presumably, is the "American Way," like fast food and
searing stimuli. We can then go home and view ourselves in huge numbers
on television while movement celebrities receive wide media exposure to
our utter delight as spectators. But there is a grave danger that such
well-orchestrated spectacles like iridescent bubbles will burst in our
eyes as soon as a limited issue is exhausted. Initiated by movement
celebrities, it is quickly taken over by establishment celebrities --
and we are likely to see the nuclear freeze issue, for example, defuzed
by the current Congress's cooptation of the entire demand, just as mere
opposition to the Viet-Nam war was easily taken over by the very
establishment figures who so readily approved of the war in the opening
years of the Johnson Administration. Although the war has ended, after a
fashion, southeast Asia is still an area of terrifying afflictions --
and missiles or the neutron bomb is the next "single issue" that hangs
over us, not to speak of space-war technologies and potential horrors we
could never have foreseen two decades ago.
I think it is crucial that the peace movement of the eighties view
itself as more than a "campaign" and its supporters as more than a
"constituency" devoted merely to opposing a problem such as the arms
buildup. Nor should it focus merely on mere "mobilizations" and episodic
theatrical actions. For one thing, the peace movement of the eighties
must root itself deeply in the communities of America rather than a few
offices in Washington and New York. The Vermont town-meeting process of
initiating the freeze was as important as the result it achieved.
People, meeting in a face-to-face democratic arena were using a richly
libertarian way of empowering themselves, not merely trying to
disempower the hawks and warmakers in the United States. Process, in
effect, became part of program. Today, when authoritarians in the
Pentagon, White House, Capitol, and the state houses of America are
trying to strengthen executive authority with proposals for six-year
presidencies and, in Vermont, with four-year governorships, the
opposition to war, colonialism, and armaments programs is organically
tied to the attempt to preserve our democratic institutions and
practices.
Secondly, I think we must recognize that the peace movement is
intimately linked with the environmental movement, feminist movement,
ethnic minority movements, and the stirrings by the aged, poor, and
unemployed who are the most direct victims of the "defense" budget and
the vast reductions in expenditures for social budgets. Working
patiently and unrelentingly on a grass roots, decentralized, local
basis, we must reveal all the connections between these movements and
the insane commitment of wealth to military ends, the authoritarian
controls that threaten to destroy our very means for preventing this
commitment, and the gross undermining of our environment that may
destroy us as surely as war itself.
If we retain this broad vision of our goals and give it coherence, we
will find many allies out there -- allies who are more meaningful, more
lasting, and ultimately more effective than the celebrities from all
quarters who are quite ready to turn the fundamental problem of a
harmonized and free society into a mere spotlight for their own
interests and careers.