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The system of having a "line" that everyone in the organization.
Stopping and helping someone who is dying on the side of the road is doing good.
Creating collective power, creating a community that lives on the highest level is living well.
Both of these things are important for a society.
This argument ignores the way that this society conditions us all.
- I'm against pacifism but I am also against violencism, any position that equates committing acts of violence with automatically moving towards revolution.
It's cliché but still true that a group can become absorbed with its own power rather than with its goal of creating a life worth living.
- I equate my interests with the dispossessed, knowing full well that a large percentage are now acting in the interests of the rulers.
The danger of an argument that sees activists or an active element as being the revolutionary force is that it ignores how this society conditions and frames all of our behavior. We are products of this society right now, it not just learning, in fact our learning isn't a very powerful force compared to the constant opportunity to create roles for ourselves right now.
The point is that we must be considering the context of our behavior, we must all be sorting those things that we do to survive now from those things that will eventually over-throw this society. The group the situatioists international was famous for having tremendous discipline and throwing people out who didn't participate. And they did that for the opposite reason than the usual centralized group works. They were demanding people think for themselves and demanding that people step outside the context of the easy roles that society has for them.
- This group had other problems but if we are serious about our project, we have to recognize that we are constantly conditioned by this society. We can not say that there is some group whose actions aren't determined by this society. We can't paint a wall around ourselves and say "here's the true revolution."
- Indeed, that is exactly why we need to over-throw this society. If there were some group that could jump to a frame outside this society, or if any individual could potentially jump to some conceptual frame totally this society, then why would you need to over-throw our conditions. We could just use that force to this society.
- My position is that the working class is that implicit group that is dispossessed, that has nothing. This is different from those who consider themselves working or those who have working class culture.
Bill Gates Personally owns more than the lower $40 of the American population. And this is partly because the networth of the lower %40 of the American population is essentially zero.
Now the point isn't these folks are morally at all better than anyone else - under many circumstances they can be cruel and submit totally to the dictates of the ruling class.
The point is that they have the potential to become an active collective of those KNOWING that they nothing to lose from the end of this society. This collective only fully forms in an insurectionary situation, although it is constantly present as potential.
Historically, guerilla movements have given way to nationalist dictatorships. Our country isn't that much of an exception. Cuba, Nicaragua and Vietnam are other examples - whether these countries call themselves communist or capitalist doesn't make a fundamental difference.
Cuba and Che Guevarra are good examples.
Essentially, Castro and Che landed a small guerilla band that hid in the hinterlands of Cuba for a short while creating a political embarassment for Castro.
At the point, there was popular revolution in the cities. This went on for a while and resulted in the government evacuating once defeated. Castro simply marched into the city and since he was the visible, he was acclaimed as the leader and began a new government. (One side note is the Fidel hesitated for a number of month in deciding whether to cast his lot with the US or the Russians. Whatever he decided isn't as important as seeing that the two countries were essentially two competing ball leagues of the world rather than fundamentally opposed).
The worst production of the Cuban revolution was "focoism." This is the guerilla ideology that seeks to create revolution by parachuting in guerillas who "delegitimize" the existing government, foment rebellion and then take control.
Basically, it is both untrue AND counter-revolutionary.
Che died trying to create focos in various countries, all of which failed. When the focos have suceeded, such as in nicaragua, they have simply been a way that the sons and daughter of the ruling class can re-establish their power when the old regime is toppled.
Now I imagine one kind of focoism - opportunism for us. We should be leveraging every possible opportunity for the of new life. But even here, thing are going to be much more complex than simple model of stages of the revolution.
- To cap, The point of basing yourself on social dynamics is to escape the dynamic of your activity.
There are a lot of folks who today base their activity in terms of seeing themselves as the free. And I respect them because sometimes people like that are the free-est folks around.
The problem with calling yourself the free is that it gives no direction to go with the freedom. If we are to begin a war with the weak and the strong, we may as create our own corporation, certainly that is what these do.
Our experiance with selfless "servants of the people" shows how suspect this is.
- It begins with a conflict with an owner, an inter-personal conflict, or simply with people who have a quality the police don't like(Homeless, minorities, inter-racial couples, non-conforming youths, etc).
- It then continues with a police encounter.
- A police encounter is often followed by a person being processed into the entire judicial system.
While we can call for unity as a whole, we cannot demand that in a particular jam that anyone tow our or anyone's line.
We can broadcast our opposition to their general presense and we can thwart some of their actions. But naturally we cannot pretend to prevent all of their abuses or stand as one power against another.
All of our resources will begin as extremely limited and most likely remain at least somewhat limited.
We must consider what the ultimate consequence of each activity.
If we are intervening deeply in the situation of a particular person, we should be prepared to follow the situation from it's first stage to it's last stage.
- The resource that we will have for intervening is publicity and political organizing.
- We should not give the impression that we can use this resource as something like a magic wand to solve any problem. Those who get help should know the power and limitations of this approach.
- We can still encompass the situations of those who are not are particular causes. We can publicize the general behavior of the police without needing to photograph each instance. We essentially need only enough photographs to prove our point. Having enough evidence means our activity goes to the next level - publicity, community out-reach and organizing.
This is generally in the form of lawyers. When the political interests of the entire capitalist class of an area are concerned, even this is often not enough.
Must be clear about our strategy from the beginning.
Our strategy is not to simply publicize the evils of the police - this is something that can only have limited effect. We must expose and challenge the entire ediface of justice, being willing to show it for what it is rather than claiming it "out of control."
We must know this as our strategy and be aware of how far it will get us in different situations.
We begin knowing the scales are unfair, let the powers-that-be try to prove otherwise. Our target audience is the community of the dispossessed in our area and the larger world.
While observing an incident may provide some protection for those involved, we must consider that entire support network is necessary for real protection rather than simply observing someone in a single incident.
- If we are successful, we will quite likely become targets of harassment ourselves.
- Obtaining cameras with zoom lenses and intervening in situation where we have some rapport with those encountering the cops are important things.
This can happen from the political preasure of mass organization, from the cop's realization that a certain behavior is ineffective or by this behavior having served it's purpose.
- We wish to modify police behavior by spreading a general awareness of police behavior.
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.....WHAT WE ARE AGAINST....
Social welfare agencies and other groups cannot have a princepled opposition to the police and moreover are more and more tied to the police.
At the same time, we cannot make other people choices for them - folks rely on these institutions.
And we do not have the resources to become a social welfrare institution ourselves.
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- Our Aim is not to prove the police are bad. However, putting forward blatant abuses in a visual form can force actions by heightening conscious awareness.
- By describing and documenting the real purpose of the police, it leaves the police themselves the job of proving they serve some useful purpose.
- We must work to discredit not just the police in particular but the entire justice system. It is key to have an over-all opposition to this complex.
- One should note that the trial system is an enforced theater event wherein an image of the community is invoked and used to punish "wrong doers." The jury is the institution used for this purpose. This illustrates the strong need of the justice system for an image of community support. And thus it this shows how general opposition within the community to the justice system can have strong effect (real juries even today hardly reflect the averge of the community but their most conformist edge.).
A) Create awareness of the role of the real role of the police.
B) Encourage no one to ever talk to the police.
C) Mass demonstrations and mobilizations.
D) Give general education on the importance of particular cases.
E) Encourage neighborhood solidarity to prevent certain instances of police intervention.
- Solving interpersonal conflicts (like fights between people) or personal crimes (like bike thefts) will not keep the police from seeing a need to intervene in the neighborhood. Neither will it create a situation where no one will ever call the police - shop owner and so-forth will always need the police for their protection.
We associate with those who are sincerely and decisively against the present order. That might not mean we would always agree with such folks explication of themselves or that we would disagree with the expression of those are in accord with the present order.
Some of these logical fallacies. Some of these are important arguments that simply use the wrong quality as their criteria. Some of these incorrectly frame radicalism and then point out true contradictions in these false frames.
These arguments are all archetipical by their focus on various qualities surfaces qualities of capitalism. Once we point the common arguments, we will describe our criteria for decisive versus surface qualities. One thing is the qualities we call decisive are somewhat abstract way to describe the decisive constant aspects of dailly. This comes because the concrete qualities of dailly are ever-changing.
We would note that the need to use surface, sensual criteria for the decisive aspect is a characteristic of neurotic reasoning, reasoning that must freeze the world to avoid openning to it's constant change.
- We will describe the relation of neurosis and praxis further at a later point.
This argument also goes into what the basic qualitities of this society are.
A crucial thing here is what qualitities we are dealing with.
All these phenomenon are real. What we are concerned about is the most compact way to express this society's reproduction.
A decisive phenomenon would be one that this society needs in order to keep existing and which is generated by this society. Air, for example, is needed by this society but is not generated by this society.
But there is more than just this. The qualities must be active and coherently formulated. Violence is created by this society and more or less necesarry.
Essentially, what we need is a necesarry and sufficient phenomenon that has a "the less/the less" type relationship. That means the less the