Without a doubt the most important eviction took place in New York’s Zuccotti Park—the place that started it all—where Mayor Bloomberg’s police evicted the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) protestors in the early morning hours of November 15th. This touched off a curious legal fight in the bourgeois court system, with lawyers for the occupiers arguing that the eviction violated their first amendment rights of free expression. The decision of the bourgeois judge was a pyrrhic victory for the protestors allowing them to return to the park to engage in lawful protest, but refusing to block the city’s prohibition on tents and camping gear. Thus, OWS finds itself deprived of its modus viviendi. With the bourgeois state no longer willing to play nice, it is now an occupation movement without the ability to occupy anything of consequence. 

Could this work to extend the movement? Deprived of the right to legally encamp in the park, might the protestors be moved to create a different mode of struggle—one that focus less on the occupation of a particular geographic space and more on developing organs for clarification and theoretical deepening such as discussion groups? At this time it is not possible to say, but it is often the nature of social movements that actions of the state have these kinds of unintended consequences. 

Although many in the occupy movement vow to continue their fight against corporate greed, income inequality and the supposed corruption on the United States’ democratic process, it is clear at this point that the initial phase of the occupation movement has come to a close. Throughout the first several weeks of the occupations, the protestors could generally claim the support of public opinion obliging the authorities to operate with some level of restraint towards them. This is no longer the case. While polls continue to show that the population holds tremendous sympathy for the protestors’ goals and grievances, support for the occupations themselves has declined. The sense that the occupiers have overplayed their hand is widespread. Pressure is now being put on the occupiers to find ways to work within the system to voice their grievances. 

While we can’t predict where this movement will go from here, or even if it can survive as an independent social movement outside of the institutions of bourgeois politics, it is appropriate at this juncture for revolutionaries to attempt to make a balance sheet of this movement in order to draw the lessons for the future of the class struggle. What was positive in this movement? Where did it go wrong? What can we expect from here? 

Despite these unanswered questions and the general ambiguity expressed by this movement, we feel that is a manifestation of the desire by certain sectors of the working class, among other social groups, to fight back against the massive attacks the capitalist system is carrying our on its conditions of life. Even if this movement featured much of the same activist dominated politics we have seen since the late-1990s with the anti-globalization movement, it nonetheless appears to have been carried out on a fundamentally different dynamic than these previous movements, one that might contain the seeds for further radicalization, even if these have yet to fully sprout. 

Thus, while we cannot provide a definitive statement on the nature of this movement at this just yet; however, we can attempt to situate it within a class perspective and draw some of the major lessons for the period ahead. 

The International Context

The Occupy Movement in North America constituted a clear link in the chain of protests and social movements that have swept across the far corners of the world over the course of 2011. These movements have overwhelmingly sought to respond to the effects of capitalism’s crisis on the conditions of life of the working class and society in general. From the revolts in the Arab world in the spring, to the outbreak of massive struggles in China, Bangladesh, France, Spain, Israel and Chile, the Occupy Movement was clearly inspired by events that took place far from American shores. Not since the period of the late 1960s/early 1970s, have we witnessed such a broad series of movements across the globe all seeking to respond to the same fundamental provocations: the attack on the population’s working and living conditions resulting from the global recession and the massive austerity attacks unleashed on the social wage in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis and the financial meltdown of 2008. 

All these movements have been characterized by the desire of ever increasing numbers of people to do something in response to the mounting attacks on their living and working conditions, even if there is little clarity as to what needs to be done. The Occupy Movement is an important manifestation of this international trend within the “belly of the beast” itself. Like the massive movement in Wisconsin earlier in the year, the Occupy Movement has refuted the persistent idea that the North American working class is totally integrated with capitalism or unwilling and unable to resist its attacks. However, whereas the events in Wisconsin took place within one state, the Occupy Movement has spread to hundreds of cities across the continent and even the world beyond. Moreover, while the Wisconsin protests were very quickly recuperated by the unions and the Democratic Party, the Occupy protestors have been keen to assert their autonomy, believing that meaningful change can only flow from a “new type” of movement. They have shown a very healthy distrust of official parties and programs, demonstrating their increasing suspicion that the official parties only exist to co-opt their struggles. 

Like the movements in other parts of globe, the Occupy protests have been characterized by the influx of new generations of workers, many of whom have little experience in politics and carry few preconceived ideas about how to organize a struggle. What unites these participants is an almost precognitive desire to come together with others and feel the experience of active solidarity and community made real—to pose an alternative to the existing society through the lived experience of making the struggle. Undoubtedly, these desires are fueled above all by the increasing sense of social alienation in the face of capitalist decomposition, as well as the tremendous difficulty the younger generations have in gaining admittance to the labor process itself. The absence of the experience of collective labor and the accompanying sense of isolation, atomization and despair is today propelling more and more workers—particularly the young and those who have been kicked out of the production process—to seek solidarity through the struggle. Also present in these struggles are people from other social strata: all sorts of people deeply frustrated and worried about the direction of society. However, in North America, these protests have been dominated by the younger generations of workers and those most deeply affected by the crisis of long-term unemployment. 

Of course, this does not mean that the Occupy Movement itself—in particular the tactic of occupying specific geographic spaces—represents the form that the class struggle will take in the future. On the contrary, this movement—like all of its sister movements across the globe—have been marked by fundamental weaknesses, which it will be necessary for the working-class to transcend if it is to go forward. We can conclude that the Occupy Movement represents an important attempt by sections of the proletariat to respond to capitalism’s aggressive attacks on its conditions of life, even if it does not represent a direct model for future struggles. 

The Importance of the General Assemblies

One of the most important features of the Occupy Movement has been the emergence of general assemblies (GAs) as the sovereign organ of the struggle. The rediscovery of the GA as the form best capable of ensuring the broadest participation and the widest exchange of ideas has marked a tremendous advance for the class struggle in the current period. In the Occupy Movement, the GAs appear to have been adopted from prior struggles—particularly that of the indignados in Spain—demonstrating that in this period there is a tendency to learn from struggles in other parts of the world in quick succession and adopt the most effective tactics and forms. The speed with which the GAs have spread across the globe this past year has indeed been quite impressive. 

Like the GAs elsewhere, in the Occupy Movement the GAs were open to everyone, encouraging all concerned to participate in shaping the movements direction and goals. The GAs operated on an ostensible policy of openness. Minutes were circulated. A clear desire was expressed that the GAs remain distinct from any party, group or organization that may seek to usurp their autonomy. The GAs thus represented an incipient realization that the existing parties and institutions—even the parties of the left and the unions—could not be relied upon to run the struggle on behalf of the masses. On the contrary, the protestors themselves would remain sovereign; they alone could determine how to go forward. 

Nevertheless, despite these very positive features, the experience of the GAs in the Occupy movement was marked by a profound weaknesses not seen to the same extent elsewhere. From the start, the Occupy Movement framed itself as an occupation of a piece of geographic space. While OWS may have initially set out to occupy the financial district of New York City itself, or set up a symbolic place of protest on Wall Street, once it became clear that the state would not tolerate this, the protestors turned to occupying a nearby park, almost by default. (1)  At the foot of the mountain, but not quite the mountain itself, the model was thus set for the movement in other cities, which overwhelmingly took the form of an encampment in a city park. While there is some precedent for this kind of occupation in US history, (i.e. the Bonus Army’s occupation of fallow land in Washington, DC to protest the living conditions of World War One veterans during the Great Depression); the decision to define itself as a movement occupying a specific geographic location constituted a profound weakness that contributed to the Occupy Movement’s isolation.

Rather quickly—particularly in New York—the Occupy Movement became dominated by a sentiment that it had to defend the park that had become the movement’s home and in fact had come to serve as a kind of community for many of the individual protestors. Undoubtedly, the positive sense of solidarity that many of the protestors felt as participants in a movement for change contributed to a tendency to define the limits of the movement as the park’s boundaries and to seek to defend those boundaries against attack by the state or dilution from mainstream politics. 

However, this tended towards the production of a tension in the Occupy Movement, between, on the one hand a movement for broad social change and on the other a new experiment in communal living. From a temporary encampment made as a result of tactical necessity, Zuccotti Park tended to be seen by the occupiers as a new kind of “home” within capitalist society. Rumors of imminent police repression only reinforced the desire to “defend the park.” While the occupiers made occasional forays outside the park to protest the banks or demonstrate in bourgeois neighborhoods, the longer the movement persisted, the more the tendency to try to constitute a kernel of an alternative way of life in the park predominated. No real attempt was ever made to carry the struggle to the broader working-class beyond the boundaries of the park. 

By contrast, this fetish on occupying a specific geographic space did not characterize the movements in Spain, Israel and the Middle East. In contrast, the public squares were seen more as a meeting point where protestors could come together for a specific purpose, discuss, hold rallies and decide tactics. The desire to hold onto public spaces with permanent encampments has been a peculiarly North American feature of the recent movements, one that demands further examination. 

However, perhaps even more damaging than the fetish for occupation, the GAs in the Occupy Movement were ultimately unable to fulfill their function of unifying the protestors, as over the course of the struggle they were transformed from decision making bodies of the struggle to increasingly passive objects of activists and professional leftists—mainly through the activities of the working groups and committees. Rather than constituting the organ of the most widespread debate, the GAs omnipresent fear of working out concrete demands—because they were seen as divisive and polarizing rather than unifying—rendered them powerless in the face of the need to take concrete decisions in the heat of the moment. 

Democratic Illusions And The Trauma of the Past

One feature of the Occupy Movement that has been common to most of the protest movements we have seen over the past year has been the preponderance of tremendous illusions in “democracy” as an alternative to the present system. In one form or another, the sentiment that some kind of authentic democracy can serve as an effective corrective to, or buffer against, the worst forms of oppression and suffering that the population is experiencing has emerged in Egypt, Spain, Israel and elsewhere. 

In the Occupy Movement, these ideas were expressed with a typically American flavor. For the most part, this took the form of an underlying assumption that the problems facing the world could all be traced back to the domination of economic and political life by a parasitic clique of financiers, bankers and large corporations who put their own immediate financial interests above that of society as a whole. In the United States, this phenomenon is said to have corrupted the U.S. democratic process, such that corporations are effectively able to dictate policy to Congress and the President through their control of campaign funds. 

Thus, the Occupy Movement has tended to pose the solution to oppression and suffering as the revitalization of democracy against corporate greed and financial speculation. While the precise definition of “democracy” may differ from protestor to protestor—some may be content with an amendment banning corporate campaign contributions, while others have a more radical definition of self-government in mind, the underlying sense is nevertheless that “democracy” is somehow opposed to economic oppression and exploitation. 

Moreover, while many protestors are now willing to say that “capitalism” is either part of or at the root of the world’s economic problems, there is no consensus on what “capitalism” actually is. For many, capitalism simply equates to the banks and big corporations. The Marxist understanding that capitalism is a mode of production associated with an entire epoch of human history characterized by the exploitation of wage labor is only broached on the margins of this movement. As such, while many protestors recognize that Marx had something important to say about capitalism’s problems, there is little clarity about the relevance of Marxism and the workers’ movement for their project of building a new world today. These hesitations have also been seen in other movements around the world, constituting a limitation that is vital for future movements to transcend. 

If these illusions in democracy remained at the ideological level, we could justly write them off to the immaturity of the movement, as an expression of an opening phase in the class struggle, which the working class would transcend in the light of experience. This may ultimately prove to be the case, but for now the Occupy Movement has turned its view of the nature of democracy into a fetish that came to serve as a fundamental barrier to its ability to move forward. In addition, it provided the basis for precisely what the movement did not to happen in the first place: its co-optation by pro-democracy, reformist ideology in the context of the approaching Presidential election campaign of 2012. 

From the beginning, taking the mandate to create a new form of democracy in the course of the struggle seriously, the GAs attempted to function on the basis of a “consensus” model of democracy. In many ways, this was a healthy response designed to ensure the widest possible participation and to make sure nobody felt excluded from the decisions taken by the GAs. Undoubtedly this model was adopted as a response to the bad experiences of previous movements dominated by professional activists and political organizations, in which the average participant was made to feel like little more than a foot solider in a movement led by professionals. 

In this sense, the desire to make sure everyone felt included is perfectly understandable. However, in reality, the insistence on operating on a consensus model prevented the movement from moving beyond its limitations by blocking the necessary confrontation of ideas and perspectives that would allow the movement to break out of its isolation in the park. In the absence of being able to take any real decisions, to respond to the immediate needs of the movement—by neglecting to develop an executive organ—the GAs very quickly fell under the influence of the various working groups and committees, many of them dominated by the very professional activists they originally feared. In a way, the insistence on making every decision based on consensus ensured that no real decisions could be made and that the various “parts” (working groups, committees, etc.) would begin to substitute themselves for the “whole” (the GA). Thus, the GAs’ fear of exclusion allowed substitutionism to creep in through the back door—a situation that ultimately led to numerous distortions of the GAs’ sovereignty. 

The a priori insistence on consensus based functioning was also evident in the very difficult question of the raising of concrete demands. From the beginning, the Occupy Movement seemed proud of its refusal to specify precise demands or formulate a program. This is an understandable concern for those who wish to avoid being recuperated into the same old reformist politics offered up by the state, but as the fate of the Occupy Movement shows, reformism cannot be blocked by refusing to put forward demands. The movement has been characterized by an extreme heterogeneity of demands. The most radical vision for a total recreation of society on egalitarian terms co-exists with totally reformist demands that remain within the purview of bourgeois legalism, such as the passage of a constitutional amendment to end “corporate personhood.” In the name of excluding no one, the Occupy Movement has been unable to advance and thus unable to fulfill its ultimate goal of transforming society. 

With such a plethora of often-contradictory demands circulating, and with the movement consciously refusing to specify which demands would define it, the movement thus allowed others to step-in and speak for it. Unsurprisingly, the Occupy Movement was very quickly adopted by bourgeois celebrities, left-wing politicians and union officials who wasted no time stepping in and declaring themselves the movement’s voice. By refusing to specify demands, the movement ensured that it would characterized in the media—and thus in front of the rest of the working class—by only those demands that fit the immediate agenda of this or that faction of the bourgeois political apparatus. 

The refusal to take up the question of demands, the avoidance of the trauma of “exclusion,” served to prevent the movement from figuring out how to move forward. With no ability to undertake a real process of clarification, the Occupy Movement was unable to determine to which social force it should turn to. It was thus doomed to turn inwards on itself in an ultimately fruitless attempt to defend the “communities of consensus” they thought they had built in the parks. 

Without question the Occupy Movement’s focus on consensus functioning was a response to the trauma of previous movements and represented, on some levels, a healthy instinct to try to transcend leftist and bourgeois modes of functioning. However, beyond this, the insistence on consensus represented the fundamental penetration of democratic ideology into the functioning of the GAs itself. Thus, the Occupy Movement—and indeed most of the social movements we have seen recently—are characterized by more than mere ideological illusions in the bourgeois democratic state; on the contrary the insistence on democratic functioning have completely distorted the unitary forms of struggle that are merging in response to capitalism’s attacks.

The traumas of the past—of which Stalinism and leftism are paramount—have created a fetish for attempting to create a new kind of democratic-consensus functioning that can avoid exclusion, confrontation and hurt feelings. While this may be understandable on one level, ultimately it comes to function as a roadblock to the development of a real alternative to the present system. In the end, the consensus model proved totally illusory as the GAs’ ultimate inability to live up to the tasks of the moment allowed the committees and working-groups to ultimately assert their hegemony. 

One of the most important lessons of the Occupy Movement therefore is that future movements must take up the question of how to develop a competent executive organ that remains responsible to the GAs: A real decision making body that operates with an immediately revocable mandate from the GAs. Such an organ is necessary if the movement is to make decisions in the heat of the struggle and forge solidarity, trust and unity among all participants. As this movement shows, the development of a real executive organ cannot be avoided if the movement wants to advance beyond a very elementary stage. How can tactical decisions be made in the heat of the struggle? How can the GAs maintain their sovereignty over whatever committees and organs will be necessary? These are the vital questions that must be taken-up. 

Of course, it is also true that an executive organ cannot be proclaimed ex nihilio. An executive organ that does rest on the basis of the widest discussion and the broadest exchange of ideas between all participants would be at best a total farce and at worst another avenue for substitutions to creep in through the back door. An executive organ can only function as a concretization of the vitality of the GAs—it cannot substitute itself for them. Therefore, while the failure to take up the question of an executive function may have been a key factor in the Occupy Movement’s ultimate demise—this does not mean that an executive organ declared in a purely voluntarist fashion by the most active elements in the struggle would have saved it. 

More than anything, what was missing from this movement was a real desire to discuss the roots of the crisis itself. Rather than attempt to engage in what has become an inevitable discussion about the nature of society’s troubles, the Occupy Movement focused instead on a fetish around the mode of decision making itself. Bogging down in process, the movement never broached the fundamental substantive questions: Are the banks to blame for society’s impasse or are their shenanigans a mere symptom of a wider failure of the economic system itself? Can we make meaningful change by prodding the state to act in society’s interests or must we think about ways to transcend the state? While it was possible to find participants on both sides of these questions (and a few more to boot!), the movement never figured out to go about deciding which positions were “right.” Under the guise of “all positions are welcome here,” the Occupy Movement never moved beyond a simplistic faith in its own ability to point the way forward by the example of a new form of consensus living. 

The Need to Extend the Struggle

One aspect of the Occupy Movement that figured prominently in its ultimate failure was its inability to effectively extend the struggle beyond the various encampment sites. Many factors figured into the movement’s ultimate isolation: the tendency for the occupiers to see the encampment sites as a community, the tendency for the various parks to be seen as fortresses of liberated space that must be defended, etc. However, the most important factor has been the inability of the movement to effectively link up with the broader struggle of the working class to defend its living and working conditions faced with capitalism’s aggressive attacks. 

Outside of the controversial general strike in Oakland that shut down the city’s port operations for a day, the Occupy Movement has been unable to inspire a broader response by the working class to capitalism’s attacks against it. (2)

For the most part, the working class at the point of production remains disoriented in the face of capitalism’s broad offensive against its conditions of life and has been unable to launch a mass struggle to defend itself. Outside of a few scattered union-controlled strikes, the broader working class remains largely absent from the struggle at the moment. 

On some level, this should not be surprising. The current crisis and the present stepping up of the assault on the working-class is coming after over 30 years of open attacks on the working-class’s living and working conditions and the very basis of class solidarity itself. Moreover, the current attacks are remarkably brutal in their ferocity at both the level of the point of production and the social wage. In addition to this, the ongoing political crisis of the U.S. bourgeoisie must be factored in to any analysis of the working class’s apparent passivity. The insurgent right wing’s aggressive attacks on the union apparatus, as well as the increasingly bizarre rhetoric emerging from the Tea Party have undoubtedly had a disorienting effect on working class consciousness. Under these conditions, many workers remain on the level of seeking to protect what they still have through the existing institutions of the unions and the Democratic Party. Others have become so disoriented that they sympathize with whatever politician sounds the angriest—even if he/she happened to be from the Tea Party. 

Nevertheless, despite the difficulties and barriers it faces to recovering class identity and the working-class terrain of the struggle, the broader working-class has not been totally silent. The examples of the mobilizations in Wisconsin earlier this year, are evidence that we have entered a phase—opened up by the New York City Transit Strike in 2005/2006—where the tendency will be towards increasing class confrontations—towards the recovery of solidarity and a will to resist the paralysis instilled by capitalism’s attacks. If the trauma of the escalation of the attacks in the wake of the financial meltdown of 2008 and the current political chaos of the U.S. ruling class are currently weighing heavily on the working class and dampening its militancy, a memory of these struggles still brews on the subterranean level. 

However, while public opinion polls have consistently shown a high level of sympathy for the Occupy protestors throughout the populace, this has not translated into any effective mass action. There were of course instances in which this prospect was raised. Mostly, this occurred around the issue of police repression. In New York, Oakland and elsewhere, each time the state appeared to go too far in its repression of the protestors, a massive outrage in public opinion forced the state into restraint. However, while the New York unions were obliged on several occasions to call the workers out to show sympathy with the protestors in the face of imminent repression, only in Oakland did police repression evoke a broader response from the working class. 

It is not surprising then, that the Occupy protests have done little to slow down the attacks against the working class, which just keep coming. American Airlines’ bankruptcy petition, the ongoing lock-outs at American Crystal Sugar and Cooper Tire and the massive austerity planned at the U.S. Post Office are just some examples that show the bourgeoisie has not been cowed by the Occupy Movement to lessen its attacks on the working class. Clearly, the tactic of occupying parks on the edge of financial districts has not proven effective in fighting back against capitalism attacks. Rather than camping out on the fringes of Wall Street, Bay Street and other financial centers, would the protestors have been more effective if they would have taken their efforts to working class districts, showing the workers—still too disoriented to struggle—that they were not alone? 

We cannot say for certain, but clearly, a serious conversation about tactics has become necessary for all those seeking to struggle against the current degradation of human life represented by capitalism’s ongoing assault on society. Unfortunately, for the Occupy Movement, it’s a priori fetish for consensus, its almost principled desire to refrain from tactical discussions and its privileging of pluralism above concrete action; have prevented it so far from effectively taking up these questions. Above all, in the face of state repression, it has not been able to effectively ponder the questions, “To whom do we turn for support?” and “Where do we go if we can no longer live in the park?” Unable to consider these questions deeper, the Occupy Movement has for now turned back in on itself and faces an uncertain future. 

From our perspective, even if the Occupy Movement represents a very important first step by a portion of the working class most affected by capitalism’s crisis, it is clear that going forward will require a fundamental reconsideration of the goals of the struggle and the method for carrying it out. Above all, there is a need to reexamine the attachment to consensus functioning, which appears to us to ensue from the traumatic wounds emanating from the negative experiences of past movements. How can a social movement advance in a way that avoids the pitfalls of the past, but which allows it to function in a truly effective way in the heat of the struggle? How can a social movement committed to the idea that another world is possible remain true to this goal, but still have the tactical fortitude to confront the bourgeois state?  These are all important questions, which revolutionaries and all those committed to a different world will need to consider in the period ahead. 

--Internationalism

12/05/2011

Notes:

(1) A similar chain of events occurred in Toronto, where plans were made for protestors to meet in the heart of the city’s Bay Street district, only to later move to a small park on the outskirts of downtown. The Toronto Police Department—still reeling in the court of public opinion over their aggressive crackdown on G20 protestors the previous year—were more than willing to allow the occupiers to take over the park. 

(2)  See our article, “Oakland: Occupy Movement Seeks Links With the Working Class [1]”

ICC Introduction

The comrades who have written the statements below, instead of being locked up in their sector as usually happens with struggles dominated by the unions, have launched a struggle open to all workers without distinction of sector or situation: in short, a united struggle.

And, in the second place, instead of the struggle being led by a minority of organising and negotiating “professionals” – again, as in the union way of thinking- they have made the centre of decision-making an Open Assembly held in a square, offering a public space where workers from other sectors can unite with their demands, bring their initiatives, and discuss together the measures to be taken.

Confronted with a situation of generalised social cuts, defaults and arrears in the payment of wages, of rampant unemployment, where no government or union can put forward any solutions - in fact, they are part of the problem- the only solution can lie in the united mobilisations organised by assemblies of all workers, of the oppressed and exploited. We do not have any illusions; we know that this road is difficult, that we will make many errors, suffer from traps and repression. But it is the only road that can take us forwards! The other way - having confidence in governments, in elections and the unions - offers no “road” apart from that leading into a bottomless pit.

WE ARE MOBILISING FOR THE DEFENSE OF OUR JOBS AND THE CONTINUATION OF “THE SOCIAL/SOCIAL CARE” (centres and services paid for by public funds but with private or third sector management)

To “Social care” workers, to all workers,

In our sector cuts, defaults, closures, the worsening of working conditions,... are increasing: as they are for all workers. Rare is the centre or services that is not threatened by closure or cuts, or is already closed.

Over recent weeks comrades from several firms in this sector have spontaneously got in contact with us asking “what to do”. In response we have invited them to the next meeting of the Platform[1]. Given that this interest has been growing we have decided to call an OPEN ASSEMBLY with the intention of testing the situation and assessing the possibility of a united struggle against the cuts in order to maintain jobs and services (the services that are most necessary for those most in need).

We know that it is difficult to envisage such a struggle but we take hope from the unprecedented situation in which we are living, and above all from the demands from various areas “to do something”. We believe that it is possible to try and mobilise ourselves and a good number of our comrades; and with a large movement we could face up to the attacks that we are suffering. We understand that this appears illusory and utopian, but we think that it is illusory and utopian to think that something or someone, other than ourselves is going to “save” us.

We invite everyone to participate and to spread this invitation:

Wednesday 9th November at 18.00 in the Plaza de la Montaneta (Alicante)

Workers’ Open Assembly

Against the cuts, unemployment, the closure of social services and the worsening of working conditions

Unite in order to struggle for ourselves

Plataforma de Trabajadores de AFEMA

(an Independent and assemblyist collective)

This call, though centered on our sector, is open to all workers and those who are interested, because we think that we are all the same and that solidarity is essential.

Alicante 10th November 2011

COMMUNIQUE TO THE COMRADES CONCENTRATED IN VALENCIA

Dear comrades, we are mainly workers and users of the “social” sector, education and health, (although there are also comrades of other sectors), and we are mobilised and organised through open assemblies against the attacks, which we have been suffering for some time.

We know about the mobilisations of the comrades of Parque Alcosa in Valencia and we are in profound solidarity with them, since we know they are trying to do the same as we are and that we have the same interests.

Yesterday at our first assembly we called for a gathering/demonstation and open assembly for Wednesday the 16th November, against the cuts, unemployment, precarious working conditions and the closure or worsening of services in the social sector. We also want to make you aware of this call in order that on the same day you could also have a gathering and assembly in Valencia (we do know not anyone in Castellon but if you do, it would be great if they could participate). We believe that a joint call would be more effective and visible.

We think that this would be the beginning of a future cooperation and coordination that could bring about unified actions faced with the outrages of the Generalitat Valencia.

We await your response and please accept our cordial greetings.

Workers’ Open Assembly (Alicante)

We invite you to a gathering and after an Assembly next Wednesday 16th November in the Plaza de la Montaneta (Alicante) at 18.00 and would ask you to make this as widely known as possible!!

Attached is the agenda, thanks!!!

AGAINST CUTS AND NON-PAYMENTS BY THE GENERALITAT VALENCIANA IN THE “SOCIAL” SECTOR, EDUCATION AND HEALTH

NO TO LAY-OFFS

NO TO SERVICE CLOSURES

WORKERS AND SERVICE USERS’ OPEN ASSEMBLY

WE PROPOSE FORCEFUL AND COORDINATED ACTIONS TO AVOID THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SOCIAL SERVICES AND THE WORSENING OF THE CARE IN EDUCATION AND HEALTH

WEDNESDAY 16TH NOVEMBER AT 1800 IN THE PLAZA DE LA MONTANETA (ALICANTE)

WORKERS’ OPEN ASSEMBLY OF VALENCIA

[email protected] [3]

The announcement is open to users, to families and workers from other sectors of workers, faced with trying to stop the economic policies that are daily worsening the living conditions and basic rights of everybody.

The proposed agenda for the Workers’ Open Assembly of Alicante 16th November:

Manifesto of the assembly of workers, users and other sectors of workers. To evaluate the outline drawn up by the responsible work group.

1. Mailing of the protest to the Generalitat. To evaluate the outline drawn up by the responsible work group.

2. Proposal to create a commission against unemployment and the closure of services. To evaluate the proposal.

3. Actions against the Generalitat.

4. Coordination with the comrades of Valencia and Castellon, preliminary information on the tasks carried out.

5. Organisation of work, the possible creation of a work commission.

6. Next assembly (a calendar of the next assemblies) and the name of the assembly (the name used so far has been provisional).

If a comrade or workers’ collective wishes to propose another point, please let us know:

[email protected] [4]

Today those involved in the riots that arose in several cities across England between 6th and 9th of August continue to appear before the courts, with many given exemplary sentences that far exceed those usually handed down for the particular offence. They are being punished for their participation in a riot as much if not more than for any crime they committed.

In the immediate aftermath of the riots a discussion developed within the revolutionary movement about the class nature and dynamic of the riots. Left communist organisations and anarchist groups, such as Solfed, saw the riots as arising from the nature and contradictions of capitalist society but criticised the attacks on other workers, whether directly or as the result of setting fire to shops above which workers are living. Others saw the riots as an attack on the commodity and on capitalist relations of production. Some have drawn a distinction between these riots and those of the 1980s, arguing that the latter were more clearly against the forces oppressing and attacking the working class, in particular the police. The following article attempts to contribute to this discussion by looking at the relationship between the riots and the class struggle by placing them in the framework of the nature and evolution of the class struggle. The first part, published here, considers the question in the context of the history of the workers’ movement and the general nature of the class struggle. The second part will look more specifically at the summer riots in the UK.

The relationship between riots and the class struggle

Those who side with the working class cannot accept the language and framework given by the bourgeoisie. The confrontation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie inevitably involves the working class appropriating goods and property from the bourgeoisie and confronting its forces of control, at times with violence, whether this be the food riots of the 18th century, the struggles to organise and win wage increases in the 19th or to overthrow capitalism of the early 20th. For the bourgeoisie anything that threatens its rule and that imposes on the sanctity of property is rioting, looting, criminal and immoral and calls forth a desire for revenge that leads to repression, incarceration and at times massacres. Thus when the ruling class talks of “riots” we should not be too quick to follow them.

Nor should we be too ready to dismiss any action as that of the lumpenproletariat. While the Communist Manifesto analysis of “the dangerous class” which “may…be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution” but whose conditions of life “prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue” correctly describes a process that has existed throughout capitalism, and which may be increasing under present circumstances, it is also clear that this is not an immutable category.

Those who side with the working class must judge any event by the extent to which it advances or retards the struggle of the working class to end its exploitation. This is above all a historical perspective; immediate gains may not always translate into long term acquisitions. Thus evaluating any particular event means understanding its impact on the working class’ weapons of struggle: its organisation and its consciousness.

Marx and Engels outline the dynamic and unity of these two aspects in the Manifesto of the Communist Party. On the one they hand they describe the development the unions (the form that the mass organisations of the working class took at that time) and the struggles they engaged in and comment: “Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of battle lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers”. On the other, they describe how “The bourgeoisie itself…supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education” before going on to argue that the communists are “practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others…theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march…” Organisation and consciousness; consciousness and organisation; these are the mutually reinforcing qualities of the working class, the fruit of its historical and international being and struggle. They are not identical and arise and manifest themselves in different, but related, rhythms. Elements can and do come to the proletariat from other classes and contribute to its development, but the origin, dynamic and strength of that development arises from within the working class.

In considering the general question of how the working class struggles and the specific question of the place that riots have in that struggle, there are two aspects to the critique the workers’ movement makes: theoretical analysis and practice.

Theoretical analysis

In the Condition of the Working Class in England published in German in 1845 Engels set out the position in which capitalism places every worker (regardless of gender despite the language of the following quotes): “…the working man is made to feel at every moment that the bourgeoisie treats him as a chattel, as its property, and for this reason, if for no other, he must come forward as its enemy…in our present society he can save his manhood only in hatred and rebellion against the bourgeoisie”. He then sketched an outline of the development of the revolt of the working class: “the earliest, crudest, and least fruitful form of this rebellion was that of crime. The working-man lived in poverty and want, and saw that others were better off than he. It was not clear to his mind why he, who did more for society than the rich idler, should be the one to suffer under these conditions. Want conquered his inherited respect for the sacredness of property, and he stole…The workers soon realised that crime did not help matters. The criminal could protest against the existing order of society only singly, as one individual; the whole might of society was brought to bear upon each criminal, and crushed him with its immense superiority.” The working class moved on to oppose the machines that excluded some and dominated others and then to develop unions, first in secret and then openly, to defend their interests by keeping wages up as much as possible and preventing the bourgeoisie from dividing the class with differing rates of pay for the same work

In this analysis Engels made clear that the working class had both to challenge bourgeois legality and be ready to use force when necessary. He gives an example of a strike by brickmakers in Manchester in 1843 when the size of the bricks produced was increased without any increase in wages. When the owners posted armed guards “the brick-yard…was stormed at ten o’clock one night by a crowd of brickmakers, who advanced in military order, the first ranks armed with guns” and the workers succeeded in their purpose of destroying the newly produced bricks. More generally, he comments that “the working-men do not respect the law, but simply submit to its power when they cannot change it” and gives the example of the attacks on the police that he states take every week in Manchester.

However, neither Marx nor Engels saw violence and law-breaking as revolutionary in themselves and were ready to criticise actions that went against the development of the class struggle, even when they appeared spectacular and confrontational. Thus in 1886 Engels strongly attacked the activity of the Social Democratic Federation in organising a demonstration of the unemployed which, while going through Pall Mall and other rich parts of London on the way to Hyde Park, descended into attacks on shops and looting of wine shops. Engels argued that few workers took part, that most of those involved “were out for a lark and in some cases were already half seas over” and that the unemployed who participated “were mostly of the kind who do not wish to work – barrow-boys, idlers, police spies and rogues”. The absence of the police was “so conspicuous that it was not only we who believed it to have been intentional”. Whatever one might think of some of Engels’ language his essential criticism that “These socialist gents [ie the leaders of the SDF] are determined to conjure up overnight a movement which, here as elsewhere, necessarily calls for years of work” is valid. Revolution is not the product of spectacle, manipulation, (deleted: ‘violence’) or looting.

The practice of the working class

For all the theoretical critique developed by leading figures within the workers’ movement, the most eloquent critique was that which flowed from the actual practice of the working class. In the history of the class struggle, the question facing the working class was not simply whether any particular moment was violent and “riotous” or not but the extent to which it took place on a working class terrain and was controlled by the working class. Amongst the many instances of unrest, riot and insurrection that took place in the last decades of the 18th and the first of 19th it is possible to distinguish between those where “the mob” was manipulated by the bourgeoisie and those where the emerging working class struggled to defend itself and to survive. 

Amongst the former, were various incidents intended to stir up religious antipathy, whether it be against Catholics or dissenters and also ‘popular’ political movements, such as that led by Wilkes in the later 18th century. An example of the first are the Gordon Riots of 1780 which began with marches to the House of Commons in protest at concessions given to Catholics and led on to attacks on Catholic churches and the property of rich Catholics and was only stopped when the mob turned its attention to the Bank of England. This loss of control highlights one of the dangers facing the bourgeoisie in its efforts to use the mob: it may slip out of its control. This is illustrated in the movement led by Wilkes, which was essentially a struggle between different factions of the ruling class, when the movement created to back his campaign began to merge with industrial action, and revolutionary slogans were raised.

Amongst the latter, can be seen the food riots that took place in many parts of Britain, which were often characterised by the seizing of food from merchants and its forced sale at a lower price. These movements could be very organised, lasting several days without violence, with the merchants being given the money that the people deemed to be a “fair price”. The latter also included the Luddite movement that took place at various times in the Midlands and north of England and which sought to protect the wages and working conditions of the working class in the face of rapid industrialisation and the reorganisation of patterns of life and work. The movement was characterised as much by its organisation and popular support as by the machine breaking popularly associated with it. The bourgeoisie responded with a mix of force and concessions. At its height in 1812 more than 12,000 troops were deployed between Leicester and York and the total value of the property destroyed has been estimated at £100,000 at contemporary prices. 

In The Condition of the Working Class in England Engels traced the development of unions and above all of Chartism that flowed from these first efforts of the working class. For Engels Chartism was “the compact form of the opposition to the bourgeoisie”; “In the Unions and turnouts opposition always remained isolated, it was single working-men or sections who fought a single bourgeois. If the fight became general, this was scarcely by the intention of the working-men…but in Chartism it is the whole working class which arises against the bourgeoisie…” Chartism may have been the first political organisation of the working class and it may have struggled for goals such as universal suffrage that were later given as reforms to contain the struggle, but in its time its struggle was revolutionary and in that struggle it was ready to use violence when necessary. The general strike and armed insurrection were discussed and found expression in the Newport rising of 1839 and the general strike of 1842.

Throughout its history working class struggles have been faced with the necessity to use violence at times. The liberals and pacifists who denounce violence never see that ‘ordinary’, ‘peaceful’ life under capitalism is a continual act of violence against the exploited. This is not to praise violence in itself but to recognise that it is an unavoidable part of the class struggle. In his history of the class struggle in the US Louis Adamic shows how the particularly brutal exploitation and repression meted out by the bosses in the US sometimes prompted an equally forceful response.

We can return to Britain to look at the particular example of the Tonypandy riot of November 1910. This was part of the wider Cambrian Combine dispute and arose after the miners were locked out by the mine owners who alleged that they were deliberately working slowly. Other mines came out in support and 12,000 miners took part, closing nearly all the mines in the area. The bourgeoisie responded by sending in police and troops with violent confrontations resulting between the police and the workers. The riots broke out when workers attempted to stop strike-breakers from entering one of the mines to keep the pumps working, leading to hand to hand fighting between the workers and the police. By midnight, after repeated baton charges by the police, the workers were forced back into the centre of Tonypandy where they faced further attacks by the police. During the early hours of the morning shops were smashed and some were looted. The police were not present during the period of looting and it was used by the bourgeoisie as a pretext to call for military intervention. Many workers were injured and one killed as a result of the clashes. The wider dispute prompted reflection amongst miners in the South Wales Miners’ Federation and contributed to the development of a current that challenged the leadership of the Federation and advanced syndicalist ideas in the pamphlet The miners’ next step, published in Tonypandy in 1912.

Time and again the essential question is not how violent a struggle is – whether one uses that as a measure of its proletarian or non-proletarian nature - but the context in which it took place and its dynamic. Thus alongside the history of struggles that advanced the interests of the working class there is another strand of actions that did the opposite and took the working class off its terrain. To give a few examples:

-           In the summer of 1919, ‘race riots’ broke out in Liverpool and Cardiff following the discharge of black and white sailors. Trade unions that later became the National Union of Seamen complained about black sailors being given jobs when whites were unemployed, and in May 1919 five thousand unemployed white ex-servicemen complained to the Mayor of Liverpool about black workers competing with whites for jobs. In June black ex-serviceman and their families and homes were attacked. In Liverpool crowds of two to ten thousand people attacked black people on the streets and in Cardiff Arab and black areas were targeted and three people were killed with many more injured.

-           In May 1974 the Ulster Workers Council organised a general strike of Protestant workers in opposition to supposed concessions to catholic workers. The strike was controlled by loyalist political and paramilitary organisations and while there is some evidence that workers were reluctant to participate, it successfully divided the working class. 

The assault on the heavens

The critique made by the working class is at its most eloquent when it challenges the power of the bourgeoisie and begins to assert the human society it carries within it against the inhuman regime of the bourgeoisie as it did in the Paris Commune of 1871, in the revolution of 1905 in Russia and in the revolutionary wave initiated in Russia.

The basic question of these movements was not so much the direct appropriation of property but the question of power, expressed in the struggle against the bourgeoisie and for the reorganisation of society.

This lies at the heart of the analysis of the Paris Commune made by Marx in The civil war in France, issued by the International Working Men’s Association in 1871. He emphasises the Commune’s opposition to the organisation of the state, expressed in its first measure that suppressed the standing army and replaced it with the National Guard. Under the conditions of siege in which it existed the Commune could but indicate the direction of the social reconstruction it aspired to “The great social measure of the Commune was its own working existence. Its special measures could but betoken the tendency of a government of the people by the people. Such were the abolition of the nightwork of journeymen bakers; the prohibition, under penalty, of the employers’ practice to reduce wages by levying upon their workpeople fines under manifold pretexts… Another measure of this class was the surrender, to associations of workmen… of all closed workshops and factories…” The elected members of the Commune - the majority of whom were working men - and its administrators were all paid average worker’s wages. The church was disestablished and education made available to all: “the priests were sent back to the recesses of private life… the whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of Church and State. Thus not only was education made accessible to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it.” (p.71). Attempts by the French government to starve the Commune failed and a regular supply of food was maintained.

The revolution of 1905 saw the appearance of strike committees across large parts of Russia to control the struggle in individual factories and their development, by coming together and becoming permanent elected bodies, into soviets. In short, a movement from the immediate economic struggle to the more general struggle and its fusion with the political struggle for power. Questions of immediate survival were addressed within this wider context: thus workers fired during strikes at the Putilov works “established relief measures, among which were four soup kitchens” The centre of the revolution, the St Petersburg Soviet became involved in the organisation of daily life, including preventing censorship of the press by the state and giving instructions to the railways and post office. In Moscow, the soviet issued directives “regulating the water supply, keeping essential stores open [and] postponing rent payments for workers…”

In 1917, this situation was repeated and then went further as the working class took power from the bourgeoisie: “in many cases the collapse of the central government and local bureaucracies turned these instruments of revolution into governmental bodies that intervened in and arrogated to themselves administrative functions.” When the disruption of revolution led to food shortages in urban areas “local soviets independently adopted stringent measures of alleviation. In Nizhni Novgorod, for example, exportation of bread was curtailed; in Krasnoyarsk, the soviet introduced ration cards; in other places ‘bourgeois’ homes were searched and goods confiscated.” In The history of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky wrote “In the Urals, where Bolshevism had prevailed since 1905, the soviets frequently administered civil and criminal law; created their own militia in numerous factories, paying them out of factory funds; organised workers’ controls of raw materials and fuel for the factories; supervised marketing; and determined wage scales. In some areas in the Urals the soviets expropriated land for communal cultivation.”

Even in struggles less dramatic than those already mentioned the methods of the working class come to the fore. Thus, during the first days of the mass strike in Poland in 1980 representatives from the striking factories came together to form the Inter-Factory Committee (MKS in Polish), which “controlled the entire region and resolved transportation and food distribution problems.” 

Thus, we can draw a number conclusions about struggles that take place on a class terrain, whether it be a single strike or a revolutionary movement. Firstly, violence is not an end in itself nor a simple expression of frustration, but a means by which the working class takes and defends power in order to change the world. Secondly, when commodities are appropriated this is done above all as a means of maintaining the collective struggle and it is the use value of the commodity that dominates rather than its exchange value. Thirdly, they are marked by and strengthen collective action and solidarity. The perspective of the such struggle is always towards the future, towards the transformation of society. 

North 11/11

A second part of this article on the riots that took place in August will follow.