|
Post by mundo is online on Jul 16, 2004 13:59:11 GMT -5
I remember a particularly enlightening thread at the 2changetheworld website discussion was the one that dug ito the line differences between the then recently-defunct STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement) and the RCP. It was during this exchange that I started to become acutely aware of the need for thorough, rigorous materialist analysis and the dangers of the kind of eclecticism that brought STORM to an end, despite their best efforts and intentions. The person who presented STORM's line in the "2change" discussions was a person who went by the handle "Fellow Traveller". He mentioned at that time that STORM was in the process of writing up a summation of the development of its line and practice from beginning to end. That summation is now public. chicago.indymedia.org/usermedia/application/7/STORMSummation.pdf I thought people here would be interested. Unfortunately it's not in html.
|
|
|
Post by XiaoDi on Jul 18, 2004 13:52:12 GMT -5
Thanks a lot for alerting us to this.
While I don’t agree with all their conclusions and assumptions, there’s much in the document that’s worth getting into and learning from. I think it’s really great that STORM took the responsibility and time to seriously think through things and publicly present their analysis in such a warts and all approach.
As a rather tangential note, here’s a story which relates to the ongoing discussion in AWIP about leaders: I was in SF during the time that RAW was active. [For those who haven’t read the document, RAW was a radical organization made up of youth of color which became the nucleus of STORM]. I saw them in action and thought they were a kick-ass group of people. They were particularly active in mobilizing people around the Rodent King stuff. After a huge and illegal mass arrest of protesters & days of systematic police brutality, RAW called for a speak-out at a park. Hundreds of people risked arrest and more brutality to come - and people were totally pissed off. Many spoke of how they had never really been that radical but after the last couple days of complete injustice and police state bullshit, they were ready to completely tear shit up.
After a while, it was proposed that we move to a local community center to have a mass meeting. RAW facilitated the meeting from the stage of an auditorium. I don’t remember much of the specifics but the atmosphere was intense. Lots of passion & righteous anger, and a deep feeling that shit needed to be fundamentally changed. A friend of mine who had been involved in revolutionary work in the Bay Area since the 60’s said it was the most intense political event he’d been to in 20 years. There was a feeling of tremendous potential in the air.
Eventually, the RAW youth began making some proposals, seeking a way to build upon what people were feeling and the intense energy. I don’t remember the specifics but my take on it at the time was that they were trying to keep things from dissipating, to develop some cohesiveness and organization so things could be taken to the next level. After a bit of back and forth and some progress, a group of folks starting chanting at the RAW folks - “No leaders! No leaders!” - drowning them out and keeping them from speaking. When RAW started to try to get a discussion going again, the chanting came back. This kept repeating and, along with some other petty individualistic bullshit shouted out by other people, eventually the RAW youth got frustrated. They basically said ‘fuck it, everybody just go home and do whatever it is you were doing.”
I recognized some of the folks doing the chanting and, besides being white and mainly middle-class, they were also in fact leaders, even if informally, of various groups. So their problem wasn’t really about having leaders, it was about them (and more broadly, their ideas and their class content) not being the leaders. & the thing is, RAW weren’t really setting themselves up as the leadership in any real way, they were just trying to facilitate the creation of something radical. With them shouted down and nothing new created, the chanters went back to their groups and resumed their de facto leadership roles in the movement. They’re probably still there.
Putting aside all the other aspects of revolutionary leadership for right now which other folks have addressed on AWIP, this experience with the shouting down of RAW reflects something I’ve found to be pretty depressingly typical. Most times, the people who most vehemently demand “no leaders” are in fact playing a leadership role, either within their group or the community as a whole. What they basically want is themselves and their ideas playing the leading role, and not anybody else’s. & they also don’t want to have take responsibility for their leadership, to have it be accountable, so they avoid any serious discussion of leadership, whether through insipid chanting or whatever.
Aside how fucked it is to have revolutionary youth of color shouted down by a bunch of white (mostly middle-class) reformists and revisionists, what happened that evening was something that every revolutionary should abhor - a missed opportunity. There was the potential there, more so than any other time in 20 years in the Bay Area, to take things much higher and to make a substantial advance, to create a greater and higher unity among radical & revolutionary minded people. & it was pissed away b/c some people couldn’t see past their opportunism, individualism and dogmatism. It wasn’t an historic, revolutionary opportunity but it still sucked that it was missed.
As long as there are contradictions, particularly class contradictions, there will be leadership. It’s still a question of whose leadership, which class, what line. Is it a leadership that serves the oppressed and the proletariat, that can bring about revolution and put us on the road to communism, or is it a leadership that serves other classes and aims for something else? Any dogmatic insistence on ‘no leaders’ does nothing to change this and only prevents serious discussion. And as long as that position is allowed to be dominant, any future opportunities will also be thrown away.
|
|
|
Post by redstar2000 on Jul 18, 2004 20:35:02 GMT -5
XiaoDi wrote: Eventually, the RAW youth began making some proposals, seeking a way to build upon what people were feeling and the intense energy. I don’t remember the specifics but my take on it at the time was that they were trying to keep things from dissipating, to develop some cohesiveness and organization so things could be taken to the next level. After a bit of back and forth and some progress, a group of folks starting chanting at the RAW folks - "No leaders! No leaders!" - drowning them out and keeping them from speaking. When RAW started to try to get a discussion going again, the chanting came back. This kept repeating and, along with some other petty individualistic bullshit shouted out by other people, eventually the RAW youth got frustrated. They basically said "fuck it, everybody just go home and do whatever it is you were doing."
An interesting anecdote.
XiaoDi wrote: I recognized some of the folks doing the chanting and, besides being white and mainly middle-class, they were also in fact leaders, even if informally, of various groups. So their problem wasn’t really about having leaders, it was about them (and more broadly, their ideas and their class content) not being the leaders. & the thing is, RAW weren’t really setting themselves up as the leadership in any real way, they were just trying to facilitate the creation of something radical. With them shouted down and nothing new created, the chanters went back to their groups and resumed their de facto leadership roles in the movement. They’re probably still there.
Quite plausible...although some of those "no leaders" chanters might well have been expressing their real political convictions.
Perhaps they thought it "suspicious" that RAW was "in the front of the room".
XiaoDi wrote: Putting aside all the other aspects of revolutionary leadership for right now which other folks have addressed on AWIP, this experience with the shouting down of RAW reflects something I’ve found to be pretty depressingly typical. Most times, the people who most vehemently demand "no leaders" are in fact playing a leadership role, either within their group or the community as a whole. What they basically want is themselves and their ideas playing the leading role, and not anybody else’s.
There's no political idea of any kind that cannot be used -- or misused -- in an opportunistic fashion.
On the other hand, if someone objects to hierarchy as a matter of principle, then yes, they want their ideas to "lead the struggle" without being part of an institutional hierarchy themselves.
XiaoDi wrote: Aside how fucked it is to have revolutionary youth of color shouted down by a bunch of white (mostly middle-class) reformists and revisionists...
Are you really sure about that? No people of color were also shouting "no leaders"? And all the white folks were "mostly middle class" and "reformists" or "revisionists"? How did you determine this in a group of "several hundred" people? I know you said you recognized a few of them, but still...?
XiaoDi wrote: ...what happened that evening was something that every revolutionary should abhor - a missed opportunity...it was pissed away b/c some people couldn’t see past their opportunism, individualism and dogmatism.
Perhaps..."what ifs" and "if onlys" are always difficult. There's really no way to objectively verify such things.
But you make a grave error if you assume that "opportunism, individualism, and dogmatism" are at the root of the struggle against elitism in the revolutionary movement.
There are real political principles involved here. And far from being limited to "small groups" of "white, middle-class intellectuals"...they are much more wide-spread than you think. Were you aware, for example, that an anarchist people of color group has been recently formed?
XiaoDi wrote: As long as there are contradictions, particularly class contradictions, there will be leadership.
Once again, that's a self-serving hypothesis...put forward to "justify" your ambitions. If it turns out that there will not be "leadership" -- in the Leninist-Maoist sense that you are using the word -- what does that leave for you to do?
XiaoDi wrote: Any dogmatic insistence on ‘no leaders’ does nothing to change this and only prevents serious discussion.
I think we've had a great deal of "serious discussion" on this board and I look forward to more.
You can label the egalitarian position "dogmatic" if you wish...that will not diminish its appeal.
XiaoDi wrote: And as long as that position is allowed to be dominant, any future opportunities will also be thrown away.
Gee, I thought I was supposed to be "the great pessimist" on this board.
|
|
|
Post by kasama on Jul 26, 2004 19:57:32 GMT -5
XiaoDi wrote: "As long as there are contradictions, particularly class contradictions, there will be leadership. It’s still a question of whose leadership, which class, what line. Is it a leadership that serves the oppressed and the proletariat, that can bring about revolution and put us on the road to communism, or is it a leadership that serves other classes and aims for something else? Any dogmatic insistence on ‘no leaders’ does nothing to change this and only prevents serious discussion. And as long as that position is allowed to be dominant, any future opportunities will also be thrown away. "
Redstar wrote: "Gee, I thought I was supposed to be "the great pessimist" on this board."
Xiaodi's remark is not "pessimism" but political reality.
And it is why we need to fight for a far broader and deeper understanding of the importance of vanguard leadership.
We need to "make it an issue" -- not just by asserting it, but by really digging in (in a living, dynamic and convincing way) into what vanguard leadership is, what makes it necessary, how its contradictoriness needs to be deal with etc.
It is truly a cardinal question. (I.e. one of those issues that people NEED to understand if we are going to have a chance to "do the dog.")
On the issue of Storm:
I think STORM is a great negative example. They tried to gather a revolutoinary pole, without fighting for a clear revolutinary ideology and program. They chose to tail all kinds of backward ideas (or "coexist" with them), and they has a powerful line of "build the movement now, deal with other questions later." Etc.
If you read their summation, it jumps out how superficial and pragmatic it is. The issues of "how do we get to the new society" are never (ever!) serously addressed. It remains unclear if they were for socialism or what?
And then they flew apart, and liquidated (not surprisingly) -- and their "summation" just makes it clear that the authors "still don't get it." And would repeat the same errors again.
|
|
|
Post by repeater on Jul 28, 2004 17:40:20 GMT -5
Is there anywhere else to find this document? I can't download it for some reason.
|
|
|
Post by MundoQueGanar on Jul 28, 2004 22:01:10 GMT -5
Is there anywhere else to find this document? I can't download it for some reason. You could try googling it--but yeah it's a bummer that it's only in .pdf format. Can't copy and paste .pdfs.
|
|
|
Post by redstar2000 on Aug 3, 2004 12:32:06 GMT -5
I finally got to read the document myself -- it seemed to take almost ten minutes to download!
Some things that kind of "jumped out" at me...
1. They were never a very large group...yet they seemed to attempt to participate/lead in a large number of struggles...it's hard to see how "trying to do so much" could be very productive.
2. Burn-out seemed to take a drastic toll on their numbers...eating away at their potential strength and growth over the whole period of their existence. I've seen that happen in other groups myself...I think it's crucial that serious revolutionaries "set a pace that you can maintain year-in and year-out" for the long haul. Driving yourself to exhaustion will just make you another casualty.
3. The inter-personal dynamics (especially romantic entanglements) seem to be especially destructive in small "intense" groups...though I never witnessed anything quite as dramatic as what the people in STORM evidently experienced.
4. And, I agree, their "line" seemed to be a very fuzzy one...not necessarily inappropriate for a mass organization but most unsuitable for a "cadre" organization.
5. "We're not the vanguard but we often acted like we were" -- because, I suspect, in the backs of their minds they actually did think they were, "sort of". I don't think you can have it "both ways" -- if you're not going to build a Leninist party then you really can't entertain that kind of conception in your practical work. If there's a contradiction there, people will notice.
6. It also seemed as if they wanted "leadership" but "not too much" -- another rather treacherous tightrope to walk. If the "crucial importance of leadership" is central to your understanding of the revolutionary process, then "you buy the package". (In STORM's case, a self-selected "core" leadership collective.) At this point in history, people who are at all knowledgeable about the left know what that word means and what it implies...it means that you expect, sooner or later, to "run the show" and you expect people to approve of that and follow you.
I imagine that whenever a STORM member touched on the subject of "revolutionary democracy", there was a good deal of smirking and eye-rolling in the audience.
Especially from ex-members of STORM and their friends...the left in the Bay Area is very "gossipy".
7. Finally, it struck me that STORM had no grasp of how to tell the difference between resistance and reformism. Their document reads as if they jumped into almost anything that "got people excited" -- even trivia like the dispute over KPFA. And even when they did get involved in something significant -- like the campaign against the draconian Proposition 21 -- they did nothing to prepare either themselves or their allies or the people in general with the possible outcome of the referendum or the limits of bourgeois elections in principle. No wonder they suffered acrimonious criticism from their allies and more burnout among themselves.
With all that, however, I cannot but grant them a grudging degree of admiration; in a very grim period for the left, they "raised the flag".
That's nothing to be ashamed of. #nosmileys
|
|
flyby
Revolutionary
Posts: 243
|
Post by flyby on Aug 3, 2004 17:28:11 GMT -5
rs wrote: "With all that, however, I cannot but grant them a grudging degree of admiration; in a very grim period for the left, they "raised the flag". That's nothing to be ashamed of."
Well that depends.
They raised a very very confused flag (of tailing nationalism, reformism, revisionism and identity politics) and did so in rather conscious and open OPPOSITION to the red flag.
They developed (more or less, sooner or later, openly or secretly) as a project of forces like the Committees of Correspondence -- and like the COC found themselves liquidating in a fit of disorientation.
|
|
|
Post by redstar2000 on Aug 4, 2004 9:22:54 GMT -5
flyby wrote: They raised a very very confused flag (of tailing nationalism, reformism, revisionism and identity politics) and did so in rather conscious and open OPPOSITION to the red flag.
Does that mean they gave the RCP a "hard time" in the Bay Area left?
There was a remark in the document that went something like "groups opportunistically selling newspapers at our events" -- was that you they were talking about?
Also, they seem to suggest that they didn't "tail nationalism enough"...I think it was worded along the lines of "being insensitive to the concerns of nationalists".
But all that is trivial; as I remarked to RosaRL, the "meat" of the matter is "identity politics" and American-style "Bundism" -- which is clearly different in many ways from the original.
STORM was one attempt to deal with that "can of worms" and I think many of their difficulties could possibly be traced to that.
But what "other" ideas are "out there"? Who has come up with a "formula" that "works" for the U.S.?
It's a mess!
|
|
|
Post by RosaRL on Aug 5, 2004 14:41:39 GMT -5
RS2000 wrote: "But all that is trivial; as I remarked to RosaRL, the "meat" of the matter is "identity politics" and American-style "Bundism" -- which is clearly different in many ways from the original."
If that is the case -- that the "meat" of the matter is "identity politics" and American-style "Bundism" - regardless of the differences from the 'original', then the flag they were raising is not the Red Flag but some other flag! And it is a very confused flag- is it not?
It is as Flyby said - "They raised a very very confused flag (of tailing nationalism, reformism, revisionism and identity politics) and did so in rather conscious and open OPPOSITION to the red flag."
Further, Its not an issue of giving someone 'a hard time,' its an issue of what line was being carried out and if that line is or is not a Communist one.
|
|
Burningman
Revolutionary
"where it is by proxy it is not"
Posts: 194
|
Post by Burningman on Aug 5, 2004 16:08:00 GMT -5
|
|
Burningman
Revolutionary
"where it is by proxy it is not"
Posts: 194
|
Post by Burningman on Aug 5, 2004 16:10:05 GMT -5
I posted comments to 2changetheworld.info under the name "fellow traveler."
|
|
|
Post by RosaRL on Aug 5, 2004 16:41:20 GMT -5
Welcome and nice to see you here. I posted over at 2change as well.. I posted as 'RosaRL' over there
|
|
Burningman
Revolutionary
"where it is by proxy it is not"
Posts: 194
|
Post by Burningman on Aug 5, 2004 16:50:32 GMT -5
I kind of figured.
|
|
|
Post by redstar2000 on Aug 5, 2004 21:14:34 GMT -5
RosaRL wrote: If that is the case -- that the "meat" of the matter is "identity politics" and American-style "Bundism" - regardless of the differences from the 'original', then the flag they were raising is not the Red Flag but some other flag! And it is a very confused flag- is it not?
I have to disagree...at least if the information in the summary was reasonably accurate. Confused they certainly were...but I don't see how you can argue that they were not (at least in their own minds) "raising a red flag".
They were certainly perceived as a militant and even revolutionary current in the left in the San Francisco Bay Area, were they not? And how much was actually going on there in the 1990s? (Hint: it wasn't a "good period".)
I can certainly understand why you are critical of them...though a more thorough critique would not go amiss.
But I sense a "dismissive" attitude on your part which seems to me to be unwarranted.
Why did their version of "Bundism" come to grief?
Is there a version of "Bundism" that would work in the U.S.?
And if not, why not?
The RCP does use the phrase "national minorities", right? So why shouldn't these "nations" (or "nations-in-formation") have their own "revolutionary parties"?
(I couldn't help but notice that the ex-STORM people have now switched from "people of color" to "third world peoples"...what idea is that supposed to communicate?)
What strikes me is that no ethnic/cultural minority in the United States has ever approached the level of nationalist consciousness found in Quebec or even Puerto Rico. That's why "Bundism" seems irrelevant to me.
But if you think these minorities are or might become "nations", then why shouldn't they be "Bundist"?
|
|