From the South Side ARA blog:
Annual South Side ARA Zine #3 (Mid 2011- April 2012)
Download readable version here
Download printable PDF here
"This is South Side ARA's 3rd annual zine. This zine, just like the ones before it, is filled with intel on local fascists, action reportbacks and analysis. It represents a written documentation of the work we have done, supported, or have taken interest in from mid-2011 to April of 2012.
"It's important that we recognize fascism as a component (or opponent) in the class struggle; it is a force that may influence the disenfranchised and those with potentially insurgent desires. They use populist, resurgent and nationalist politics in their attempts to sway people toward a world based on discipline, control, hierarchy and order. Those who reject the illusionary appeal of mainstream politics and capitalist wage slavery are the same people that we need in order to truly challenge capitalism and the state, towards a world based on freedom, creativity, and the fulfillment of our desires - reclaiming control of our lives and all the possibilities therein.
"This zine is an attempt to not only document ARA's work, but to push others to analyze and understand fascism as a complex social movement, as well as think about the relevance of militant anti-fascism: an area of work less likely to be bogged down in reformist and liberal doctrine, being firmly rooted in practice as well as theory.
"We're fighting for a free society and a world without racists – and we intend to win."
[Full disclosure: In this zine, the South Side ARA folks have reprinted some of my writings: two recent pieces about the Occupy movement and an older piece about fascist ideology.]
Monday, May 07, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Palestinian activists' statement denounces Gilad Atzmon's racism and antisemitism
Twenty-three Palestinian activists and organizers have signed a public statement titled
"Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon." The signers "call for the disavowal of Atzmon by fellow Palestinian organizers, as well as Palestine solidarity activists, and allies of the Palestinian people, and note the dangers of supporting Atzmon’s political work and writings and providing any platforms for their dissemination. We do so as Palestinian organizers and activists, working across continents, campaigns, and ideological positions."
Here is another excerpt from the statement:
As countless Palestinian activists and organizers, their parties, associations and campaigns, have attested throughout the last century, our struggle was never, and will never be, with Jews, or Judaism, no matter how much Zionism insists that our enemies are the Jews. Rather, our struggle is with Zionism, a modern European settler colonial movement, similar to movements in many other parts of the world that aim to displace indigenous people and build new European societies on their lands.
We reaffirm that there is no room in this historic and foundational analysis of our struggle for any attacks on our Jewish allies, Jews, or Judaism; nor denying the Holocaust; nor allying in any way shape or form with any conspiracy theories, far-right, orientalist, and racist arguments, associations and entities. Challenging Zionism, including the illegitimate power of institutions that support the oppression of Palestinians, and the illegitimate use of Jewish identities to protect and legitimize oppression, must never become an attack on Jewish identities, nor the demeaning and denial of Jewish histories in all their diversity.
Indeed, we regard any attempt to link and adopt antisemitic or racist language, even if it is within a self-described anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist politics, as reaffirming and legitimizing Zionism. In addition to its immorality, this language obscures the fundamental role of imperialism and colonialism in destroying our homeland, expelling its people, and sustaining the systems and ideologies of oppression, apartheid and occupation. It leaves one squarely outside true solidarity with Palestine and its people.
read more at
http://uspcn.org/2012/03/13/granting-no-quarter-a-call-for-the-disavowal-of-the-racism-and-antisemitism-of-gilad-atzmon/
"Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon." The signers "call for the disavowal of Atzmon by fellow Palestinian organizers, as well as Palestine solidarity activists, and allies of the Palestinian people, and note the dangers of supporting Atzmon’s political work and writings and providing any platforms for their dissemination. We do so as Palestinian organizers and activists, working across continents, campaigns, and ideological positions."
Here is another excerpt from the statement:
As countless Palestinian activists and organizers, their parties, associations and campaigns, have attested throughout the last century, our struggle was never, and will never be, with Jews, or Judaism, no matter how much Zionism insists that our enemies are the Jews. Rather, our struggle is with Zionism, a modern European settler colonial movement, similar to movements in many other parts of the world that aim to displace indigenous people and build new European societies on their lands.
We reaffirm that there is no room in this historic and foundational analysis of our struggle for any attacks on our Jewish allies, Jews, or Judaism; nor denying the Holocaust; nor allying in any way shape or form with any conspiracy theories, far-right, orientalist, and racist arguments, associations and entities. Challenging Zionism, including the illegitimate power of institutions that support the oppression of Palestinians, and the illegitimate use of Jewish identities to protect and legitimize oppression, must never become an attack on Jewish identities, nor the demeaning and denial of Jewish histories in all their diversity.
Indeed, we regard any attempt to link and adopt antisemitic or racist language, even if it is within a self-described anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist politics, as reaffirming and legitimizing Zionism. In addition to its immorality, this language obscures the fundamental role of imperialism and colonialism in destroying our homeland, expelling its people, and sustaining the systems and ideologies of oppression, apartheid and occupation. It leaves one squarely outside true solidarity with Palestine and its people.
read more at
http://uspcn.org/2012/03/13/granting-no-quarter-a-call-for-the-disavowal-of-the-racism-and-antisemitism-of-gilad-atzmon/
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Not Quite “Ordinary Human Beings”—Anti-Imperialism and the anti-humanist rhetoric of Gilad Atzmon
[This statement has been moved to a separate page on the Three Way Fight website at http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/p/atzmon-critique_09.html.]
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Between Pro-Fascism and Left-Populism: Reading Loren Goldner on the Bolivian MNR
I recently read Loren Goldner's 2011 article on Bolivia's Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) and I think it has a lot to offer for ThreeWayFight readers. The title is a mouthful: "Anti-Capitalism or Anti-Imperialism? Interwar Authoritarian and Fascist Sources of a Reactionary Ideology: The Case of the Bolivian MNR." Since the article is over 27,000 words (plus footnotes), I will try to summarize some of its main points here, but I encourage people to read the original. (The article appeared in Insurgent Notes #3 but is available in more readable format as a PDF from Goldner's website, Break Their Haughty Power. All page numbers below refer to the PDF version.)
1. The MNR was formed in 1941/42 and took power in the 1952 Revolution. Although few North Americans remember that event today, it was one of the most important political upheavals in 20th century Latin American history. The armed working class dissolved the army and installed a new MNR government, which quickly nationalized the holdings of the big tin producers (Bolivia's main export), established universal suffrage, broke up big land holdings, and abolished peonage labor in the countryside. But as Goldner shows, the MNR was founded by Nazi sympathizers and was originally an antisemitic, pro-Axis party. Its path from there to the 1952 Revolution was "a prime example of the recycling of proto-fascist and fascist ideologies of the interwar period in 'progressive' and 'anti-imperialist' form after 1945" (12).
2. The MNR didn't simply move from the right to the left -- it combined fascistic and left-populist politics in ways that shifted and changed. Its 1942 program, written when Hitler's power was at its height, denounced "the maneuvers of Judaism" as "anti-national" and called for an "absolute prohibition of Jewish immigration, as well as any other immigration not having productive efficacy." Yet that same year MNR head Víctor Paz Estenssoro strongly supported the Catavi miners' strike and condemned a government massacre of miners and their families. By the early 1950s, the MNR had long abandoned its anti-Jewish language and pro-Axis stance, largely due to U.S. pressure. But a 1953 book by one of the party's leading intellectuals, Carlos Montenegro, offered a vision of all "national" classes unified against the "foreign" elite, in terms that borrowed directly from Oswald Spengler's racial theory.
3. Goldner (who is a friend) has long been critical of populist anti-imperialism and of leftists who embrace it. He writes here, "contrary to what contemporary complacent leftist opinion in the West thinks, there is a largely forgotten history of reactionary populist and 'anti-imperialist' movements in the underdeveloped world that do not shrink from mobilizing the working class to achieve their goals. This little-remembered background is all the more important for understanding the dynamics of the left-populist governments which have emerged in Latin America since the 1990's" (1-2).
4. The Great Depression and rise of radical workers movements spurred many Latin American ruling classes to remake their political systems, away from traditional oligarchic regimes based on classical liberalism and limited suffrage, toward various forms of state-corporatism based on mass politics. Cardenas's Mexico, Peron's Argentina, and Vargas's Brazil are all examples of this. (Corporatism refers to a formalized system of "social partnership" between representatives of different classes and economic sectors that is sanctioned or imposed by the state.)
5. The MNR emerged from a broader Bolivian nationalist-populist current that advocated a cross-class alliance of all true Bolivians against foreign influence and control. This current blended influences from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Primo de Rivera's dictatorship in Spain, and Italian and German fascism. In a context where "democracy" was identified with brutal capitalist rule and subservience to Angle-American imperialism, many middle-class Bolivians – including left-leaning ones – liked the idea of an anti-liberal alternative that emphasized national unity and strength. The fact that one of Bolivia's three major tin barons, Mauricio Hochschild, was Jewish meant that populist anti-elitism could easily be channeled into Jew hatred.
6. Germany's influence on Bolivian populism was especially strong. In Bolivia as in much of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, many members of the local elite admired Germany as a model of national development that challenged the dominant imperialist powers economically, militarily, and culturally. Goldner traces Bolivian populist nationalism back to the writer and politician Franz Tamayo (1878-1956), who developed a paternalistic celebration of indigenous Bolivian culture -- based on German romantic race theory. In the decades before World War II, many Bolivian students studied at German universities and often absorbed German rightist ideas. Right-wing German officers also came to Bolivia as military advisers – most notably Ernst Roehm, founder and leader of Hitler's stormtroopers, who served in Bolivia from 1928 to 1930 and briefly joined the Bolivian General Staff.
7. Bolivia's traumatic defeat in the Chaco War against Paraguay (1932-1935), like Germany's defeat in World War I, created a protracted crisis that fueled the growth of fascist-influenced political forces. These included Razon de Patria (RADEPA), a secret organization formed by junior army officers released from Paraguayan POW camps, and the newspaper La Calle, founded in 1936, which "became an organ for German fascist propaganda and virulent anti-Semitism" (43) and included several future leaders and intellectuals of the MNR.
8. Between 1936 and 1952, control of Bolivia's government shifted back and forth between populist nationalists and traditional forces representing the mine owners (known as "La Rosca"). David Toro and German Busch's "military socialism" (1936-1939) borrowed elements from Italian fascism (such as "a corporate type of regime in parliament, mandatory worker savings plans, a social security system, and state-subsidized food stores" [42]) and was friendly with Nazi Germany. So was the government of Gualberto Villarroel (1943-1946), which included RADEPA and the MNR, until Washington forced Villarroel to declare war on the Axis and fire MNR cabinet members in mid 1944. Yet these pro-Axis governments also endorsed labor unionization and took at least formal steps to address indigenous rights and problems facing peasants. During the years when the pro-U.S. forces of La Rosca were in control, repression against workers and peasants was much harsher.
9. During the 1940s, Bolivia's main Stalinist party, the Party of the Revolutionary Left (PIR), developed a close alliance with the mine owners under the banner of anti-fascist unity – to the point where PIR militants took part in murderous repression of workers. Partly for this reason, Bolivia was one of the few countries in the world where Trotskyism (centered in the Revolutionary Workers Party, or POR) became the dominant current in the working class. The head of the mineworkers' federation, Juan Lechin, developed close ties with both the POR and the MNR in the 1940s, and held an important cabinet post in the 1952 revolutionary government. Goldner argues that both Lechin and the POR provided far-left cover to the MNR during the 1952 Revolution, restraining the working class from more radical action and enabling the MNR to consolidate a new state apparatus. (The MNR responded with large-scale arrests of POR members within two years.)
10. The 1952 Revolution modernized Bolivian capitalism but did not transform social relations for the mass of Bolivians in any fundamental way. The workers and peasants who took up arms to bring about change ended up disempowered by new bureaucratic structures, such as the new government-owned mining corporation, COMIBOL. The United States could not use a military coup to overthrow the MNR because the army had disintegrated, so instead it pumped in lots of aid, and the new government willingly let itself be co-opted. Within a few years, the Bolivian revolution's radical momentum – and any larger threat to U.S. power in the region – had been neutralized.
11. The MNR transformed itself from an openly racist, pro-fascist organization to a left-nationalist party that received substantial U.S. aid. But, Goldner argues, its core ideology and program did not change. Before and after, it promoted an "irreducible, anti-universalist 'Bolivianness,' counterposed to everything 'foreign'" (78), in order to rally all classes behind its project to modernize the capitalist nation-state. The leftists who hoped to push it in a more radical, socialist direction fell into a mistake that "has been employed again and again, from Bolivia under the MNR to Algeria under the FLN to Mitterand's France to the Iranian mullahs after 1979. The far-left groups in question see themselves in the role of Lenin's Bolsheviks to Kerensky's Provisional Government, when in fact their role is to enlist some of the more radical elements in supporting or tolerating an alien project which sooner or later co-opts or, even worse, represses and sometimes annihilates them" (99).
This account of the MNR highlights the continuities between fascism and other forms of populism. It belies simplistic conceptions of the political spectrum where fascism, imperialism, and ruling-class repression are lumped together on the right; while working-class militancy, anti-imperialism, and popular movements converge neatly on the left.
The early MNR (in both its pro-Axis phase and during the 1952 Revolution) shared with classical fascism a belief that national unity transcended all other loyalties, and that the nation must be reborn out of a deep crisis by purging "foreign" influences. Like fascism, the MNR spoke to real popular grievances, offering a twisted anti-elitism that defined the oppressors not as an integral part of the existing social order but as an alien intrusion. This could include scapegoating Jews (as in the original MNR program) but did not require it. Like fascists (despite standard leftist claims to the contrary), the MNR challenged direct capitalist control of the state and advanced policies that clashed with big business's immediate interests, yet remained committed to an exploitative economic system.
On the other hand, the early MNR's close relationship with organized labor and progressive measures such as land reform set it apart from classical fascism. Above all the MNR apparently did not share classical fascism's drive to establish a totalitarian state, in which all spheres of society would be forcibly subordinated to one ideological vision. In this sense, the MNR's challenge to the established social order was much more limited than fascism's.
Goldner's portrayal of the MNR fits with the idea of fascism as one of various strategies for modernizing capitalist nation-states. This is a useful piece of the picture to explore, although fascism is never just this, and arguably has the potential to break with capitalism more fundamentally.
1. The MNR was formed in 1941/42 and took power in the 1952 Revolution. Although few North Americans remember that event today, it was one of the most important political upheavals in 20th century Latin American history. The armed working class dissolved the army and installed a new MNR government, which quickly nationalized the holdings of the big tin producers (Bolivia's main export), established universal suffrage, broke up big land holdings, and abolished peonage labor in the countryside. But as Goldner shows, the MNR was founded by Nazi sympathizers and was originally an antisemitic, pro-Axis party. Its path from there to the 1952 Revolution was "a prime example of the recycling of proto-fascist and fascist ideologies of the interwar period in 'progressive' and 'anti-imperialist' form after 1945" (12).
2. The MNR didn't simply move from the right to the left -- it combined fascistic and left-populist politics in ways that shifted and changed. Its 1942 program, written when Hitler's power was at its height, denounced "the maneuvers of Judaism" as "anti-national" and called for an "absolute prohibition of Jewish immigration, as well as any other immigration not having productive efficacy." Yet that same year MNR head Víctor Paz Estenssoro strongly supported the Catavi miners' strike and condemned a government massacre of miners and their families. By the early 1950s, the MNR had long abandoned its anti-Jewish language and pro-Axis stance, largely due to U.S. pressure. But a 1953 book by one of the party's leading intellectuals, Carlos Montenegro, offered a vision of all "national" classes unified against the "foreign" elite, in terms that borrowed directly from Oswald Spengler's racial theory.
3. Goldner (who is a friend) has long been critical of populist anti-imperialism and of leftists who embrace it. He writes here, "contrary to what contemporary complacent leftist opinion in the West thinks, there is a largely forgotten history of reactionary populist and 'anti-imperialist' movements in the underdeveloped world that do not shrink from mobilizing the working class to achieve their goals. This little-remembered background is all the more important for understanding the dynamics of the left-populist governments which have emerged in Latin America since the 1990's" (1-2).
4. The Great Depression and rise of radical workers movements spurred many Latin American ruling classes to remake their political systems, away from traditional oligarchic regimes based on classical liberalism and limited suffrage, toward various forms of state-corporatism based on mass politics. Cardenas's Mexico, Peron's Argentina, and Vargas's Brazil are all examples of this. (Corporatism refers to a formalized system of "social partnership" between representatives of different classes and economic sectors that is sanctioned or imposed by the state.)
5. The MNR emerged from a broader Bolivian nationalist-populist current that advocated a cross-class alliance of all true Bolivians against foreign influence and control. This current blended influences from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Primo de Rivera's dictatorship in Spain, and Italian and German fascism. In a context where "democracy" was identified with brutal capitalist rule and subservience to Angle-American imperialism, many middle-class Bolivians – including left-leaning ones – liked the idea of an anti-liberal alternative that emphasized national unity and strength. The fact that one of Bolivia's three major tin barons, Mauricio Hochschild, was Jewish meant that populist anti-elitism could easily be channeled into Jew hatred.
6. Germany's influence on Bolivian populism was especially strong. In Bolivia as in much of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, many members of the local elite admired Germany as a model of national development that challenged the dominant imperialist powers economically, militarily, and culturally. Goldner traces Bolivian populist nationalism back to the writer and politician Franz Tamayo (1878-1956), who developed a paternalistic celebration of indigenous Bolivian culture -- based on German romantic race theory. In the decades before World War II, many Bolivian students studied at German universities and often absorbed German rightist ideas. Right-wing German officers also came to Bolivia as military advisers – most notably Ernst Roehm, founder and leader of Hitler's stormtroopers, who served in Bolivia from 1928 to 1930 and briefly joined the Bolivian General Staff.
7. Bolivia's traumatic defeat in the Chaco War against Paraguay (1932-1935), like Germany's defeat in World War I, created a protracted crisis that fueled the growth of fascist-influenced political forces. These included Razon de Patria (RADEPA), a secret organization formed by junior army officers released from Paraguayan POW camps, and the newspaper La Calle, founded in 1936, which "became an organ for German fascist propaganda and virulent anti-Semitism" (43) and included several future leaders and intellectuals of the MNR.
8. Between 1936 and 1952, control of Bolivia's government shifted back and forth between populist nationalists and traditional forces representing the mine owners (known as "La Rosca"). David Toro and German Busch's "military socialism" (1936-1939) borrowed elements from Italian fascism (such as "a corporate type of regime in parliament, mandatory worker savings plans, a social security system, and state-subsidized food stores" [42]) and was friendly with Nazi Germany. So was the government of Gualberto Villarroel (1943-1946), which included RADEPA and the MNR, until Washington forced Villarroel to declare war on the Axis and fire MNR cabinet members in mid 1944. Yet these pro-Axis governments also endorsed labor unionization and took at least formal steps to address indigenous rights and problems facing peasants. During the years when the pro-U.S. forces of La Rosca were in control, repression against workers and peasants was much harsher.
9. During the 1940s, Bolivia's main Stalinist party, the Party of the Revolutionary Left (PIR), developed a close alliance with the mine owners under the banner of anti-fascist unity – to the point where PIR militants took part in murderous repression of workers. Partly for this reason, Bolivia was one of the few countries in the world where Trotskyism (centered in the Revolutionary Workers Party, or POR) became the dominant current in the working class. The head of the mineworkers' federation, Juan Lechin, developed close ties with both the POR and the MNR in the 1940s, and held an important cabinet post in the 1952 revolutionary government. Goldner argues that both Lechin and the POR provided far-left cover to the MNR during the 1952 Revolution, restraining the working class from more radical action and enabling the MNR to consolidate a new state apparatus. (The MNR responded with large-scale arrests of POR members within two years.)
10. The 1952 Revolution modernized Bolivian capitalism but did not transform social relations for the mass of Bolivians in any fundamental way. The workers and peasants who took up arms to bring about change ended up disempowered by new bureaucratic structures, such as the new government-owned mining corporation, COMIBOL. The United States could not use a military coup to overthrow the MNR because the army had disintegrated, so instead it pumped in lots of aid, and the new government willingly let itself be co-opted. Within a few years, the Bolivian revolution's radical momentum – and any larger threat to U.S. power in the region – had been neutralized.
11. The MNR transformed itself from an openly racist, pro-fascist organization to a left-nationalist party that received substantial U.S. aid. But, Goldner argues, its core ideology and program did not change. Before and after, it promoted an "irreducible, anti-universalist 'Bolivianness,' counterposed to everything 'foreign'" (78), in order to rally all classes behind its project to modernize the capitalist nation-state. The leftists who hoped to push it in a more radical, socialist direction fell into a mistake that "has been employed again and again, from Bolivia under the MNR to Algeria under the FLN to Mitterand's France to the Iranian mullahs after 1979. The far-left groups in question see themselves in the role of Lenin's Bolsheviks to Kerensky's Provisional Government, when in fact their role is to enlist some of the more radical elements in supporting or tolerating an alien project which sooner or later co-opts or, even worse, represses and sometimes annihilates them" (99).
* * *
This account of the MNR highlights the continuities between fascism and other forms of populism. It belies simplistic conceptions of the political spectrum where fascism, imperialism, and ruling-class repression are lumped together on the right; while working-class militancy, anti-imperialism, and popular movements converge neatly on the left.
The early MNR (in both its pro-Axis phase and during the 1952 Revolution) shared with classical fascism a belief that national unity transcended all other loyalties, and that the nation must be reborn out of a deep crisis by purging "foreign" influences. Like fascism, the MNR spoke to real popular grievances, offering a twisted anti-elitism that defined the oppressors not as an integral part of the existing social order but as an alien intrusion. This could include scapegoating Jews (as in the original MNR program) but did not require it. Like fascists (despite standard leftist claims to the contrary), the MNR challenged direct capitalist control of the state and advanced policies that clashed with big business's immediate interests, yet remained committed to an exploitative economic system.
On the other hand, the early MNR's close relationship with organized labor and progressive measures such as land reform set it apart from classical fascism. Above all the MNR apparently did not share classical fascism's drive to establish a totalitarian state, in which all spheres of society would be forcibly subordinated to one ideological vision. In this sense, the MNR's challenge to the established social order was much more limited than fascism's.
Goldner's portrayal of the MNR fits with the idea of fascism as one of various strategies for modernizing capitalist nation-states. This is a useful piece of the picture to explore, although fascism is never just this, and arguably has the potential to break with capitalism more fundamentally.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Anti-capitalist perspectives on the Occupy movement
The January issue of Insurgent Notes, an online left-communist journal, is devoted mainly to the Occupy movement, with a lead editorial, reports from Occupy campaigns in six U.S. cities, and an article on "class struggle in the US from the 2008 crash to the eve of the Occupations movement." Here's a quote from the editorial:
"The Occupy movement discovered the remaining central public space as the one place of visibility capable of reaching large numbers of people. 'Making shame more shameful still by making it public' (Marx) was an important part of what OWS and its spinoffs were about, after decades in which so much degradation and rollback had been suffered in atomized silence, buried by the trashy feel-good media and the enforced anonymity of people who suffered increasing job insecurity, the reality or threat of homelessness, ever-more expensive health care or no health care at all, useless diplomas and 'retraining' from dubious fly-by-night educational scams, downsizing, lengthening work weeks and declining real income with two and three precarious jobs, disappearing pensions, skyrocketing school tuitions, arbitrary week-to-week shift changes and scheduling (designed for no other reason than to tire, and demoralize, and fragment any potential workplace solidarity), electronic surveillance, and 'just in time' production methods. Like the Argentine piqueteros who realized the increasing limits of struggle focused on the factory, and expanded it instead to the supermarket, the hospital, the police station and the freeway blockage, OWS discovered a form of militant organization in which a thousand different grievances could be aired and made visible, not least through its often skillful use of new electronic media."
Also check out Hella Occupy!, a pamphlet distributed on December 12th with articles by Occupy activists in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Portland, Oakland, and Seattle. Hella Occupy! was "put together by revolutionaries from across the country. The purpose is to broaden and deepen our analysis of the Occupy Movement, and develop a deeper understanding of its potential beyond any particular city or location."
"The Occupy movement discovered the remaining central public space as the one place of visibility capable of reaching large numbers of people. 'Making shame more shameful still by making it public' (Marx) was an important part of what OWS and its spinoffs were about, after decades in which so much degradation and rollback had been suffered in atomized silence, buried by the trashy feel-good media and the enforced anonymity of people who suffered increasing job insecurity, the reality or threat of homelessness, ever-more expensive health care or no health care at all, useless diplomas and 'retraining' from dubious fly-by-night educational scams, downsizing, lengthening work weeks and declining real income with two and three precarious jobs, disappearing pensions, skyrocketing school tuitions, arbitrary week-to-week shift changes and scheduling (designed for no other reason than to tire, and demoralize, and fragment any potential workplace solidarity), electronic surveillance, and 'just in time' production methods. Like the Argentine piqueteros who realized the increasing limits of struggle focused on the factory, and expanded it instead to the supermarket, the hospital, the police station and the freeway blockage, OWS discovered a form of militant organization in which a thousand different grievances could be aired and made visible, not least through its often skillful use of new electronic media."
Also check out Hella Occupy!, a pamphlet distributed on December 12th with articles by Occupy activists in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Portland, Oakland, and Seattle. Hella Occupy! was "put together by revolutionaries from across the country. The purpose is to broaden and deepen our analysis of the Occupy Movement, and develop a deeper understanding of its potential beyond any particular city or location."
Friday, January 06, 2012
Conservatism studies: on the value and limits of academic history
Not so long ago, respected historians and sociologists promoted the idea that right-wing politics was best understood as a kind of psychological problem: a form of collective irrationality, an expression of despair or a paranoid style, or a product of status anxiety among declining sectors of the middle class. The scholars who developed this view were Cold War liberals who needed a way to delineate their supposedly rational, measured anticommunism from the reckless, irresponsible anticommunism of Senator Joe McCarthy and his fans. (Michael Rogin pointed this out 45 years ago in his book The Intellectuals and McCarthy.) The right-wing-equals-irrational approach is pretty well useless for understanding political movements, but it persists in popular culture, largely because it makes liberalism (and the Democratic Party) look good.
Most academic historians, to their credit, have abandoned psychological theories of the right. This shift got seriously underway in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan's presidency made it clear that the right could no longer be dismissed as a declining or marginal force in U.S. politics. Since then, many valuable historical studies have been published, most of which concentrate on specific movements, locales, organizations, or people. The December 2011 Journal of American History features a helpful overview of much of this scholarship entitled "Conservatism: A State of the Field." (All page references are to this article unless otherwise indicated.) In this essay, Kim Phillips-Fein of NYU assesses academic work on modern U.S. conservatism over the past two decades, citing and commenting on dozens of books and articles, outlining broad trends, and offering suggestions for future work. (Unfortunately, the text of Phillips-Fein's piece -- and roundtable responses by six other historians -- is only available online by subscription to the journal, which excludes most of us outside academia. However, a detailed summary of the whole roundtable is available on the U.S. Intellectual History blog.)
A starting point of reference for Phillips-Fein is 1994, when Alan Brinkley wrote in the American Historical Review that historians had largely ignored conservatism. Since then, Phillips-Fein argues, conservatism has become "one of the most dynamic subfields in American history" (723). Her essay walks us through recent works on conservative intellectual history, the Christian right, women and conservatism, the role of business, regional studies, and the complex relationship between libertarianism and traditionalism. Overturning several older stereotypes, the new scholarship treats conservatism not as marginal but a thriving movement with diverse constituencies, not as a sudden backlash but a mobilization that developed gradually for decades, and not as backward or anti-modern but rooted largely in the suburban upper middle class of the Sunbelt and promoting modern business principles.
Looking forward, Phillips-Fein encourages her colleagues to "move beyond the closely focused studies of movement history that have dominated the scholarship thus far and to reconsider our ideas about the relationship of the Right to the broader trends of American political history" (724). "Instead of seeing a conservative movement springing from the ashes of World War II to counter a powerful liberal state, we might see a long tradition with deep historical roots, revitalized at different points in response to various challenges but nonetheless present throughout the century" (738). At the same time, citing some historians of the 1970s and 1980s, Phillips-Fein questions an overemphasis on conservative power in two ways. First, she argues that the recent conservative movement, "despite its obvious victories, was actually much weaker and less cohesive than historians have generally believed" (739), while liberalism and left activism persisted. Second, she suggests that conservatism's rise to power may largely reflect external factors such as political shifts within liberalism and the Democratic Party, the 1970s economic crisis that brought "a newly aggressive class politics" (740), and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Academia tends to see itself as synonymous with serious scholarship, and Phillips-Fein says up front that her overview excludes "popular works," whether journalistic accounts, books by conservative activists, or "polemical pieces from the Left." While anyone writing a literature review needs to limit its scope to keep things manageable, a historiography of U.S. conservatism is weakened if it omits non-academic treatments such as Susan Faludi's Backlash or Jeff Sharlet's The Family, or, for that matter, the work of conservative activists such as Justin Raimondo and Paul Gottfried. As Martin Durham points out in one of the more interesting roundtable responses to Phillips-Fein, Raimondo's and Gottfried's books challenge the hegemony of foreign policy hawks within the conservative movement (first National Review fusionists, then neoconservatives) and reclaim Old Right traditions of anti-interventionism going back to the America First Committee and the early libertarians. The clash between interventionist and anti-interventionist rightists is crucial for understanding recent U.S. conservatism, but Phillips-Fein never mentions it.
Leftist and liberal activists, meanwhile, have been doing solid research and analysis on all of the topics Phillips-Fein highlights as needing more attention from historians: the conservative movement's relationship with war and nationalism, antifeminism and opposition to gay rights, anti-immigrant nativism, the role of mass media, and the relationship between conservative economics and the politics of race and gender. (The Political Research Associates newsletter alone has covered almost all of these topics in feature articles over the past five years.) Anti-rightist activists have also done detailed work on conservatism's factional divisions, and the complex interplay between conservatism and the far right, which Phillips-Fein touches on only in passing.
Regarding Phillips-Fein's larger questions about the nature of conservatism and its relationship with broader political and social changes, some of the most useful work comes from people who combine academic scholarship with leftist analysis. For example, Phillips-Fein urges historians to explore the "apparent contradiction" between conservatives' stated libertarian values and their actual policies, which "dramatically expanded government in areas such as defense spending and in the war on drugs" (741). This discussion would benefit by revisiting a definition that Sara Diamond offered seventeen years ago: "To be right-wing means to support the state in its capacity as enforcer of order and to oppose the state as distributor of wealth and power downward and more equitably in society" (Roads to Dominion, 9). (A pioneer in studying the modern right, Diamond left the field, and academia, in 1998 because she was unable to find a full-time teaching position.)
Similarly, efforts to place the conservative movement in the context of "some deeper shift in American politics, economics, and culture" (740) would do well to consider Thomas Ferguson's work on the 1970s collapse of the pro-New Deal coalition within the business community (Golden Rule and, with Joel Rogers, Right Turn) and Michael Omi and Howard Winant's explication of the collapse of the "American Dream" during the same period (Racial Formation in the United States). These are just a few examples. The left has a lot more to offer than just polemics.
Most academic historians, to their credit, have abandoned psychological theories of the right. This shift got seriously underway in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan's presidency made it clear that the right could no longer be dismissed as a declining or marginal force in U.S. politics. Since then, many valuable historical studies have been published, most of which concentrate on specific movements, locales, organizations, or people. The December 2011 Journal of American History features a helpful overview of much of this scholarship entitled "Conservatism: A State of the Field." (All page references are to this article unless otherwise indicated.) In this essay, Kim Phillips-Fein of NYU assesses academic work on modern U.S. conservatism over the past two decades, citing and commenting on dozens of books and articles, outlining broad trends, and offering suggestions for future work. (Unfortunately, the text of Phillips-Fein's piece -- and roundtable responses by six other historians -- is only available online by subscription to the journal, which excludes most of us outside academia. However, a detailed summary of the whole roundtable is available on the U.S. Intellectual History blog.)
A starting point of reference for Phillips-Fein is 1994, when Alan Brinkley wrote in the American Historical Review that historians had largely ignored conservatism. Since then, Phillips-Fein argues, conservatism has become "one of the most dynamic subfields in American history" (723). Her essay walks us through recent works on conservative intellectual history, the Christian right, women and conservatism, the role of business, regional studies, and the complex relationship between libertarianism and traditionalism. Overturning several older stereotypes, the new scholarship treats conservatism not as marginal but a thriving movement with diverse constituencies, not as a sudden backlash but a mobilization that developed gradually for decades, and not as backward or anti-modern but rooted largely in the suburban upper middle class of the Sunbelt and promoting modern business principles.
Looking forward, Phillips-Fein encourages her colleagues to "move beyond the closely focused studies of movement history that have dominated the scholarship thus far and to reconsider our ideas about the relationship of the Right to the broader trends of American political history" (724). "Instead of seeing a conservative movement springing from the ashes of World War II to counter a powerful liberal state, we might see a long tradition with deep historical roots, revitalized at different points in response to various challenges but nonetheless present throughout the century" (738). At the same time, citing some historians of the 1970s and 1980s, Phillips-Fein questions an overemphasis on conservative power in two ways. First, she argues that the recent conservative movement, "despite its obvious victories, was actually much weaker and less cohesive than historians have generally believed" (739), while liberalism and left activism persisted. Second, she suggests that conservatism's rise to power may largely reflect external factors such as political shifts within liberalism and the Democratic Party, the 1970s economic crisis that brought "a newly aggressive class politics" (740), and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Academia tends to see itself as synonymous with serious scholarship, and Phillips-Fein says up front that her overview excludes "popular works," whether journalistic accounts, books by conservative activists, or "polemical pieces from the Left." While anyone writing a literature review needs to limit its scope to keep things manageable, a historiography of U.S. conservatism is weakened if it omits non-academic treatments such as Susan Faludi's Backlash or Jeff Sharlet's The Family, or, for that matter, the work of conservative activists such as Justin Raimondo and Paul Gottfried. As Martin Durham points out in one of the more interesting roundtable responses to Phillips-Fein, Raimondo's and Gottfried's books challenge the hegemony of foreign policy hawks within the conservative movement (first National Review fusionists, then neoconservatives) and reclaim Old Right traditions of anti-interventionism going back to the America First Committee and the early libertarians. The clash between interventionist and anti-interventionist rightists is crucial for understanding recent U.S. conservatism, but Phillips-Fein never mentions it.
Leftist and liberal activists, meanwhile, have been doing solid research and analysis on all of the topics Phillips-Fein highlights as needing more attention from historians: the conservative movement's relationship with war and nationalism, antifeminism and opposition to gay rights, anti-immigrant nativism, the role of mass media, and the relationship between conservative economics and the politics of race and gender. (The Political Research Associates newsletter alone has covered almost all of these topics in feature articles over the past five years.) Anti-rightist activists have also done detailed work on conservatism's factional divisions, and the complex interplay between conservatism and the far right, which Phillips-Fein touches on only in passing.
Regarding Phillips-Fein's larger questions about the nature of conservatism and its relationship with broader political and social changes, some of the most useful work comes from people who combine academic scholarship with leftist analysis. For example, Phillips-Fein urges historians to explore the "apparent contradiction" between conservatives' stated libertarian values and their actual policies, which "dramatically expanded government in areas such as defense spending and in the war on drugs" (741). This discussion would benefit by revisiting a definition that Sara Diamond offered seventeen years ago: "To be right-wing means to support the state in its capacity as enforcer of order and to oppose the state as distributor of wealth and power downward and more equitably in society" (Roads to Dominion, 9). (A pioneer in studying the modern right, Diamond left the field, and academia, in 1998 because she was unable to find a full-time teaching position.)
Similarly, efforts to place the conservative movement in the context of "some deeper shift in American politics, economics, and culture" (740) would do well to consider Thomas Ferguson's work on the 1970s collapse of the pro-New Deal coalition within the business community (Golden Rule and, with Joel Rogers, Right Turn) and Michael Omi and Howard Winant's explication of the collapse of the "American Dream" during the same period (Racial Formation in the United States). These are just a few examples. The left has a lot more to offer than just polemics.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Stand up Against Racism and Transphobia!
From the First of May Anarchist Alliance:
Defend CeCe McDonald!
Self-Defense is Not a Crime!
Stand up Against Racism and Transphobia!
Defend CeCe McDonald!
Self-Defense is Not a Crime!
Stand up Against Racism and Transphobia!
An important case demands our support. Crishaun “CeCe” McDonald, a young Black transgender woman faces two counts of second degree murder for defending her friends and herself from physical attacks by a group shouting ugly racist and homophobic insults.
Please contact the Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman and demand he drop the charges against CeCe:
612-348-5540 fax * 612-348-2042 * citizeninfo@co.hennepin.mn.us
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