Tag: action

The problem of sociability

I have been traveling Europe for the past few months and have another month left before I head back to the States (and the large pile of collapsing projects that await me). Radicals in the US often have a great deal of envy regarding the social movements and general scale and quality of the actions that happen in Europe compared to the US. Usually this is attributed to the history, education, or continued maintenance of radical movements all of which I have found to be true and quite different than my experience in the US. I am not sure there is much we can do about these facts though, at least in the time I have left on the planet. I do think there is something that can be done with the other significant difference I have found between the US and Europe, which is social life.

To put it simply the Europeans (with notable differences in each country) have a healthier social life, than we do in the US, both with their comrades, families, and the strangers on the street than we do in the US. I will try to examine some of the reasons why I think this is the case but obviously I feel like I can only speak to what I have seen which is the social life between comrades and not the full range of Euroradical social life. I will also try to talk about what I think we can do about it.

Remarks on the US & me

American social life is horribly fractured and alienated. I don’t say this as some critique of this or that faction within my general circles but as a statement of fact. Most people experience others only in the institutions that shape our lives; school, work, and church. As one ages there is a certain trajectory that propels one to shed the relationships of the past and to grow more and more isolated. More orientated towards sociability through work or family than anything else. Of course many find themselves isolated from the very start–only meeting like-minded people online and not finding people in real life satisfying or close. Whether by the Internet or the adage that OPS (other people suck) the dominant social experience in the US is lonliness.

For political people1 this social alienation corrolates to our inability to oppose the impact of the institutions that frame our existance, to oppose those institutions themselves. If each of us has only a certain amount of capacity that we use to understand, criticize, and then possibly take action against the existing order it makes sense that to the extent that we are alone(ish) we are less potent than we would be with others.

I feel as though I have mixed up my priorities as I have devoted far more time to my personal intellectual growth than to social connections. This isn’t to say that I wish I had done more activism or gone to more clubs but I do wish that I would have seen this problem (of alienation) from a distance and started working on more relaxed social solutions a decade ago. Instead my work has been on tighter and more disciplined approaches to lonliness. I don’t blame the Internet for this, I blame the fact that I resolved to do my projects with or without other people. Instead I had to (and have to now) find a way to find other people who are interested in the same approach to radical activity that I have.

I’ll try to specify the problems I see in this work for me personally but also more generally in the US context. The traditional way that my friends have talked about this problem2 is to talk about the fact that either people are wrong, they are snobs, or they are passing through. Wrong usually looks like participation in the left in one of its variants: activism, puritanism3, or academia. Snobs usually look like (and I damn myself here too) taking extreme positions that while possible correct (like the post-left) are absolutely isolated positions. Passing through, which is the dominant form of radical alienation, looks like the process of enchantment, education, experience, disillusionment and exit strategies that we understand, and correctly name when we see it, but haven’t figured out a way to abate.

Perhaps starting from an analysis of the problem is the wrong way to work towards a solution. I think that the structure of the solution is very simple but the will and details are a problem. The solution to the problem of the deep alienation seemingly inherent to US radical politics is people, space & time. This couldn’t be a simpler solution but we can point to the ways that each of these simple things has been disrupted over time, what makes them difficult to reclaim now, and why we tend to just give up.

Space

This can be seen particularly in Greece but all over Europe there is something you can call radical space and generally there is more area where people can be together without buying shit than in the US. Greece, particularly Exarchia, is amazing with its squares, reclaimed parks, and even public benches used to meet, discuss, and even particularlize conversations. This can’t be overstated as an incredible boon. In the US the only place where we can meet is in an area of commerce, at work/school, or in a private space (a home or clubhouse).

Regaining space is a serious problem usually thought of as an isolated project. Often we (usually some variant of a couple or cult) find a way to buy (or just rent) a space together–at best creating a private space that a slightly broader definition of we can use but that doesn’t particularly attract anyone outside of our direct experience. The slightly more radical option is to be part of a social struggle that fights for and reclaims a space. This could be a squatted park or a house (or series of houses). It could be using an abandoned space (like a warehouse) for a meeting or dance party and then walking away from it. The US makes this project particularly difficult as property has a value greater than any other (including human life) and even abandoned property is usually assumed to be worth defending by the state against any encroachment.

Time

Second in importance to space is having the time to spend in space with people. Time is a wonderful abstraction as it only exists in order to commoditize it but here we are spending it (buying it) entirely on paying off the security guards that defend property, that allow us a place to stand or lay our heads.

In Europe there is still, largely, enough of the social democratic arrangement in place that most people can find a way to not, or barely, work. In some places this means that there are large bodies of people sitting around drinking beer. This is fine, I don’t have a particular problem with how other people spend their time, but my larger interest is that this arrangement also means some people spend their time hatching plans, conspiring.

People

I like people. I don’t need them to be revolutionary robots or to even particularly agree with me. As a matter of fact my favorite people are agents of chaos who disagree with me in ways that tickle my fancy. The individual people around me are both entirely unimportant3 and entirely necessary. In the US social life has become increasingly filled with lists of “friends” that we can quantify and measure but whose qualities and lack of reproducibility is entirely forgotten.

I have seen in Europe that the strongest political groups begin with groups of friends whose political life looks like a daily life that includes each other. This looks like intentional living and daily meetups in public space. In the US we are together, as radical subjects, only as long as our shared living space or clubhouse lasts and no longer. Our friendships tend not to have political relevance or when they do they are the relevance of cliques.

Hope?

To restate the problem in a word: isolation. The solution simply put is people, space & time. This is all highlighted by the way in which my European experience demonstrates the ways in which the US is flat in comparison to the topography of relations in space over time. We have, in comparison, some bursts of activity in nearly random places on occassion. This may be an intractable problem and definitely speaks to my deeply pessimistic attitude towards social change or even social relationships with people I would feel comfortable calling comrades. I would like to believe there is still potential so I’ll wonder aloud.

There is not a chance that there will be social democracy in the US in my lifetime or that the American attitude towards property will shift towards a balanced perspective, not to speak of an abolitionist one (which is my preference). This means that the simple solution to the problem of social fracture will probably not come from an easy solution like squatting more homes, finding more cracks in the welfare state, or even ending the invasion of hipster cliques into the project of shattering this world.

Here is where I think there is potential and my future projects will lead:

  1. keeping a balanced approach (individual alienation can only be combated by a trinary approach) rather than focusing too much on 1/3 of the solution
  2. tactics should look like one part dance party in squated warehouse (space & people) and one part weekly event in rented space over years (time & people)
  3. if people aren’t capable of being friends4 we probably shouldn’t do close political work with them
  4. We have to return to kitchen table politics with more discussion in small informal settings that nourish the body as well!

    5. That’s all I have for now but suffice it to say that I think that there is plenty of room for experimentation in this potential and once that runs dry, I can always go back to Europe for a few more months.

A story of a Greek Assembly

Ever since I saw the Void Network give their presentation on the “Greek situation” I have wanted to seriously think, and put into practice, my understanding of what they meant by “an assembly”. Since I am in Greece now (updates of my Amsterdam trip will have to come later as I don’t want to lose my way regarding this topic) and have attended my first significant assembly I feel far more informed about what is possible to transfer from my Greek experience and from the several conversations I’ve had with different people on the composition of their model compared to what we do in the States.


Asocial @ vs the pigs at the Polytechnic: Photos by Insurgent Photo

Preliminary sidebar: What is broken in US meetings

I have taken a generally hostile stance towards meetings, particularly with people who have a different political center of gravity, for over a decade. I tend not to go to them, as I believe many others do also. This deep ambivalence towards “working with others” has a couple different sources.

One, multi-tendency meetings tend not to be about anything. This isn’t to slight the necessity of people sitting in a room together as part of their individual and group growth process but in terms of actually getting anything done, it tends to happen intra-tendency not inter. A harsh example is to discuss the summer 2010 attempt at an assembly in the Bay. This was an incredible opportunity missed as it ended up being a general directionless gripe session rather than a place where people (outside of a few specific Statist Marxist types who were there) could articulate either general proposals or examples of the kind of work their particular tendency or affinity group believed was appropriate. Here is an excerpt from the call out that exemplifies the problem.

Although any actions that come out of this assembly will be on people’s own initiative – whether they do so alone, through small affinity groups, or in more formal meetings – we should all feel compelled to make a mark on the world we inhibit and not passively let history pass us by!

The intention here is fine. It implores something be done, puts the onus of that something on the participating groups, but leaves the action delightfully vague. Who is going to try to measure our groups initiative with the flow of history?

Two, multi-tendency meetings in the Bay Area (or any other US city) have a life-stealing/soul sucking tendency toward creating ridiculous Manichean mission statements that serve as statements of purpose and/or litmus tests for participation. Here is a particularly egregious example from the brand new call by UA in the Bay for an upcoming quarterly General Assembly.

We’re asking anyone who agrees with the following to attend:
– A rejection of all forms of hierarchy, including capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, heterosexism, colonialism and party based politics
– Organizing on a consensus based, non-hierarchical basis, that promotes autonomy, solidarity, and the agency of those most affected by each decision
– Embracing a diversity of tactics based on practicality, regardless of legality
– Working actively to build relationships and institutions that are based on equality, self determination, and sustainability

This is a laundry list of loaded terms that is, or should be, entirely unnecessary if your goal is to have, or to call for, an Anarchist General Assembly. At some point we either assume that we are dealing with units-of-active-agency (aka adults) and stop treating each other like children, or worse like people who can’t be trusted, or we just stop dealing with each other. I can tell you that even if I was in town this passive-aggressive checklist would make me seriously doubt that this event would be worth my time or would be capable of resulting in (meaningful, interesting, potential building) activity.

Three, multi-tendency meetings in the Bay Area have a proven track record of bringing out the worst kinds of behavior in people, this includes lack of respect, bad faith, general wingnuttery, and unending evil eyes. I, for one, don’t enjoy going into a room where it feels like everyone in the room hates each other, speaks entirely in (historically loaded) jargon, and can’t pull their heads out of their asses for long enough to accomplish more with more people than resentment and enmity. I have enough hate in my life dealing with people who absolutely hate the idea of anarchy to waste my time with my frenemies who will not actually work with me anyway due to misunderstandings and half-knowledge.

Four, multi-tendency groups tend to confuse friendship with politics. Especially in the Bay Area where the groups with the strongest political disagreements also do not socialize with each other (I often refer to the Bay as have 4-6 different anarchist scenes that do not talk to each other) this is a particularly thorny problem. We do not see eye to eye politically but we don’t really know that because we don’t really know each other. When we do experience each other it is in an atmosphere of hostility. This is a chicken-and-egg problem.

We begin: What I saw in Greece

This is a time of incredible tension in Athens. After the general strike on May 11th an anarchist comrade was hospitalized by an attack by the police (putting him into a coma by blunt force trauma to the head). In the days following the informal nationalist/fascists forces attacked immigrants (including a mass stabbing incident with over a dozen victims) and have made serious violent incursions into the public space (with a square next to long standing squat Villa Amalias being a particular target). At the same time some “asocial” anarchists attacked the Exarchia police station with molotovs to disasterous effect. The following day included an attack on the Skaramanga squat (which I happened to witness first hand and it was 1) terrifying and 2) intense for its political consequences) and then a mass arrest (the next day) of residents of the same squat.

To the extent to which there is a central body (which is in no way a central body) of anarchists that would even discuss the incredible week and series of events it is the Assembly of the Polytechnic. The Polytechnic is on the edge of Exarchia and, from what I’ve seen so far, the rumors of it are true. It (it is an architectural school) is a “free zone” from the police. It is the location from which young anarchists stage hit-and-run attacks against fascists and the police. It is a meeting space that is also a place of occupation. We cannot imagine such a place in the US today as nothing even a 1/4 of it has ever existed in my memory.

The Assembly met there on Wednesday night to analyze the events of the past week and to discuss what action makes the most sense to take as a result. The meeting went on for three hours with very few pauses (more on them later). The meeting was smoke filled, multi-generational (mean age: 30), packed by US standards (60 down to 40 by the end) but supposedly small by Greek standards, and totally respectful and productive (even when there were disagreements which there were a number of serious ones). This was a focused serious meeting about what to do in crisis.

Structurally it began with a person introducing the Assembly and then one person after another speaking. There was no structure to the event other than particularly long winded speakers being cut off for talking too long (and at least 8 people talked for 10+ minutes at a go). At the end of the event the proposals (that would be finalized next week) were fairly specific (orientation wise) and agreeable/disagreeable along lines that would cross most political lines. They were different plans along strategic, not ideological, lines.

We end for now: Conclusions

Before we end a note on the interruptions of the Assembly. The day of the Assembly also happened to be the day of student elections at the Polytechnic (which, remember is a university). Traditionally (?!) the anarchists (some faction or another) attack these elections and… they did. Obviously I was inside a meeting room (and none of the @ in the room were involved) but it was clear that at least 4 bombs (bigger than M-80s smaller than a cluster bomb) were thrown, sticks (and helmets) were deployed and the area outside the meeting room (but inside the Polytechnic) was a standoff of mostly leftist (meaning Statist Communists) students in a paranoid stance against the anarchist interlopers of their election. Fucking crazy.

I will end this write up with a few cautious conclusions about what I have seen from Greece that I think is directly transferable to the American context.

1) Treat each other like adults. It makes a substantial difference in the attitude of the participation and, I believe, makes a long term difference. This means no lifestyle restrictions, no “stacks” or “vibe checks”, and freedom of expression of the participants (especially insofar as they demonstrate that they are doing as well as talking)

2) Leave labels and group identification at the door. While it is important to have participation of people from many concerned parties at your event it is not important for everyone to end every sentence with “class” this or “insurrection” that. It is also important that our rooms look more chromatic (and that doesn’t just mean red and green).

3) Our ideas can be communicated without jargon or loaded terms.

Cheers from Athens