Here is the text of a couple of little essays I wrote in the comments when someone posted a link to some anarchist fighting.
Debating tactics outside of the context of goals and strategy is useless. I think the real debate being had is of those latter points.
As is known, I was opposed to anarchists spending a tonne of time organizing against the Olympics. Why? Because I think there are enough problems in the world that we can pick one which is much more widely agreed upon than the Olympics being bad. In the context of a weak Left and a strong Right, we can’t really afford to be wasting our time on unpopular (another word: undemocratic) battles.
There are 500+ issues that are worth our time (precious time) as organizers. As a movement, it makes sense to look at them not solely on their ethical value, but also on their ability to help us build to the point where issues like the Olympics can be fairly debated amongst people.
To those who wanted so much to organize against the Olympics, I give you a mind experiment: Imagine that the network of various social justice, labour and community organizers and activists had been set up in a way which was *ideal* to disseminating the message about the Olympics being fucked up (which for the record I agree with 100%!) and to facilitating action which would have the effect of enacting the original goals of the anti-2010 campaign. Go back 4 years and imagine what would have been needed to STOP the ravaging of Vancouver’s communities, and the building of the roads, and the diverting of public funding and everything else. Go back and think, “in a perfect world, what would have been there?”
*That* infrastructure is what we need to build. *Those* organizations. The muscle that could have stopped this 4 years ago is what we need to begin building today. Because next time something like the Olympics happens, where the anarchist opinion diverges substantially from the default public opinion, we want a ready mechanism to tell people why we have the better idea, right? Because really: we do.
To bring this back to the original post, I think the argument is not over black block tactics or whatever, it is over goals and strategy. I think that if anarchists had engaged in a big public campaign of clowning in the streets it would make those of us who see the strategic failures of this incredibly undemocratic and unfeasible goal cringe in the same way as black bloc tactics. hell if it had been a letter writing campaign. The method doesn’t matter when the strategy is unsound.
I’m just saying, wouldn’t it have been great to see all that effort around, say, reproductive rights, an issue that is the one hand popular, on the other hand the way the state and business is going with it is horrific. There are literally hundreds of issues like this: many people agree a certain thing is fucked but most don’t have a clue what to do about it. We can pick one of any of those issues to organize around, and there will be one less barrier.
Frankly, I can’t wait for the day when we are done dealing with all the popular and easy to understand issues and we are forced to move on to more complicated ideas like being anti-Olympics. I think that will be a bright and shining day for working people. But really, are we there yet?
What you say about building networks might be true, but it would have been true no matter what the issue. ANY organizing will result in that. I think we can expect more of the Left than another decade of “building connections”. I say build power.
[...] Tactics and strategy – Here is the text of a couple of little essays I wrote in the comments when someone posted a link to some anarchist fighting. Debating tactics outside of the context of goals and strategy is useless. I think the real debate being had is of those latter points. [...]