Front De Troglodistes

I’m about to confess something that I think many North American activists secretly know to be true but have never had the nerve to say aloud: protests don’t work anymore, they may have worked in the past and they may still work to some degree on small focused campaigns but, generally, protesting is a futile and ineffective activity. If you don’t believe me, then name an American protest movement in the last 25 years that has accomplished anything of significance. Anyone? Anyone? Yeah, I can’t either. One could suggest the anti-apartheid movement of the 80's and 90's, but in that case we were just doing our part and in no way can it be said that the American anti-apartheid movement was directly responsible for the defeat of apartheid in South Africa--that distinction goes to the South African people and to exile groups like the British AAM (ACTSA). What about the anti-globalization movement? Well, what about it? For American activists, it was a fad, the political equivalent of ugg boots, and it collapsed like the rest of the left in the wake of that stiff wind called 9/11. What about the contemporary peace movement? Just kidding, no one would seriously suggest the contemporary peace movement has accomplished anything.

What if you count direct action as form of protest? Well I do, since what passes for direct action among North American activists is not direct action at all, it’s really just another form of symbolic protest. While it’s true that you may be able to find the occasional direct action campaign that saves a copse of trees somewhere in the Northwest or frees a few hundred puppies from a research lab, at the end of the day, even the most impressive victories through direct action are nullified by the overall rapid destruction of our environment and the wholesale slaughter of animals worldwide. It’s pretty astonishing when you think about it: such a huge chunk of activist’s time and effort goes into planing, promoting, and attending protests. Yet, if you look at the results we get from our labors it’s not just astonishing, it’s shocking.

Why do we keep doing things we know aren’t working? Part of the reason stems from the reactive nature of American activist culture. We don’t make things happen, we react to the awful things that other people make happen. We haven’t been really active, in the sense of actually creating the world we want to see, since the labor movement and anti-fascist movements of the 1930's. Add to this a simple lack of imagination and an unwillingness from most activists to buck the stifling dominant activist culture of “protest, rinse, repeat” and the result is the marginalized ineffectual state of affairs we have now. But even all these reasons pale in comparison to the simple fact that we really don’t know what we want. Of course, we know what we’re against, but we only vaguely know what we’re for. The left has no coherent plan for changing society, and it’s a pretty sad state of affairs when marginal nutball groups like the Revolutionary Communist Party have more coherent plans than anyone else on the left. The RCP’s plan is horrible, scary, and as old as the hills but at least they know what they want.

And so does the right wing in this country, they know exactly what they want. But unlike the RCP and most left groupings, they know how to play nice with each other. The right, like the left is composed of a plethora of large and small groups with agendas often seemingly at odds with each other. The more radical groups are just as committed to accomplishing their goals as any radical left group. Why are right wing groups able to accomplish so much? Because they know what they want and they have a plan to get what they want, and they don’t sweat the small stuff like ideological differences. The ideological differences part is where the left gets stuck every time. People on the left seem to enjoy arguing about things like how the liberals will betray “us” and try to water down the “revolutionary message” of this or that protest or campaign while the liberals and “progressives” have an all too eager tendency to turn on or distance themselves from the people who are willing to take the most risks.

When you know what you want and you have made a plan for yourself to get what you want, you tend not to waste time with ideological arguments or other bullshit. It’s only people stuck in the political backwaters who care about ideological minutia and the whole left is in a political backwater. But the most marginalized and irrelevant groups and sects best illustrate this because they have nothing better to do but complain about the authoritarianism of other irrelevant and equally powerless groups--yes I’m talking about you my anarchist friends. I’ve read lengthy dire treatises from anarchists on the danger to the left from dogmatic newspaper selling clowns because they organize protests better than anarchists can. I don’t know about that, but I can tell you what IS NOT in danger: the left IS NOT in danger of becoming relevant while broken up into little sects that stare up each other asses the live long day. And the left IS NOT in danger of doing anything worth a damn while we focus on protests at the expense of organizing in the real world among real people.

It’s actually funny that people on the left think huge protests are really important because, guess what? No one else thinks this. No one cares. You’re arguing in a vacuum. You are people no one cares about criticizing other people that no one cares about for engaging in activities that no one cares about. What the fuck is wrong with all of you?

I’ll admit, I’ve basically said most of this before, and the last time I tried to be more restrained and even handed, but I’ve grown really tired and disgusted. I don’t really want to be restrained and even handed about this anymore, it’s too important. How bad does it have to get before we pull our heads out of our asses? I’m going to make things real simple so that it might sink in to even the slowest and the most hidebound. Leftists love their lists of demands, so here’s my list of “demands” to the left in general and anarchists in particular.

1) Protests are a show of strength, nothing more, if you have no base you have no strength and if you have no strength, no muscles to flex, then don’t organize large protests.

I don’t know how I could make it simpler folks! Protests used to be a way to show the world how many people you had doing real-world things. The protest was not an end in itself, it was a way to show the world how strong your movement was. What you did outside of the protest is what mattered and what made the protest itself even relevant. We don’t have this anymore. Now protests are the only thing we do, it’s an end in itself and the most significant activity that most activists engage in, which is to say that most activists don’t do anything of significance. Can activists legitimately call themselves “activists” when all they do is protest in one form or another?

2) We want to have political and social power or we don’t. If we don’t, then stop wasting the time of people who do want to have the power to change things. Either shit or get off the pot.

This goes for anarchists in particular, but also the left in general. It’s time we faced the fact that, gee, we want to have power. We want everyone to have the power to change their own lives, but to want everyone to have power is to still want power. Stop being coy about this and start acting like you mean it. Stop acting like you’re asking a hypothetical fucking question and start making it happen. Either that or just shut the fuck up, stay home, and jerk off to your Spanish Civil War posters.

3) If you are even remotely serious about changing the world you’re going to have to work with people you don’t necessarily agree with. Duh!

You have no base. You are completely fucking irrelevant. The only hope you have of doing ANYTHING at all is by working with other groups that might not agree with every word that comes out of your mouth. And by “working with”, I don’t mean attaching yourselves like some parasite to a protest that other people did the heavy lifting to make happen and call them fascists when they are not entirely cool with your plans that you didn’t even have the courtesy to run by them in the first place. It’s just pathetic folks. I’ve been to too many of these kinds of fiascos and I’m embarrassed to have defended some of the shitty things that anarchists had unilaterally chosen to do at these things. Protesting is generally a waste of time, but it’s even more pathetic when you have to hijack someone else’s waste of time because you couldn’t be bothered to organize your own.

Even anarchists need to compromise. This isn’t the revolution and there isn’t going to be any revolution anytime soon. If you want something to happen and if you actually believe in things like participatory decision making then you are going to have to accept viewpoints that are different from your own and hammer out some course of action that may be watered down a bit, but might actually lead somewhere. Either you intend to make your ideas mainstream or you’re just fucking around. And if you do intend to make your ideas mainstream, then you have to get out there in the world and work with people who don’t think like you. There is simply no other way, anyone who tells you different is full of shit.

4) Understand that if you are not building institutions, then you are doing nothing to change the world.

In their heyday, the communists had schools, summer camps, neighborhood organizations, they had sympathizers and fellow travelers elected to political office, their organizers where among the backbone of the labor movement, they were organized and they had solid institutions that they could use as a base to realize their goals. The religious right now have similar institutions in place and they are growing stronger by the day. If you are not changing existing institutions or building new institutions to replace existing ones, you are doing nothing. Don’t kid yourself. You can chant till your blue in the face, wave signs until your wrists break, break enough windows to affect the stock price of glass manufacturers and nothing you have done will even come close to the people who unionize a workplace, or found radio stations, coops, or alternative schools and universities.

Just to be clear: what I mean by founding an institution is not the same as setting up a flophouse for your cool friends or an exclusive club that admits only the ideologically pure. Anarchists and other radical activists do a lot of things that cosmetically resemble institution building but are actually just bullshit projects to impress people in the scene. Ban “infoshop” from you vocabulary and learn words like “mutual aid society”, “grassroots medical insurance”, and “cooperative”. Fuck! Even founding a credit union has a more positive impact on society than some sign waving song and dance.

5) If you’re not thinking about how people will feed and clothe themselves, or how things will be made, or how the trains will continue to run after you’ve taken over society, then you’re just not serious.

I’ve heard it all before: this will all take care of itself after the revolution...but we don’t need trains anymore ‘cause trains destroy the earth...we’ll all go back to the woods and live as hunter-gatherers...we’ll all put on our chairman mao suits and live as shiny happy workers in a smokestack ridden socialist paradise. Blah, blah, blah. Tell it to someone who gives a damn. Oh, that’s right, no one gives a damn about any of this. That ignorant rabble we claim to want to liberate obstinately insists on having indoor plumbing and living in a house with heat and electricity, they want to have a better standard of living than what they have now, they actually think working in a factory sucks ass, the philistines!

If your plan for changing society does not seriously take into account how society is going to function, if you’re not doing the work to make sure society actually will function after you’re done, then all your high-falutin’ ideas are little more than shit-talking. Not breaking the basic functionality of society is pretty key and if you intend to make your ideas mainstream you should know that instinctively. Now, I know that some people want to totally break down society and see it go away, but I’m not talking to them. Let the misanthropes have their fantasies, I’m only interested in the people who are trying to make things better, not worse.

I can already hear the criticism of this piece: You’re arguing for mere reformism...you want us to emulate the right wingers and the communists...you’re telling us to abandon revolutionary praxis (whatever the fuck that is). But these criticisms will all be wrong. What I’m advocating is that people actually get serious about what they claim they want and believe.

It’s easy to go to protests and to organize them, it’s even easy to get arrested--people get arrested all the time, it’s really no big deal. (I have always felt a bit like an ass for even thinking of feeling somehow noble for going to jail for a few hours and getting treated a million times better than the shoplifter in the cell next to me.) None of these things requires a life commitment, although some people do make a life out of this and similar activity. What does require a life commitment is institution building and union and community organizing. But that kind of work is boring and often thankless, it also requires competence and responsibility, and spending tremendous amounts of time with ordinary people who don’t dress cool or listen to hip music, who might be a bit racist or a bit sexist, or who just might simply be insufferable assholes. However, with these people lies the only hope of changing this society for the better. Until, activists get out there among these people and start actually building the world they claim they want to see we aren’t doing anything at all.