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On 2/10/12 11:37 AM, Andrew Battle wrote:
I'm sorry this doesn't have much to do with Marx per se but seeing as the anarchist thing is being debated on here as it has been everywhere for the past few days, I will say at least, 100% anecdotally and unscientifically, that there were a few organizers there who appeared to be hoping and waiting for some of the "crazy" anarchists known to them to provide the spark towards escalation (and I don't mean violence in any shape) that would have moved the action in a potentially more effective direction. And so as far as the relationship between other left groups and anarchists goes, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility to posit that some members of these groups have a more ambivalent relationship with the anarchists than they will publicly admit, in that they sometimes find themselves relying (cynically, in my opinion) on anarchists' propensity for direct action as a springboard that they can make use of and sometimes even take credit for, just as Hedges has cut himself a new career path as an occu-celeb, no matter how clueless he is about the origins of what's been happening over the past several months. My two cents, anyway.
If anything, my attitude toward black bloc adventurism has hardened since yesterday when I learned about the attack on the KKE and PAME in Syntagma Square last October.
The Greek CP (KKE), for better or for worse, is the primary organizer of the resistance to the austerity drive in Greece. But when you have photos of hooded people consulting with the cops and then attacking the protest with police truncheons, it really brings the rise of fascism to mind. Keep in mind that Hitler advocated "national socialism". When you have such thugs attacking ordinary working people fighting unemployment and hunger in the name of "smashing the state", there is something dangerous afoot.
Granted the American black bloc types are much smaller and much less of a threat than in Greece, we still have a big job in front of us educating the left about what a potential threat it represents. When it comes to the point when the unemployment rate is 21 percent as it is in Greece today, there will be massive resistance. The last thing we need is unaccountable masked people penetrating mass actions giving cops the excuse to bust the demo.
As I just told Paul Buhle offlist, I am anxious to review the book he did on Wisconsin because that was an example of a mobilized working class that was NOT attacked by cops. In fact, the cops refused to evict trade unionists sitting in at the capitol building. Granted there were problems in Wisconsin stemming from the DP and AFL-CIO hegemony but the last thing we would have needed is some agent provocateurs--either paid or unpaid/unconscious elements--giving the cops the excuse they needed to arrest people en masse.
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