At 02:18 PM 1/13/98 -0500, Dick Platkin wrote:
>So, knowing that severe economic and political crises will appear, in the
U.S.
>and elsewhere, shouldn't we be ahead of the curve? Shouldn't we now
undertake
>the political organizing necessary to make sure that future crisis don't
>present squandered opportunities?
>
>PSNers can contribute to this process by exposing the superficial class peace
>prevailing in the United States, by documenting the many instances large and
>small when class anger emerges, and by offering the political leadership to
>ensure that these crises become organizing opportunities.
My comment (WS):
I agree, however, I also think college trained professionals can do more
than just exposing superficial class peace and providing "leadership." The
latter sound suspciously like the traditional aspirations of the middle
class. We can do much more than that: provide logistics how to organize
and recruit supports, how to sabotage the ruling elite's effort to dominate
the public sphere, how to stirr popular dissatisfaction with the status
quo, etc.
In a word, what I have in mind is writing a new 'Anarchist Cookbook' or
'Anarchist Cookbook for the 21st century." Unlike the original publication
that mixed romantic longing for a lone-star guerilla fighter with the
excerpts from US Army training manuals how to fight a guerilla war in a
Third World country, the "Anarchist Cookbook for the 21st Century" should
focus on the nature of the post-modern urban/suburban society, expose its
strenghts and weaknesses, outline effective strategies of exploiting those
weaknesses to disturb the system or use it to one's advantage, and most
importantly, identify strategic targets. There is nothing worse for the
movement than indiscriminate or misdirected attacks, since they will
invariably antagonize the public to the movement's cause; doing nothing is
better than attacking wrong targets.
As I see it, the "Anarchist Cookbook for the 21st Century" should have the
follwoing sections:
1. Description of the post-industrial society: the relationship between
state, economy and civil society, the nature of capitalist social
engineering (replacement of social solidarity ties with individualistic
'rational' responses to cues coming from authorities), the pervasive role
of buraeaucratic organization, the behavior of individuals in such
organizations, etc.
2. Outline strengths, problems and weaknesses of that organization:
stability, ability to operate independently of personal characteristics of
human actors, diffusion of responsibility, group-think (both strengyth and
weakness) authoritarianism, inflexibility, profound vulnerability to
informal ties and networks among officers, alienation, etc.
3. Explain why we should fight that system, what alternatives we have to
offer; and why those alternatives are better than the status quo (drawing
on studies in alternative forms of organizations, e.g workers coops,
participatory democracy, civil society, etc.).
4. Outline the strategy of that struggle which, IMHO should follow Karl
Marx's idea of appropriating the system's strengths and using its
vulnerabilities against itself; focus on the tremendus material power
people already have in their hands, provided they refuse to play the
assigned roles and use the resources the system put int their hands to
alternative ends; in other words: fuck the romantic notions of revolution,
marches, or demonstrations, focus on what an employee of a corporate
organization, a clerk, a janitor, a secretary, a technician, and engineer,
a teacher and so on can do in his/her workplace. The rural and urban
guerilla of the 20th century Left is dead, the 21st century insider
corporate guerilla is in.
5. Ouline specific strategies of sabotaging the functioning of the
corporate system, how to avoid risk (nobody wants to be a dead hero) and
how to link acts of sabotage to specific goals; how to select legitimate
targets and how to avoid "collateral damage" i.e. hitting unintended
targets. This is a technical part that should carefully consider the
specific details of actual workplaces and corporate organziations.
6. Outline a strategy of moving from individual sabotage to organized
struggle, how to use the egisting organizations venues as vehicles for
organizing; recruitment and network-building strategy, outline the strenght
of informal networks; outline strategy of winning larger popular support,
finding potential allies etc. Again, this is a technical part that should
focus on the existing resources and possibilities.
It is also my understanding that sociologists are uniquely qualified for
writing such a manual. This can be a collective work of this discussion
group, something positive coming from the net (instead of endless
schmoozing). Any comments or suggestions?
wojtek sokolowski
institute for policy studies
johns hopkins university
baltimore, md 21218
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
voice: (410) 516-4056
fax: (410) 516-8233
