What we Want, When we Want It
by Steve ThomasWhat do we want?
Peace!
When do we want it?
Eventually!
I am just returned from Washington, D.C., where I took part in this weekend’s massive protest-march against the war.
I have never been so amazed by the American left. The protest was organized by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and United for Peace and Justice. These groups amaze me. How is it possible to have the resources; the organizational capacity; and the grassroots support to put 200,000 people in the center of Washington and yet accomplish ABSOLUTELY NOTHING?
I guess we should ask what they were hoping to accomplish. From the rabble it wasn’t always clear, but the overall demands seemed to amount to 1. ending aggressive war abroad (specifically in Iraq, Palestine, and Haiti) and 2. implementing socialism at home.
Had the protesters really wanted to end the wars, they would be over right now. With two hundred thousand people we could have stormed the White House, hauled Bush and his regime out and hung them from a tree for their crimes. If we had all had rifles, we could have made a Fallujah of D.C. Clearly we didn’t want to.
“But we’re PACIFISTS,� the lefties cry. Well, that’s bullshit too. The pacifist gang loves to invoke Mahatma Gandhi as their model or icon. Gandhi would have been disgusted by what I saw on Saturday. His model of nonviolence was extremely confrontational, amounting to forcing your opponent to have the courage to kill you or to accede to your demands. It was psychological warfare. (Essentially it was violence without the physical component—but shh, let’s not talk about that). It had absolutely nothing to do with marching along pre-planned, police-state-approved parade routes and singing silly songs. Had we wanted we could have shut down the economy of the nation’s capital; made government impossible; forced the Bush administration to either massacre 200,000 people or pull out of Iraq.
I just checked CNN. Shockingly, it seems the war is still going on. Doesn’t the president know how loud I screamed “PEACE! NOW!�?
Now ending the war wasn’t the only demand of the protesters. For a significant majority (and certainly for the leaders) socialism was the other half of the agenda.
Let’s get this straight. 200,000 people (let’s pretend we were all socialists) want a new economic model. There are probably 20 or 30 supporters for every protester. So we have (let’s fudge this math a bit) at least 10 million socialists in the United States.
And the best way we can come up with as to how to get it is to demand it from the heart of the capitalist power structure???
Can someone explain to me how that makes sense? With ten million people socialism could be here TODAY. We wouldn’t have to wait until the capitalists finally here us shouting “THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE� and figure out that they’re supposed to give their money away. We wouldn’t have to wait until the other two hundred million Americans agree and decide to vote for socialists in the House and Senate (an event which is surely more than a few years off). With ten million people we could build an active, functioning network of wealth redistribution within this country without having to rely on the government; the capitalists; or the rest of the fractious American public for ANYTHING.
All it would take is the actual desire to do it. All it would take is remembering that we’re adults and can act for ourselves instead of crying to mommy state to solve all our problems for us.
I cannot be the only person who sees this. It’s too obvious. I therefore have to conclude that at least the leaders of the left—of A.N.S.W.E.R, of UFPJ, the ZMag crowd and the Common Dreams crowd and all the rest—are liars and completely uninterested in their stated goals. What do they want instead? I don’t know. Possibly power. I could be being too harsh. They could simply be morons, or cowards. Or maybe what we think of as “the Left� is actually a grand coalition of power-thirsty liars, gullible idiots and chickenshit cowards.
Contrast this to the neo-tribal movement. Where the left cries to the government to fix things for them, we actively build the world we want to live in. Yes, we then disperse, but our revolution is incremental, and with every new gathering we create a little more. Our tribes continually grow; our networks continually form and expand. With every new protest the Left stays exactly where it is; exactly where it’s been for decades. Do they even want socialism? How can they know? With Peak Oil approaching, the time to “build the new society in the shell of the old� just might be running out. We’ll see who makes it through to the other side.
GREAT post. My thoughts exactly. I’ve similarly been frustrated by A)The seeming necessity of belonging to either the left or right, and the pigeonholing that goes on when I try to explain my views, which don’t agree with either side; B)The tendency of many protests to be strongly AGAINST something, but not really FOR anything. This is a thread that I think has been common to the NTR as well. We know what we don’t want, but aren’t exactly sure what it is that we want, or what will work. But, like you said, little by little we’re starting to figure it out.
Roxy
Comment by Raku — 26 September 2005 @ 5:00 PM
Most kinds of civil protest accept and reinforce the premise that the entity being protested against has the authority to make the decision/policy that is in question. If one goes to Washington and asks the Bush administration to end the war in Iraq, then you are publicly reinforcing the idea that their assumed authority to wage war in Iraq on behalf of the American people is legitimate. (They like that, BTW, even in the form of mass protests.)
“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.” -Gandhi
I would disagree with your assertion that the people who plan these events are liars, cowards, or morons. They simply haven’t thought far enough outside of the box yet, and so they are doing all they know how with what they’ve got. Most of us are “guilty” of that in some way or another.
“It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.” -Gandhi
Chris
Comment by Chris Hardie — 26 September 2005 @ 5:47 PM
I’m with you man. Protest marches at this point are inane. Here is a more fleshed out version of what I think that I posted on my own blog:
What’s it going to take?
Your article “Katrina, the Iraq war and the struggle for socialism� certainly gets to the point. It echoes my complaints about United for Peace and Justice whose political stances, for me, represent a political dead end. What is the classic definition of insanity? Answer: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. WSWS is absolutely correct in that the system cannot be reformed or rehabilitated. Protests, marches, vigils, petitions, conferences, teach-ins and the like are fine and dandy for raising awareness. However, as, again, the above named article spells out this did not work to stop the present war in Iraq before hand and will not stop it from continuing. If humanity is to survive, as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez forthrightly noted in his speech at the U. N., Capitalism must die. The sooner, the better.
My only concern, and it is a big one, even should a mass political movement develop here in the U. S., does anyone at WSWS really believe the ruling class will simply go away? The above named article does not hesitate to note the brutality of the U. S. ruling class in attempting to subjugate Iraq and we all saw what is in store for us in New Orleans. In short, what I want to know is that, even with a reasonably coherent mass movement, what happens when the momentum of a mass movement is met by the road block of the National Guard, The Police and, not to mention, the Blackwater mercenaries? The state understands what is at stake and this is why it quickly moved to confiscate people’s weapons in New Orleans in the same way it is seeking to make sure Iran is relatively unarmed as well. If you are not armed you are defenseless and therefore easy pickins’. Let me make myself clear, I am NOT advocating violent revolution but as someone once said, “when you block the path to peaceful revolution, you open the doors to violent revolution.�
What I have come to suspect over the last several years is that one of the hidden, but key reasons, the Left in this country has been so weak is that deep down we all know what is going to take to change things in this the belly of the beast and frankly few of us are up to the task. For many years now the Left has engaged in little more than symbolic protest at best and, at worst, narcissistic showboating (largely engaged in by privileged white middle class folks who make up much of the “official” Left and have much less to fear from the police). They really do not want to fight because that would involve, at least for the preponderantly white middle class Left, losing their privileges, tenuous as they may be at present, and real pain or even death. Nevertheless, I can’t say I blame anybody. No matter how noble the cause, nobody wants to die. However, let us be honest and frank, before this the most brutal ruling class of all gives up power, there will be rivers of blood spilled. This is the lesson I’ve learned from the whole mess in Iraq and was confirmed in my mind by the scenes in New Orleans. For the American ruling class, it appears force is now the only option. Again, the question is, can the Left deal with that?
Comment by Johnnie Quezada — 27 September 2005 @ 12:23 AM
You have me convinced…so, where do we all move so we can build our socialist state-within-the-state?
Comment by drublood — 27 September 2005 @ 10:01 AM
Why move anywhere?
Personally, I’m not certain it’s a good idea anyway. A continent-wide redistributive network could be a recipe for ecological collapse. On the other hand, local socialism can probably function indefinitely.
Complete Digression: That’s basically what the chiefdom level of human political organization is–incipient localized socialism. Interestingly chiefdom’s are not politically democratic. The chief is a dictator, but lacking any kind of surveillance technology he (in probably 90-95% of cases it’s a he) is capable of far less dictating than a modern democrtic state. Meanwhile in simple chiefdoms, his redistributive network is maintained voluntarily. That is, the dictator-chief remains in power only so long as he can convince people to pay his taxes, which he does presumably by means of effective redistribution.
Jason and I were talking about a Cuban chiefdom many hundreds of years from now ruled by “The Castro,” harkening back to that mythical ancestor.
Chris: the first half of your post is an excellent point, and very well-said. (And nice supporting Gandhi-quote).
As for the second–how many free passes do people get? And how little credit are we supposed to give them? These are thinking, reasoning adults capable of making their own decisions.
To my mind, this is much harsher than calling them morons and cowards. It seems to me that you’re depriving them of responsibility and of volition. These are thinking, reasoning adults we’re talking about; and these conclusions aren’t all THAT difficult. I agree that we have to make allowances–but at some point failure to see must be understood as refusal to see.
Comment by Steve Thomas — 27 September 2005 @ 11:18 AM
Well, we don’t, because we’re anarchists.
But if you’d like to, I recommend northern California as a nice place to start. You could get all the Cascadian hippies to secede from the union and make Arcata your capital.
Anyway, I think what Steve was trying to say was that a socialist state appeared to be what the Left wanted. (Not necessarily what he wanted.) And yet, their sheer pussyosity keeps them from doing anything but asking the capitalist state politely for permission.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 27 September 2005 @ 12:13 PM
It’s not what they appear to want. It’s what they say they want. This is not something that it should take courage to build. If you have the organizational capacity to put 200,000 people in Washington, you probably have the organizational capacity to arrange a system of wealth redistribution between those 200,000 people. It would be pretty easy. I might even take part.
Comment by Steve Thomas — 27 September 2005 @ 12:17 PM
yeah those war protests…
Here’s my theory:
When you have a bunch of people who don’t believe in anything, and the only life they have to live for is now, then dying for your cause, to the individual, is worse than losing. If you live, you survive to fight another day.
So the protesters know they don’t want to die. They also know they don’t want anyone else to die. So to begin with, they are silly Takers who above all else, are horrified with the death of their own species. Granted, many of them are afraid of the death of other species, but they are still captivated by their own fear.
And because they fear, they cower. Because they cower, they are inneffective.
Because they aren’t willing to go both ways in a fight for life and death in a system that has an even stronger fear of death than any one individual an their opinions could conjure, the game plays on…
When you talk about historical protests that work, they all have in common sothing modern protests don’t
Someone died.
………..
Walking the streets, smoking a joint in front of John Ascroft, yes, all self-fullfilling, satisfyingly smug things to do, adn that’s the reason i went.
I knew I wasn’t there to change the world.
I went to say I was there. I went to get high in the public of D.C.
So was I a part of the problem or a part of the solution?
Comment by tonyz — 27 September 2005 @ 9:57 PM
tony, were you there??
Comment by Steve Thomas — 28 September 2005 @ 12:59 AM
not last week, but jan 03, march 03 may 03, oct 03, and that’s just when I made it out to D.C….
Comment by Anonymous — 28 September 2005 @ 10:09 AM
It is because of the spiritual and moral malady that we have today. We ARE getting exactly what we want, directly in proportion to our apathy and indifference. You’re right, if we really wanted to change this Administration, we’d step up to the plate and do something about it. But we don’t, not really. We are apathetic and indifferent, although that is hard to admit. We simply do not care anymore, which only emphasises my point of our sickness. It’s very widespread today, and there are only a few people who are “disease free”.
Comment by Survival Acres — 29 September 2005 @ 12:29 PM
Great posts, comments.
Peaceful protest is a very easy way to calm a concience, and real actions are distinctly frowned upon. “All protesters must be cool, dress sensibly, not emote, not confront or otherwise challenge the violence or control of the State..”, there are so many unwritten rules at protests and in mainstream concerned society.
This cos as already said, we want to have our cake (consumer capitalism) and overthrow it (or at least pretend to) too. 99% of us wouldn’t know real struggle if it was tazered in front of us.
The idea that our profoundly unsustainable and (less-visibly) violent lifestyles/wealth merely need reform, and that politics can deliver such reform, is the single biggest fantasy impeding real change.
Screw politics, stop buying war (bechtel, halliburton, ANZ, Raytheon, Carlyle Group, Boeing, Siemens, Subway, UPS, …) and funding war (taxation, US/UK/Au bonds & currencies), powerdown your lifestyle, and support only more-sustainable businesses (INCLUDING employer), and then maybe some progress might be made.
Too hard? Then stop whinging and learn to love big brother.
Comment by Liam — 30 September 2005 @ 2:13 AM
My political views have turned 180 degrees around in the past 10 or so years. A decade ago, I thought the mainstream media had the final word in everything. One of the turning points in my conversion was the WTO protests in Seattle. I asked myself why do these people feel so passionately about these organizations. So I googled NAFTA, WTO and GATT and discovered that these trade agreements were every bit deserving of protest as the rioters in Seattle believed they were.
This set me on a path to revise my understanding of everything from 9-11 to the Federal Reserve.
Also, there was almost no mention of the Iraqi war opposition in the mainstream media until February 15 ‘03 when tens of millions of people poured into the streets of cities all over the world to say NO to the war.
My point is that these protests may be having more of an effect than we realize.
And lastly for those of you who are thinking of creating a parallel society, I might point out that the corporate globalists are notorious for completely crushing anyone who isn’t on board with their agenda. They are especially brutal with people who are successful at creating an alternative. We might do well to build a critical mass. The numbers are going in our direction.
Comment by High — 15 January 2006 @ 4:03 PM
Keep in mind, they can’t hit what they can’t see.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 16 January 2006 @ 3:53 AM