You know, I've debated saying a thing or three about this whole Chris Hedges-David Graeber imbroglio, but honestly, I'm just so exhausted. Every time I start trying to write about it, I end up lying down for awhile. Hopefully sooner or later I'll get something out.
Here's one quick thing, though: I wish David Graeber would stop stamping around and announcing how very integral he was in starting the Occupy movement. I'm sure that's true. Good for him. But an anarchist, making an explicit plea against the movement police, in the context of an anti-authoritarian movement... well, there's better ways he could spend his energy than broadly waving at his own authority. It's not just that piece, either. There's such a fussiness to his discussion of his own influence. It's pregnant with a desire to say what he knows better than to say: that he has some sort of ownership over it all.
I'm not an anarchist, and this isn't personally my issue. I don't doubt for a second how important Graeber was to starting Occupy. And I have long found the denial of leadership to be a deeply self-destruction impulse within leftist movements. (The maddest anyone has ever been at me, at an organizing movement, was when I told someone he was a leader. That he plainly was didn't moderate his reaction.) If Graeber wants to assert leadership, he should just do it. Having it both ways, by speaking about the status that gives him authority without speaking in the vocabulary of authority, guarantees that the conversation proceed in an unhealthy manner.
Update: Yeah, I need to elaborate some. Give me today to get something put together.
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14 comments:
Mysterious!
sweet tooth(Andrew Saltarelli) has questions.
first tho, having followed the link, I should say I agree with Freddie. Also graeber's 'serendipitous' book tour makes him appear averagely loathsome, perhaps not the world-historical player he fancies himself.
Here is my problem with Occupy, and the enthusiasm it's generated among us dregs of the left: this glamorous notion of anarchism.
Okay, so let me just explain that 'anarchism' comes from a deep, deep human impulse. I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say that, for obvious and logical reasons, we find it very reasonable to conduct democracy in small groups: the 25 person band, the 400 strong summer gathering.
So it's not that anarchists are especially visionary, they're just loyal to their deepest human impulses. Great, i get it and share it. But someone please answer me this: Since the past 10,000 years did in fact happen, why do we pretend there is some potential alternative to the State, or centralized planning. As far as I can see, we can only hope to reconfigure it, make the sinews of the State more responsive to the needs and aspirations of the people (which includes nonhuman People too). Bioregionalism or some model like that, in other words.
Why, then, this ridiculous anti-historical utterly Romantic self-aggrandizing delusion on the Left that centralized government itself is the enemy that must be overthrown. I mean, awesome, if it gives you energy and stokes your age... but it's jejune.
That's my problem with Graeber and co., this entrenched myopia, this grandstanding appeal to the past, this easy ability to summon the ghosts of Tolstoy and Gandhi, because, fuck yeah, that should do it!
Are we so fatuous and self-impressed that we can't even articulate a political program the dude drinking beer at the bar, cursing his luck and his fortune but entirely deaf to this vague summons for 'nonviolent revolution', which is basically at this point, let's no kid ourselves, just a way for us Lefties to get our rocks off.
Anyway, open to persuasion, but resolutely doubtful than we are headed to anything other than horrific and dolorous collapse.
articulate a political program FOR the dude...
(sorry vow to proofread before the fact next time)
"As far as I can see, we can only hope to reconfigure it, make the sinews of the State more responsive to the needs and aspirations of the people ... but resolutely doubtful than we are headed to anything other than horrific and dolorous collapse."
Sounds like Obamian "hope" then.
I'm afraid I can't see where he said he was integral...?
"I was hardly the only Black Bloc veteran who took part in planning the initial strategy for Occupy Wall Street." for example...That says he was around since the beginning (and 'oldfag' in the contemporary argot), but not that he was the boss.
I mean you're right about the leadership thing...I just don't see how that relates to any of his points. Do you object to his piece on any substantive grounds?
this post completely refresh my mind.
Jcapan:
That's a little harsh. I think structural reform is possible to a certain extent, but it would take a leader and a movement far more passionate, canny, and committed than the execrable Obama and his simpering minions.
Personally, tho, I do cop to hopelessness. Just don't see much good happening down the road. It is too late in the day, the earth is too fucked, the people are too far from the wellsprings of their humanity. And frankly it has never been near adequately reckoned just how much soul vitality -- i.e. creative life-force energy whatever the fuck you want to call it -- has been lost since the Electronic Revolution transformed us into docile bots blinking at screens.
At any rate, I recognize that capitulation to fatalism, resignation, and despair is hardly a stirring battle cry. Oh well. It's just where I am. Any revolution churning on the horizon is probably not going to be nonviolent. I mean, there is the mood at an Occupy site, and there is the mood in the inner city: not quite the same thing.
One more thing. I learn from the New Yorker that Graeber -- who will soon be appearing at a "symposium" with Rebecca "I used to write decent books until I became the pom pom girl of the left" Solnit -- is the one who came up with the "We are the 99 percent" slogan.
I think the worst thing about it -- apart from its disingenuousness and completely arbitrary math -- is that it almost makes me sympathize with this puny little 1% being menaced by this enormous sweltering 99%. You can almost hear the future Martian historians asking, Geez, how did 99% of a populace become subjugated by 1%? Either that is one super amazing badass plutocratic elite or perhaps the numbers were fudged...perhaps the rot is a little more systemic...hmmm...
Here's an idea for a nonviolent revolution: maybe make your slogan NOT speak the language of statistics. Jesus, it just feels like amateur hour to me. I mean, should we throw the Sympopsia before or after the Revolution? Ha ha perhaps it is not only Emperors who go naked.
Thanks, Pokerstars.
“That's a little harsh.”
Sorry, all in good fun. The difference, of course, being that Obama sold hope to a flock gagging to believe in the gospels, all the while plotting a leadership roster intent on dismantling that hope in an effort to protect the status quo and assure their continued power/profit.
I was just struck by the brief ray of light peaking out of your despair-blanket.
I like this: “the Electronic Revolution transformed us into docile bots blinking at screens”
I always think of Cypher saying: “You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? [Takes a bite of steak] Ignorance is bliss.”
Re: violence, I’ve been abroad a long time, but in my experience it’s the mood in the hinterlands that would concern me.
Per the 99%, Howard Zinn was talking about this long before OWS started, but his interpretation is far more nuanced:
From the penultimate chapter in A People’s History, "The Coming Revolt of the Guards":
"The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased.
There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, lee-ways, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen, winning tickets in lotteries. There is none that disperses its controls more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media- none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.
One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another: small property owners against the propertyless, black against white, native-born against foreign-born, intellectuals and professionals against the uneducated and unskilled. These groups have resented one another and warred against one another with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country.
Against the reality of that desperate, bitter battle for resources made scarce by elite control, I am taking the liberty of uniting those 99 percent as "the people." I have been writing a history that attempts to represent their submerged, deflected, common interest. To emphasize the commonality of the 99 percent, to declare deep enmity of interest with the 1 percent, is to do exactly what the governments of the United States, and the wealthy elite allied to them-from the Founding Fathers to now-have tried their best to prevent. Madison feared a "majority faction" and hoped the new Constitution would control it. He and his colleagues began the Preamble to the Constitution with the words "We the people ...," pretending that the new government stood for everyone, and hoping that this myth, accepted as fact, would ensure "domestic tranquility."
Jcapan:
Thanks for the Zinn quote. A great book and a great man. Still not convinced about the efficacy of this 99% slogan, but I'd be happy to be proved otherwise.
Re violence: yes and no. Just lived in rural Montana for three years (before moving to Denver), so have some thoughts. Maybe another time, gotta run.
Graeber seems to be suggesting that Gandhi secretly approved of violence and was 'secretly' planning with violent factions. Ridiculous.
He also suggests that Gandhi, by not denouncing a murderer, and only the act, is somehow condoning the act. Is that right? My eyes are crossing with the idea folding in on itself.
Gandhi specifally stated that the act was reprehensible, and his lack of denouncing the confused individual cannot render the act less reprehensible.
I'd like to know if there are specific case of Gandhi denouncing a person of his gov't who was known for violent acts or tactics. I doubt that any such statement can be found... it was always about the act.... karma.
IMO, this lacks insight into non-violence and it is just the sort of adaptation of truth that proponents of the reprehensible grasp onto, and just the sort of thing that non-violence sets itself against.
Graeber misrepresented what Gandhi said.
See end of this comment.
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/1064379/44980650#c46
Also http://www.correntewire.com/concerning_violence_advocates_and_the_black_bloc_in_occupy#footnote2
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