[Peace-discuss] The Revolutiona ry Communist Party says.

[John W.]

Absolutely fascinating, Mort.  Excellent synthesis of ideas/action and
repudiation of academic "high theory".  One of the more interesting things
I've read on this list.

And no, you're not "getting in too deep".  :-)  Not at all.  You generally
have very sensible and thoughtful things to say.

John W.



On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 9:56 PM, Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu> wrote:

Just to add a bit to this conversation… Staughton Lynd was one of my heros
> at the time of the Vietnam war, speaking up at Yale. He has since devoted
> his life to working with/for laboring people in Ohio. --mkb
>
> *Wobblies and Zapatistas*
> by Staughton Lynd and Andrej Grubacic
>
> *1. Can you tell ZNet, please, what Wobblies and Zapatistas is about? What
> is it trying to communicate?*
>
> *Staughton:* The book is about the need for Marxists and anarchists to lay
> down their ideological weapons and create a single Left resistance to what
> capitalism is doing to the world. The hostility between the two traditions
> is a little like a feud between extended families handed down from
> generation to generation: Hatfields and McCoys in American history, or the
> families of Romeo and Juliet. In reality Marxism and anarchism should be
> like two hands, the one analyzing the structure of things, the other
> throwing up unending prefigurative initiatives. Neither tradition has been
> so successful that it can speak of the other with lofty dismissal or
> contempt. We need each other.
>
> *Andrej:* Our way of distancing ourselves from this Shakespearean
> relationship between anarchism and Marxism is by using the notion of direct
> action and accompaniment.  In so doing we arrive at a "Haymarket synthesis,"
> recently revived by the Zapatistas, a synthesis that we see emerging over
> and over again throughout American history. We start with the Haymarket
> anarchists and the so called "Chicago idea"; we go on to explore histories
> of such movements as the Industrial Workers of the World, Zapatistas, as
> well as individuals, such as Simone Weil or Edward Thompson, who sought a
> fusion between these two traditions. By accompaniment we mean a specific
> form of mutual aid and praxis where the activist and the oppressed person
> walk side by side, sharing bread, as the phrase goes, sharing specific
> knowledge and experience. We speak about a relation between direct action
> and theory. Both Staughton and myself are very weary of recent
> fashionable "high theory" that speaks in "multitudes," and that tends to
> be, well, incomprehensible; we advocate instead a "low theory," a theory
> that arises from practice, as well as what Staughton describes above as a
> structural analysis of things. We think that the new movement needs to be
> concerned with strategy and program, that it needs to develop a serious
> strategy and a serious program, that anarchists need to learn how to swim in
> the sea of the people, and that we need to do our best to re-create a truly
> non-sectarian community of struggle that would resemble the experience of
> mass working class movements such as the one of the Chicago anarchists who
> "invented a peculiar brand of socialism" of the sort that we advocate in the
> book.
>
>
> *2. Can you tell ZNet something about writing the book? Where does the
> content come from? What went into making the book what it is?*
>
> *Andrej:* Staughton came into my life quite unexpectedly. When I decided
> to move from Yugoslavia I was thinking about writing about some serious
> stuff that is now popular in academia, such as post-colonial theory or
> something of the sort. Meeting Staughton destroyed my academic career, and
> sent me back to a world of serious politics and intellectual engagement with
> the world outside of the library. Now, somewhat more seriously, my encounter
> with the fascinating life of Staughton Lynd came at the moment when I was
> trying to understand why the global movement, the so called anti-globalist
> movement, is in such a crisis. I thought that a conversation, or, rather, a
> series of conversations, between a youngish Balkan anarchist who organized
> for many years in zapatista-inspired direct action global movements, and a
> seasoned American revolutionary, influenced by Marxism, who has been part of
> every single major struggle in postwar American history, would be useful to
> younger activists. I had in mind Students for Democratic Society and the
> Industrial Workers of the World, both of whom were "reinvented" in recent
> years. Belgrade and Youngstown and much closer than they appear on the
> map. The bridge between the two crosses the Lacondonian jungle and bypasses
> respectable institutions of higher learning.
>
> *Staughton:* It was basically Andrej's idea and it was continually he who
> posed the next question, and the next. The form of the book brings us back
> to the fact that communication between human beings is basically a
> conversation. Think of the encounter between the white pacifist and the
> African American (James Earl Jones) designated to kill him in *Matewan*,
> Ignazio Silone's "Dialogue with Christina" in *Bread and Wine, *Marechal
> and Rosenthal in *Grand Illusion*, the inquiries of Socrates, the parables
> of Jesus.
>
>
> *3. What are your hopes for Wobblies and Zapatistas? What do you hope it
> will contribute or achieve politically? Given the effort and aspirations you
> have for the book, what will you deem to be a success? What would leave you
> happy about the whole undertaking? What would leave you wondering if it was
> worth all the time and effort?*
>
> *Staughton:* On the internet this morning (December 20, 2008) one reads of
> an Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at President Bush, of Israeli 12th
> graders refusing to be part of a military occupying the West Bank, of
> rank-and-file Greek workers occupying the offices of the trade union
> federation to prevent that bureaucratic organization from suppressing the
> spontaneous happenings in the streets and local town halls.  Such courageous
> acts need to be understood as something broader than the conscientious
> refusal of individuals to become part of the pattern of things intended  by
> last-stage capitalism and its creature, the state.  That broader resistance
> began with the "Basta!" (enough!) of the Zapatistas and with their idea of
> "mandar obediciendo":  those in positions of authority must govern in
> obedience to what Marcos calls "the below," that is, us.  We are united by
> affirmation of the "other world" envisioned by protesters at Seattle.
>
> There is a tradition in the United States started by Paine and carried
> forward by other working-class intellectuals like William Lloyd Garrison,
> Frederick Douglass, Albert Parsons (in his speech to the jury before being
> sentenced to death), and Eugene Debs, which says:  We are citizens of the
> world.  This, together with the horrors of World War II, is where the UN
> Declaration of Human Rights originated.
>
> *Andrej:* We need to declare Marxist vanguardism dead. Enough of
> colonialism and colonizers, of countries and of factories.  We need to
> discover new ways of doing politics. Accompaniment, as well as  an
> "internationalism of the heart," this beautiful tradition according to which
> "my country is the world," are good guiding concepts for the yet unexplored
> territory of an innovative revolutionary practice that brings together the
> historical experience of Bartolomeo Vanzzeti and Subcommandante Marcos, of
> Rosa Luxemburg and indigenous Bolivia. We hope that our book might be a
> contribution to a serious discussion about building a movement rooted in the
> experience of ordinary people, and not the one of a Marxist or anarchist
> "professoriat," a movement that refuses to "seize" or be seized by the power
> of the State, a movement that is horizontal and organized from below.
>
> *Information about the book and about the authors*
>
> *Wobblies and Zapatistas *offers the reader an encounter between two
> generations and two traditions. Andrej Grubacic is an anarchist from the
> Balkans. Staughton Lynd is a lifelong pacifist, influenced by Marxism. They
> meet in dialogue in an effort to bring together the anarchist and Marxist
> traditions, to discuss the writing of history by those who make it, and to
> remind us of the idea that "my country is the world." Encompassing a Left
> libertarian perspective and an emphatically activist standpoint, these
> conversations are meant to be read in the clubs and affinity groups of the
> new Movement.
>
> The authors accompany us on a journey through modern revolutions, direct
> actions, anti-globalist counter summits, Freedom Schools, Zapatista
> cooperatives, Haymarket and Petrograd, Hanoi and Belgrade,  'intentional'
> communities, wildcat strikes, early Protestant communities, Native American
> democratic practices, the Workers' Solidarity Club of Youngstown, occupied
> factories, self-organized councils and soviets, the lives of forgotten
> revolutionaries, Quaker meetings, antiwar movements, and prison rebellions.
> Neglected and forgotten moments of interracial self-activity are brought to
> light. The book invites the attention of readers who believe that a better
> world, on the other side of capitalism and state bureaucracy, may indeed be
> possible.
>
> *Reviews:*
>
> *"There's no doubt that we've lost much of our history. It's also very
> clear that those in power in this country like it that way. Here's a book
> that shows us why. It demonstrates not only that another world is possible,
> but that it already exists, has existed, and shows an endless potential to
> burst through the artificial walls and divisions that currently imprison us.
> An exquisite contribution to the literature of human freedom, and coming not
> a moment too soon."**
> *--David Graeber, author of *Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology *and *Direct
> Action: An Ethnography*
>
> *"In these desperate, often tragic, times, we look backward, forward, even
> to our dreams to be able to keep imagining a world in which justice may be
> part of more people's lives. We look to lives lived before ours, to stories
> and their meanings, to strategies culled from the worlds of politics or
> ancient wisdoms. We look in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and here in
> the United States. We are willing to entertain any new idea or revamped
> strategy. Staughton Lynd's life and work put him in a unique position to
> seek out someone like Grubacic, ask the pertinent questions, and tell the
> meaningful stories. Grubacic's experience perfectly compliments Lynd's. Here
> we have the best of a non-dogmatic Marxism listening to a most creative and
> humane anarchism. But this book is never weighted down by unforgiving
> theory. Just the opposite: it is a series of conversations where the reader
> feels fully present. It provides a marvelous framework for enriching the
> conversation that's never really stopped: about how we may make this world a
> better place."**
> * --Margaret Randall, author of *Sandino's Daughters*, *When I Look Into
> the Mirror and See You*, and *Narrative of Power*
>
> *About the Authors:*
>
> Staughton Lynd taught American history at Spelman College and Yale
> University. He was director of Freedom Schools in the 1964 Mississippi
> Freedom Summer. An early leader of the movement against the Vietnam War, he
> was blacklisted and unable to continue as an academic. He then became a
> lawyer, and in this capacity has assisted rank-and-file workers and
> prisoners for the past thirty years. He has written, edited, or co-edited
> with his wife Alice Lynd more than a dozen books.
>
> Andrej Grubacic is a dissident from the Balkans. A radical historian and
> sociologist, he is the author of *Globalization and Refusal* and the
> forthcoming titles: *Hidden History of American Democracy* and *The
> Staughton Lynd Reader*. A fellow traveler of Zapatista-inspired direct
> action movements, in particular Peoples' Global Action, and a co-founder of
> Global Balkans Network and Balkan *Z Magazine*, he is a visiting professor
> of sociology at the University of San Francisco.
>
>
> People through the ages have imagined what they conceive of as a better
> world or system of governance. In working for their ideals they have (often)
> kept things from even getting worse, and not infrequently have improved the
> general lot and illuminated the problems of societal existence.. I'll let
> you-all think of examples. Saying that nothing can be constructively done
> means that it is more likely that nothing will get done. Nirvana may be
> illusory, but its a good (useful) exercise to conceive of it.. Society needs
> its motivations, hope. .
>
> I think I'm getting in too deep… --mkb
>
>
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