Anarchist Black Cat

Comrade i don't mean 'out-competed' - i mean community buy-outs. Like transferring the ownership of a block of flats from the council or a private landlord to the tenants themselves. Obviously for-profit entities like supermarkets are not a part of this; but a food buying coop might be an option.

Now please understand - and this really is the CRUX of our discussion i think - that this is not being put forward as communism! Its being put forward as a way to devolve power into workers hands to be run democratically, and build up their power in the path towards communism. Of course a cooperative housing block or cooperative service provider would co-exist with capitalism, i'm not saying they represent its overthrow. I'm talking about building up power *under* capitalism.

On a kind of related point - i've always seen the power of the workers in the late 1970's when they were organised into huge unions in nationalised industries, as being far greater than pretty much any other time in this country. I've never really been convinced otherwise. I think the people who in the 90's were like 'wahey, the reformist unions are destroyed, now we'll have proper struggle' have been proper humiliated.

DU, what do you see coming out of this demo? It's not as if it's going to win any of the concessions you're calling for.

Just a wider conversion funnel.

Visibility of indymedia Scotland, contacts, relationships, recruits to various organisations further down the line. Basically in that order.

When someone posted on indymedia scotland that there was a thread discussing the protest i was dreading reading it, and many of my fears were realised!

I am one of the three people who organised this demonstration, so throw rotten fruit in my direction please. It was the first protest attempting to appeal to non-activists we had ever done (I have organised lots of direct action, black bloc, blockades, tripods, lock-ons, banner drops etc.; the other two havnae organised anything much in the way of political protest before). Here is what we wanted to happen, and here is what largely did happen.

Aims

We wanted a demo that wasnt called or organised or dominated by the SWP.
We pitched it at ordinary people who are worried about their jobs, repossessions, pensions etc.
Get the protest in the press.
We wanted lots of people to come, no matter what their political beliefs, to express their frustration at the crisis/bailout.
Publicise Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty.
We did not want a demo where crusty anarchists, and ultra-leftists were the only ones who turned up.

Method

We wrote a flyer to encourage people to come along, with populist rhetoric, trying to get people annoyed at how 500bn is being spent, but their houses are still being repossessed etc. We figured that people would not be so interested in ultra-left rhetoric, so didnt use it.
A large amount of flyposting, similar tone and rhetoric to the flyer.
Sent round political email lists etc.

Results?

50 people turned out. 40 of which were the usual suspects.
No SWP turned out.
Some 10 'ordinary people' came
Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty member spoke, and encouraged people to join the organisation, to organise on issues such as repossession and and to join the solidarity union to resist sheriff officers evicting you or helping the utility companies turning off your electricity this winter. 3 people joined ECAP as a result.
Two paragraph article in the evening news/scotsman paper.

Our Conclusions

A largely unsuccessful demonstration.
We thought that people would want to express some ill feeling about the bailout/crisis. However, people probably are not bothered by the recession or the bailout as much as we thought, everyone apart from the left seem to think the government is not doing too bad a job.
The demo didnt appeal to people - perhaps we didnt find the issues in the crisis/bailout that people were worried about.
Perhaps the demo seemed pointless - would it really achieve anything to turn up to a rally?
From chatting to people, there seemed to be little interest in further protest on this issue in edinburgh at this time.
We should probably have chosen a saturday,
And should probably wait til the recession bites before attempting another demo.
We are going to organise public-speaking workshops, to ensure that we can speak confidently. No-one in Edinburgh could stand up and speak to a crowd of people confidently at this stage, and we want to change this fact, and not leave it to the SWP or SSP.
Also, we figured that our demo was only about as unsuccessful as the other SWP ones that were organised. They only had their membership turn up at the demos.

So...

I would quite like to discuss practical and pragmatic things in this thread, like how to pitch libertarian politics at 'the person in the street', without the ultra-left symbolism and rhetoric that will, in my view, put people off. How to maximise the popular relevance and interest in a protest. How to judge if your protest-idea is one that appeals to people outside the anarcho-subculture. etc. How to break out of the anarcho-ghetto or whatever (In Edinburgh we are very endogamous). Maybe even a document could come out of this, like a "How to" guide.

However, perhaps internet forums are inherently incapable of respectful and supportive discussion, and we needn't bother.

Solidarity.

hopefully not this one mate

I think the issue here is that people in general see the bailout as necessary and unavoidable to reduce the impact of the crash. 'People' here includes a number of left wing economic commentators. So a protest that is too tied to the bailout rather than opposition to the cuts won't appear to be useful.

The experience in Ireland where the cuts are being rolled out a lot faster is that people are willing to mobilise in great numbers at very short notice in response to cuts and when called out by what they see as their organisations (Age Action in one case, Student Unions in the other). But attendance at left organised 'crisis' meetings (including our own) is very small.

I'd suggest that rather than initiate our own protests the key thing is to be ready for whatever ones are called by mass organisations. And that rather then expecting people to 'protest capitalism' (and really the argument on this thread was really one about the correct slogans to do this around) we should use these mobilisations to argue for a linkage between individual struggles (through a common 'tax the rich' slogan across them) and for an anti-capitalist understanding of the overall situation.

To be fair we are also in many of the mass organisations, and may also be the ones calling for action there too.

There's going to be a public meeting on the financial crisis in Maryhill called by the Burgh Angel and the IWW, and more than likely it will attract the support the STO, GRN, Variant et al, and is going to be heavily billed. I expect turnout to that will be a bit higher, cos it'll be hot button issues we'll be getting people along for.

Saying that 50 ain't bad for under 5k fliers, and two weeks notice. Marketing people have a rate of return at about 1 in 1000, with the differene between events of larger size being questions of immaterial 'buzz' and critical mass. There was some buzz about this demo (I know half a dozen Glasgow people who wanted to go but couldn't cos it was a Friday evening after work in another city). If it had been held on Saturday it would have attracted more people, but to be honest some recruits and a prass article and I'd be happy with that frankly. Some good work I'd say.

well if you want housing co-ops, demand them. i don't know enough about them to know the benefits/pitfalls and therefore can't offer an opinion on the merits of such a demand. but any movement which could force such a concession is completely independent of the formal ownership of the banks, so i'm really not sure what it has to do with the topic at hand.


Well it's not being put forward at all, you've only now on page 5 articulated this demand, which was nowhere to be seen in the original call-out, and has nothing to do with nationalised banks. I don't know if i need to get this tatooed on my forehead, but i am not demanding 'communism now!' encouraging workers to make links accross union/sector boundries and make decisions in mass assemblies with mandated/recallable delegates isn't "being put forward as communism" either, it's being put forward as consistent with communist politics, as opposed proposing to state policies (as defined above).


I think you should consider cause and effect here, are you saying unionisation and nationalisation cause class struggle? Or was class struggle in the 70s a response to the material conditions of the 70s, simply expressing itself partly through the institutions of the day? my understanding is that there was massive extra-union activity in the 70s, i've been meaning to read up more, e.g. this - which suggests the primacy of struggle as opposed to institutionalised forms.

In any event I don't know anyone who actually celebrates the decline of the unions, despite being part of what i believe you consider the ultra-left (e.g. i haven't heard this from members of aufheben or endnotes i've worked with, and as you know several members of the libcom collective are shop stewards, without dropping a communist understanding that the unions are ultimately mediators of class struggle not our weapons in it). I'm certainly not clebrating the decline of the unions. This is not to say there are not opportunities in non-unionised workplaces either.

I'll reply to Jon's post properly below; quickly, thanks for clarifying your goals etc.

minorly edited for clarity

Then i hope you take the criticism constructively, i'm really not trying to have a go. Many of my criticisms on this thread have been at Dundee, Bill Stickers & AndrewF's subsequently expressed politics as opposed to the original call-out itself; my criticisms of that are there on page 1.


I think this is a laudable aim, too much lefty propaganda is aimed at other politicos, using lefty jargon etc. even if you do want to persuade other politicos, you can still do so in plain english.


Many of these things i don't disagree with. as i said in my original post...

so my problem was with the populism obscuring the class content, or in my opinion undermining it with leftist rhetoric. i'm certainly not calling for ultra-leftist rhetoric either; clarity and comprehensibility is crucial.

To be clear, i am not using populism to mean 'writing for a mass audience', which i am in favour of. i mean 'pandering to the perceived pre-existing ideas of a mass audience instead of putting forward the things you actually believe' - in this case pandering to leftist shibboleths of 'taxpayers money', identifying our interests with the state etc.


this is the discussion i've been calling for for several pages! Clearly we agree the political content of propaganda is in fact important, that's a start. Nobody anywhere on this thread has advocated "ultra-left symbolism and rhetoric" - unless you mean being critical of nationalisation, which seems to me a given of the non-statist left. Of course a practical and pragmatic discussion of how to spread communist ideas cannot expect to avoid political discussion either, nor should we be afraid of it.


I think a mentality of attracting people to your protest is a characteristic of the anarcho-subculture. I think what's important is building the confidence, power and self-organisation of the class, which may then of course express itself in protests, amongst other things. Beyond propaganda encouraging the tactics i've advocated here, perhaps a network of militant workers organised around practical communist aims & principles (promoting the means of struggle advocated in Tea Break say). I don't know if we're in a position to set such a thing up, or only advocate for it. i think it would be a positive development.

oh my goodness, sensible debate on an internet forum. how nice

i've just been redirected here from IM Scotland, so you can imagine my relief

like i was saying on IMC, i think the lack of noticeable financial hardship has more to do with the low turnout than anything else, when people start losing their jobs, houses and pensions i imagine things might just start heating up a little

that's all i've got to say if i don't want to descend into a stream of conciousness rant

hb

for everyones information, a parallel thread has been started here to discuss the question of nationalisation per se.

I don't think this is the real diagreement here.

I think this has been a pretty all over the place thread with a number of different debates happening.
1. The discussion about how we should discuss things
2. The discussion about the bail out and its significance
3. The discussion about what propaganda should say
and most importantly
4. The discussion about what if any demands should be made

This last one involves a number of disagreements
1. How do you formulate communist demands that are short of communism
2. What is the content of those demands
3. How do you make those demands

And the last three questions, I think the first one is the basis of the difference between me and JK. As for the second two, I don't really see any benefit coming from demanding micro-credit like DU. So I'd disagree with him there. And I'd also agree with Andrew that I think demos like this one are a bit silly in that really we should be teaching ourselves about what the crisis is and making those arguments in mass organisations when they take action. I think actions like this one and the one in London are just stunts that can't really achieve much. Although, there's nothing wrong with stunts per say.

in essence i think communist demands are concrete material demands of capital, whereas concerning ourselves with how capital manages these demands is not the concern of communists. i've elaborated my thoughts on this on the nationalisation thread.

I also think

is also an important one, but perhaps that's because i'm currently mandated to write a leaflet to distribute at a similar demo on saturday. that said, given our minority status in the wider class i think propaganda is neccessarily one of our main forms of activity, so we should try and do it well. putting communist demands and analysis in plain english isn't easy, so i think it's worth discussing.

well calls for a constructive discussion killed the thread

as promised, here's the main text of a leaflet brighton solfed came up with for distribution on a similar demo:

This thread just came up in a discussion elsewhere and Joseph was complaining that no one had answered his final post above with the leaflet text. So here goes.

This text and the one that started the thread are not comparable. This one is aimed at convincing people who have already decided to take a particular action (go on a demonstration) that capitalism itself is bad. I've no problem with that. In passing I'd note that it really doesn't say anything about where to go with that idea beyond 'organise amongst ourselves', strikes and protests, pretty much what everyone else on the left was saying.

The leaflet that started the thread however is trying to do something very different. It's trying to convince people why they should take part in a demonstration through being very specific about the conditions people are facing and what immediate alternatives might be. I've no problem with that beyond what I noted in the original thread.

The problem is with JK's apparent idea that his leaflet or a variation of it is all that was needed for both tasks and that therefore one can be counter posed to the other. This pretty much runs against all my experiences of trying to get people to take part in protests - abstract arguments about capitalism being bad etc never seem to mobilize anyone outside of say mobilizations of activists for summit protests. Protests (or indeed strikes) pull people in because they offer immediate solutions to immediate problems.