Feature: Globalization & Dialectics
May 2001

'We ignore ideas at our own risk'

Tom Rainey delivered this talk at The Anti-Capitalist Forum in Washington DC, "What Are We fighting for? Where is the movement going?"

The questions which make up the title of this forum are questions that face all activists at some point. I was a high school student in the '80s. I didn't really understand the machinations behind the Sabra-Shatila massacre at a refugee camp in Lebanon at the time, though it had a profound impact on me. It wasn't long before I sought out and joined the first movement I could find. I became very active in an anti-nuclear weapons group in Chicago.

I decided I was a pacifist. I made a career out of civil disobedience and then direct action for five years. Then I began to identify with the revolutionaries in El Salvador and Nicaragua. I left my pacifism behind.

I expected that all the organizing and demonstrations and direct action would naturally lead to more and more people joining until there were so many people in the streets that the government would be forced to change and we would win.

But as time went on I saw movements come and go. They didn't get bigger in direct relation to how much work my fellow organizers and I put in. I started to recognize the pattern.

I heard the same things in every movement as it was being born: "We need to just organize around what we are against and not have debates about history, or philosophy. We need to organize now and then we can talk about that later."

The ideas of Marxist-Humanism began to mean something to me. In 1990, in face of the coming war in the Persian Gulf, I helped organize some of the largest mass meetings I had ever seen. Hundreds of students who had never been activists wanted to stop the war. I spoke out often to challenge my fellow anti-war youth to deepen their activism and challenge the very nature of our society which values oil over human life; to make the goal a new society that doesn't go to war for oil. That movement grew faster and collapsed around the nation more quickly than anything I had seen. It could not survive the simple ideological assault of yellow ribbons and "support our troops."

Most people come to the movement with a big concept, with great idealism. Usually this idealism is channeled into "organizing"--which generally means pragmatism, which sees people as numbers to be accumulated as in "we need to get as many people out at the demonstration as possible." Pragmatism is the dominant ideology of current society to such an extent that people see it as natural or "common sense." It can be a dead end if it is not challenged. This is an element of what dialectics is: movement through contradiction.

The goal I've chosen is a totally new society. Blueprints by intellectuals don't work, whether it's a vanguard party, decentralized federated communities, or bio-regionalism. If it comes out of the heads of just a few, then it is not true creativity, and it won't elicit the creativity of the masses of people. The very act of masses taking control of their lives and creating a new social organization in free association is what revolution is. The form in which this will happen cannot be confined within the plans of a small group.

I'm working for the concept of full freedom. Yes, it's a tall order, but if we're going to fight, why not go for the whole thing? All these little "baby step" reforms, and "we've got to start somewhere" approaches just don't capture people's imagination. This is often confused with apathy. What is full freedom? That's what activists should be discussing in the same meetings where strategy and tactics usually dominate.

The new generation inherits a world shaped by revolutions that turned into their opposite and failed movements. It's a heavy ideological weight that can be seen in apathy, self-limiting ideas, and lack of patience seen in the speed with which elements of the anti-globalization movement went to adventurist confrontations with police.

The activist movement always comes back for many good reasons, both objective and subjective. People want something better, but often there is no continuity--or learning from the past to break out of the cycle. There is a hidden history and a battle for its meaning. At the same time, I see a progression and maturity in the new movement that in many ways is far ahead of where the '80s movement hit a dead end. There is a global perspective; the student battle against sweatshop labor has led to relationships between students and workers. There are hundreds of militant anti-racist organizations, targeting police brutality and the prison system. There is a search for new forms of organization and self-critique. I hear youth with a very developed sense of the contradictions they face. Throughout is an open confrontation with capitalism itself which was very rare in the '80s.

The critique of capitalism is often watered down and confused with a collection of symptoms or phenomena. To see through them is to see the sweatshop workers and prisoners as subjects of their own liberation, not victims. The Kensington Welfare Rights Union in Philadelphia is a working example of this kind of subjectivity in the relationship between intellectuals and workers organizing together.

I'm trying to make the case for projecting an absolute Idea. To elicit the great creativity of the "people out there" we need to go big. Reform is so old and people know deep down that it doesn't work. It's time to challenge ourselves to choose between human power or capital power. Conservatives believe people can't organize themselves, so they need a central controlling institution. Idealists recognize the potential for freely associated labor and self organization to rip up capitalism at the root and create something better. But this doen't mean that intellectuals or organizers just sit around and wait and then jump on for the ride. They have the responsibility to challenge people to deepen their opposition, to get to the meaning in thought and in history. Intellectuals can help a movement speak to itself.

You say we already know what ends we want. Are you sure? Philosophy is a question of life and death. Many anarchists who joined revolutionary forces to fight a common enemy also thought theory wasn't necessary. They ended up dead at the hands of their "comrades" once the common enemy was defeated. You should look into how many anarchists were killed by Mao or Castro or in Spain during the Civil War by Stalinists whom they united with for pragmatic reasons.

Do you ever wonder where all the people who were your age ten years ago are? They burned out. What makes you think you won't burn out on activism alone, too? You say no to just talking about philosophy as if it's bringing down the movement. Philosophy is not the problem in today's movement. Relying on activity alone is. What we're doing is not working. The quality of life, labor, the environment has plummeted. Capitalism has been kicking our ass for 30 years. You ignore ideas at your own risk.

Feature: Globalization & Dialectics May 2001

'We ignore ideas at our own risk'

Feature: Globalization & Dialectics
May 2001