The Sojourner Truth Organization: Notes Toward a History

Help Wanted

Administrator — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:27:49 +0000

Hello out there to my small stable of interested readers. I’m looking for a little help from someone with a lot of time on their hands. I have accumulated several recordings of interviews with former members of STO and other folks who were around the scene, and I want to get them transcribed. I don’t have much to offer in way of compensation, other than grateful acknowledgement in the mythical book I still believe will emerge from my never-ending project. But anyone interested in doing some transcription should submit a comment below and I will be in touch. Thanks in advance!

Big Flame

Administrator — Fri, 22 May 2009 20:25:52 +0000

Just a quick note to alert people to a wonderful new website devoted to the historical memory of the English revolutionary group Big Flame. The site functions as something of a combination of this blog and the STO web archive, so it includes both original documents (mostly in PDF format) and reflections on the group’s history. They were also kind enough to give STO a big shout-out, including a favorable (and forgiving) reference to my under-tended blog. Anyway, check it out.

Otherwise, still plugging away on my manuscript, but with a few side-projects taking up my time. I’ll talk about a couple of those side projects in future posts here.

Althusser

Administrator — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:49:07 +0000

I recently received the following document, a lengthy critique of the political philosophy of Louis Althusser, from Don Hamerquist, founding and long-time member of STO. Hamerquist was inspired by some recent threads at the Kasama website to rework some old notes on the Althusser collection For Marx, notes that he had originally produced in the process of preparing the Dialectics curriculum and other political education classes put together by STO, beginning in the late 1970s. The primary thrust of Hamerquist’s critique, it seems to me after an initial reading, is that Althusser’s analysis of Marxist philosophy is fatally compromised by his attachment to A) an enforced distinction between the "ideological" and "scientific" periods of Marx’s writings, and B) a party-based model of revolutionary theory built around an ahistorical understanding of Lenin’s What is to be Done as Communist gospel. Hamerquist offers alternative readings of both Marx and Lenin on the relevant points, and overall encourages contemporary revolutionaries to rethink our traditional conceptions of theory and practice. Additionally (and what initially made the piece appropriate for this blog), Hamerquist offers substantial insight into the origins and development of some key themes in STO’s intellectual outlook, especially relating to the theory of dual consciousness and the analysis of contradictions and crisis within capitalism. (It is also worth noting that Hamerquist published a much earlier piece on Althusser in issue #4 (1978) of Urgent Tasks, STO’s political journal.) While Hamerquist’s analysis emerges from within the Leninist framework, I believe there is much here that will benefit 21st century revolutionary anarchism as well. I am happy to post this contribution to a needed discussion, and both Hamerquist and I encourage discussion of this piece here and elsewhere, in both the virtual and the real world. Please let us know what you think.

* * *

Althusser Comments

Don Hamerquist

One skeptical participant commented on the recent Kasama website discussion of Althusser’s impact on Avakian’s theoretical posture as follows:

“Althusser and Avakian do not matter much.”

To the contrary, I think that both “matter” a good deal, although in different ways. However, in the case of Althusser, my appreciation has some different content than what I’ve seen expressed in these discussions.

I encountered Althusser when the English translation of his essay on Contradiction and Overdetermination was published in the mid 60s. For myself and other young and naïve dissidents in the CPUSA, Althusser seemed to provide some hope for a theoretical basis for a revolutionary reorientation and reunification of the international communist movement, rectifying the Sino/Soviet split and the emerging differences within the Soviet bloc of parties that eventually culminated in the twin stale farts of Brezhnevism and Euro-communism.
The essay broke with the mind numbing stupidities that had dominated Soviet Marxism for the previous few decades and had sufficient intellectual rigor and vigor to defend itself inside and outside of the cramped party framework from which it originated. It challenged simplistic economic reductionism and historical determinism, suggesting a framework for analysis and for the development of strategy that was more than a repetition of clichés and unsupported assumptions. In doing this it brought into question the “inevitable victory of the socialist camp” through peaceful competition, parliamentarianism, and related reformist processes – none of which entailed or involved revolution.

One of the impacts of the Soviet domination of the international movement in the prior decades was the cloistering and sanitizing of important aspects of revolutionary theory and the relevant intellectual history. The Soviet identified communist parties actively discouraged any study of primary writings in the communist tradition – specifically Capital – and opposed any attempts to place major theoretical contributions and debates into their actual historical context. Instead, a list of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ authors, a few sanctioned pieces from Engels, Marx, and Lenin, and some terrible attempts at summarizations and popularizations from house intellectuals were presented as a finished and closed scientific system with simple lessons to be internalized and obeyed – but with nothing that challenged or was meant to be challenged.

The first, very inadequate English translation of Gramsci’s Modern Prince dated from the fifties, but for all practical purposes he was unknown in this country. When Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks were highly praised in Contradiction and Overdetermination, we took note. The Soviets had prevented the publication and distribution of Marx’s Grundrisse, but the For Marx collection relied heavily on the 1857 Introduction and even more on his critical assessment of the “Early Writings” which also had not been generally available in this country. Important elements of Lenin’s writing - significantly the Philosophical Notebooks - weren’t available to us until the end of the sixties. Althusser testified to their existence before we knew of anything but “Materialism and Empiro-Criticism”.

In 1968, a group of us in the C.P.U.S.A. were disciplined by the National Board and a little later I was put on trial before the National Committee for “factionalism”. A number of issues were involved, one of which related indirectly to Althusser. We were charged with engaging in “horizontal” discussions within the party and opening up those discussions to individuals and groupings outside of the party. (The historical precedents for this form of discipline in the Communist movement stretch back to the 10^th Congress of the CPSU, but it was pretty much unknown before that time. d.h.) Our particular “factional” discussions centered around a document that challenged the Party’s program which was then in a draft form. We incorporated a number of positions from Contradiction and Overdetermination - also from Gramsci – in a very tentative and inadequate alternative to the party draft’s economist and reformist, but also thoroughly sectarian and anti-intellectual, “path to socialism”.

Althusser quickly became something of a political disappointment. When revolutionary potentials around the world were becoming apparent and mass insurgencies erupted in his own country; when Soviet actions with respect to Vietnam, Cuba, and Czechoslovakia were patently counter revolutionary, Althusser confined himself to feeble protests within the decrepit, corrupt and conservative structure of official ‘communism’. Even his opposition to the Euro-communist conciliation of liberalism and social democracy was weakened by its encapsulization within a neo-Stalinist position in the French C.P. I’m sure many others have noticed the impact of these circumstances on his theoretical essays. Consider his attempts to reconcile his “theoretical anti-humanism” with the laughable Soviet claim at the 22^nd Congress of the CPSU that they had moved from a class dictatorship to “socialist humanism”. (For Marx, p. 222) Consider his attempt, some years later, to find revolutionary relevance in the 22^nd Congress of the French Communist Party. (I remember this as a stand alone article in New Left Review. d.h.) Althusser’s personal epistemological break (I use the term in the STO sense, not his) was so protracted and so late in the day that it was hard to take seriously, and the discussion of his theoretical contributions suffered accordingly.

All of this was happening for us in the late sixties and early seventies when many circumstances combined to make revolution look more imminent than it proved to be and theoretical inquiry less relevant than it always is. A number of radicals, who were inclined towards a workerist anti-intellectualism in any case, concluded that Althusser’s difficult theoretical arguments could be discounted and avoided because of their political origin and continuing identification with politics that had lost revolutionary relevance. That position was wrong then and it is wrong now. Althusser was a significant thinker with arguments that remain relevant to the conception of capitalism as a social formation and to the development of a revolutionary opposition to it. If the underlying issues he confronted are examined critically, his work still contains important and useful insights and advances. On the other hand, if this work and the conclusions drawn from it are either enshrined or, alternatively, regarded as historic curiosities, the left will certainly suffer for it.

I’m sure that I haven’t seen everything that’s been included in these Kasama discussions, but what I have seen is short on a critical treatment of Althusser’s basic positions and frequently appears to discount the possibility of a Marxist theoretical position that is opposed to Althusser’s, but is neither dumb nor liberal. Maybe I’m wrong about this and I would certainly be willing to be corrected. Despite full knowledge that I don’t have Althusser’s intimidating grasp of the intellectual terrain, and many qualms because his arguments are so dense and complex that I have never been completely sure that I have a good handle on them, I’d like to indicate where I think Althusser made important mistakes, mistakes that are not only important for “Theory”, but also for current issues of revolutionary strategy.

Let me be clear about some limitations from the outset. What I’m writing here is heavily based on old material taken from numerous discussions and educationals in and around STO more a quarter century ago and only slightly updated by corrections and clarifications made possible by the passage of time. I’m going to restrict what I write to Althusser’s collection, “For Marx”. I’ve lost my copies of his two following books, “Reading Capital” and “Lenin and Philosophy”, years ago and, lacking the energy to dig up replacements, I will only make general references to them. I also haven’t read Althusser’s later works, specifically the essay on Machiavelli which Negri (Empire, p. 63) describes in ways that seem to indicate it departs significantly from his focus in For Marx. Finally, I’m sure that there is a substantial body of both academic and left discussion which has not bothered me to date, and I will resist temptation to kick Zizek for his essay on Mao, which, displaying his trademark arrogance and self-important glibness, incorporates big chunks of Althusser without giving credit.

Revolutionary Science

Althusser’s overriding concern is with the establishment and defense of Marxism as a science that is productive of valid knowledge of objective social reality:

“Indeed, in conformity with the tradition constantly reiterated by the classics of Marxism, we may claim that Marx established a new science: the science of the history of “social formations’”. (For Marx, p. 13)
“…we had been made to treat science, a status claimed by every page of Marx, as merely the first-comer among ideologies.” (For Marx, p. 22)

Not only does Althusser repeatedly make such arguments, he makes it clear that advancing this particular conception of Marxism is the focal point of his political and intellectual life.

There is no doubt that the conception of Marxism (or Marxism/Leninism) as a determinate science of history and social formations has dominated the communist movement, even in instances where the ‘Marxism’ that was being advanced and embraced was an immense leap of faith short of scientific. It is also true that a good case can be made that Marx viewed his own work as an expansion of science to the study of capitalist society. However, this is not the only possible approach to theoretical Marxism.

I personally don’t identify revolutionary theory with this conception of science and consequently I appreciate the very elements in Marx that Althusser discards as ‘pre-Marxist’ – ‘Hegelian…Feuerbachian…humanist’. To illustrate where and how this makes an immediate difference, I’m immediately distrustful of any Marxist or any Marxism that dismisses the 1845 Theses on Feuerbach as Althusser does:

“…deceptively transparent theses that are really riddles…” … “…brief sparks…”, when we know that, “…a spark dazzles rather than illuminates”. (For Marx, p. 36)

And Althusser goes further, questioning the, “…famous (11^th) Thesis on Feuerbach which, in theoretically ambiguous words, counterposes the transformation of the world to its interpretation. It was, and always will be, only a short step from here to theoretical pragmatism.” (For Marx p. 28)

Following Gramsci’s prison-dictated language designating communist theory as the “philosophy of praxis”, I find a more useful approach to Marx emphasizes the contributions to a critique of capitalist civilization and to development of a revolutionary praxis for a social movement that can “move beyond” (I avoid the aufhebung for the moment. d.h.) the capitalist era of human pre-history. In this conception, the “riddles” of the Theses on Feuerbach, and particularly the injunction to organized action in the 11^th, are the primary foundational elements of Marxism. To repeat, this is not the predominant view in the Marxist intellectual tradition and it certainly has not been the position of the international communist movement. However, given the troubles that have beset both, it’s a stance that might find a little more support at present.

Althusser goes beyond the claim that Marx “discovered” and explicated the main principles of a science of history. He asserts that by applying this Marxist science and scientific method (or ‘Theory’ as he terms it) to the entirety of Marx’s intellectual production, he can draw a sharp line between the portion of Marx’s body of work which is genuinely Marxist and that which is something else (less? d.h.). In this way he believes he can delimit a coherent system which excludes a range of pre- or anti- Marxist elements within the output of Marx himself. So Althusser states in one typical formulation:

“…the application of Marxist theory to Marx himself appears to be the absolute precondition of an understanding of Marx and at the same time as the precondition even of the constitution and development of Marxist philosophy, so much is clear.” (FM, p.38)

It’s never been that “clear” to me, and Althusser’s attempts to explain why the underlying logic in this position is not circular have never persuaded me either.

With no intention of putting forth an alternative attempt to make Marxism a coherent system, I’d like to run through some problems involved in central Althusserian propositions and arguments. To some extent this is unfair considering the nearly half century of rapid and major changes to the ‘current conjuncture’ where Althusser self consciously places himself. However, while the changes in circumstances might make some mistakes of the past more obvious, the path ahead is still not that clear and there is a definite potential to repeat old mistakes in slightly altered forms. Some unfairness to a dead communist is not that high a price to avoid such pitfalls.

Beginning this discussion poses a chicken and egg problem which will plague the rest of what I will write. Which of the central Althusserian notions; overdetermination, theoretical practice, epistemological break, the rejection of the Hegelian aufhebung, should be considered first, when they are all interconnected? I’ve decided to begin with “overdetermination”. This will create some problems when unexplained definitions of the other concepts get involved in the argument. I’ll try to note these issues as I move along.

Overdetermination

The Althusserian concept of overdetermination was developed as a challenge to economic determinism and centers around his critical analysis of Engel’s well known letter (Engels to Bloch, 9/21/1890) that argues that historical change is ultimately determined through a process in which, “…the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary”… in the famous - ‘last instance’.

Althusser’s central text on this question is the essay, Contradiction and Overdetermination and its Appendix. (For Marx, pp. 89-127). The first step in his response to Engel’s slightly more sophisticated variant of economic determinism is contained in the horribly long sentence advancing the conception of the “overdetermination of the main contradiction”. (For Marx, p. 100-101). His second step concludes that:

“From the first moment to the last, the lonely hour of the ‘last instance’ never comes”. (For Marx, p. 113).

To wrap up the logic of the argument, in the appendix to the essay (For Marx, p. 117-127), Althusser demonstrates that Engel’s description of the relationship between superstructure and infrastructure leaves the impact of the superstructural contradictions inherently indeterminate and thus cannot provide a properly concrete explanation of any historical event.

This is the very best of Althusser in my opinion. When its implications are elaborated, the argument devastates the fatalistic, essentially “imbecilic” (Gramsci’s term d.h.) belief in the historical necessity of working class triumph through a mystical, but none the less inexorable, working out of the contradiction between the forces and relations of production. Althusser directs proper attention to the irreducible complexity of social formations, and the - equally irreducible - effectiveness of the multitude of contradictory elements within capitalist superstructures on the development of the class struggle towards a revolutionary rupture.

However, I think that he ultimately misunderstands the contradictory relationship between forces and relations of social production in the infrastructure of capitalist society, and that he underestimates the a-symmetrical character of the interaction between the infrastructure and the various contradictory elements or moments (a more accurate term d.h.) of the superstructure. And as a consequence, he doesn’t adequately incorporate a different point that Engels makes in the same letter:

“We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite assumptions and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive.” (Engels to Bloch, 1890)

I will deal with this point in more detail in a later section and would only note here, that, in my opinion, the major problems with Engel’s second sentence do not diminish the importance of the his first sentence.

Beyond his practical underestimation of what is decisive, Althusser leaves the concrete articulation of an understanding of the social structure in every specific case hostage to a questionable “theoretical practice”, a process of intellectual production that is essentially confined within the political practice of a revolutionary party. This was an organizational form that was a utopian fantasy in Althusser’s day – and it remains one now. The notion of theoretical practice will also be considered later.

The combination of the lack of mooring of Althusser’s perspective in the socio-economic base of capitalist society and its peculiar academic and theoreticist slant biases it towards a party-centric view in which the mass working class struggle is seen mainly as effect and object - as pure potential, not as an emerging collective subject, as a movement that can emancipate itself and all human society.

This all is quite wordy, but still vague, and I will try to bring it down to earth in two ways. First, I’d like to examine Althusser’s application of his concepts to the historical example of the Russian Revolution. The Russian October is THE example presented by Althusser in his essay on Contradiction and Overdetermination. (See For Marx, p. 94-101, see also p. 175-180 in a later essay). Second, I’ll attempt to move to Althusser’s notion of “theoretical practice” to point out how it extends an unsupportable party-centrism to a misunderstanding of the class struggle dynamic in the infrastructure.

A number of points concerning the historical argument jump out immediately. For the most part, Althusser relies on Lenin’s analysis of the concrete circumstance of the Russian revolution, taking much of the substance from comments in Left Wing Communism that were developed well after the fact. This analysis is where Althusser discovers Lenin’s strategic notion that the revolutionary rupture will occur at the weakest link (links) of imperialism – a feature which he appears to regards as common to most, if not all, situations of real revolutionary possibility:

“That is why the theory of the ‘weakest link’ is identical with the theory of the ‘decisive link’.” (For Marx, p. 180).

(The tendency towards circularity in this argument does not appear to bother him and I won’t spend any time on it either.)

Regarding 1917 Russia, Althusser says:

“This exceptional situation was ‘insoluble’ (for the ruling classes) and Lenin was correct to see in it the objective conditions of a Russian revolution and to forge its subjective conditions, the means of a decisive assault on this weak link in the imperialist chain, in a Communist Party that was a chain without weak links.” (For Marx, p. 98)

This is a view of the course of the revolution in 1917 Russia that Althusser proposes as a guiding principle for the analysis of revolutionary possibilities everywhere. However, this picture of revolutionary Russia ignores crucial realities of the Soviet revolution that are matters of recognized historical fact even if, for reasons I will indicate shortly, Lenin glossed over them in Left Wing Communism.

The Bolsheviks were actually dragged towards the seizure of power in 1917 by the intense efforts of Lenin’s faction, which was frequently a small minority, but which prevailed through its understanding of, and close links to, the massive eruption of dual power institutions and revolutionary demands within the working class and the general population – an eruption involving plant takeovers, commandeered transportation facilities, generalized land redistributions from below, and the demobilization from within of much of the military. Much of this mass upsurge had a spontaneous character, as Lenin pointed out at the time.

Lenin, Trotsky, and a handful of other revolutionaries had recognized the dual power potentials of the Soviet form in the 1905 revolution, and fought for an appreciation of its decisive role in the revolutionary process in 1917. This was a fight in which they were opposed to one degree or another by a changing, but always significant, portion of the Bolsheviks. Leading members of Lenin’s party faction frequently argued that the parliamentary process should trump reliance on the dual power characteristics of the Soviets, and that the movement for working class power should recognize that the Russian revolution must necessarily be limited to a liberal bourgeois character. This debate persisted up to and through the October insurrection.

Those unresolved differences among Bolsheviks were a significant aspect of the political conjuncture at the actual moment of revolutionary crisis and decision. One striking example of their importance was the public condemnation of the specific plans for the insurrection by leading Bolsheviks just a few days before it was scheduled. This all makes Althusser’s description of the 1917 Bolsheviks, “…a Communist Party that was a chain without weak links…” (For Marx, p. 98), simply ludicrous. That Lenin understood these issues and continued to grapple with their implications until his death is made clear in his last writings on bureaucracy and in his assessment of major Bolshevik personalities in his Last Testament.

I haven’t read Left Wing Communism in a good while and have no intentions of doing so now. However, my memory of the piece is not that different from Althusser’s excerpts and I will stipulate to the accuracy of his reading. Lenin doesn’t mention the massive and public differences within the Bolsheviks in 1917 over whether the existing ‘concrete conditions’ made an insurrection necessary. Neither does he devote much time to the existing mass forms of struggle that were important elements in making it possible.

In retrospect, Left Wing Communism has its own set of credibility issues that extend beyond and partially explain its omissions of same historical facts that Althusser chooses to ignore. It opens with a scathing attack on the European revolutionary left communists associated with the Gorter Letter. Among other points, this letter had raised the possibility that there could be a contradiction and divergence between the dictatorship of the proletariat and a dictatorship of a party. It is their clear warning, similar to one raised slightly earlier by Luxembourg, that stands up in the light of history and not Lenin’s contemptuous dismissal of it in a massive and wrongheaded ‘bending of the stick’.

When the specific historical context for Left Wing Communism is understood, the basis for what Lenin said and did not say in it is quite clear – although it is hardly justified. Lenin is defending Soviet C.P policies a couple of years after the revolution when the grip on power is severely weakened. He is in the process of limiting internal discussion and debate in the Soviet Party and the international communist movement, a course that was presented as ‘temporary’, but which, even if it had been only temporary which it wasn’t, would have been very damaging. At the same time, Lenin was defending the expansion of party control in the society. As an extension of this conservative and defensive approach, Left Wing Communism introduces arguments intended to caution revolutionaries elsewhere in the world against insurrections that Lenin believed were destined to fail, and which might, as a byproduct, create added problems for Soviet Russia. Some of these cautions were probably merited politically, but the form they took casts a continuing pall over the development of an internationalist revolutionary perspective.

Anti-Stalinism

Administrator — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:00:15 +0000

One of the defining characteristics of STO was its consistent opposition to Stalinism, but for the most part the group didn’t write extensively on this subject. However, during a brief period in the mid-seventies, STO participated in something called the Federation of Independent Marxist-Leninist Collectives. Another participant in this short-lived group was a then-nameless grouping from Boston, which eventually became the core of the Proletarian Unity League, which in turn was one of the founding elements of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization in the mid-1980s. Whether rightly or wrongly, STO identified the Boston group as a proponent of what STO sometimes referred to as the "Stalin-model" of party-building. In the course of a series of polemics with the Boston group in 1975, STO produced (from the pen of Don Hamerquist) two of the better articulations of anti-Stalinist Leninism that I have encountered. The first, from Collective Works #2 (March 1975) concerns the question of democratic centralism. Here, Hamerquist argued:

"When Boston treats democratic centralism as a desirable, but remote, goal for the [Federation], they are applying a very mechanical, almost arbitrary, notion of what democratic centralism must be. It must be that internal regimen known popularly as "Stalinism": assumption of leadership infallibility; assumption that Marxism has already answered all important questions; the banning of "factions"; strict limits on internal debate; and the prohibition of any public manifestations of internal division… [A]ll these points … have little or nothing to do with democratic centralism, in my opinion…" (p.22)

The second quote is even more direct. In a piece from Collective Works #3 (June 1975), Hamerquist lays out the dangers of Stalinism, again within the context of party-building:

"The Leninist conception of the party must be recaptured from Stalinist distortion. We take this to involve the following points (at least): (A) Party life must emphasize clear, sharp and critical debate over points of principle. Furthermore, the maximum effort must be extended to make this debate accessible to the working class. Fear of public differences and of "factions" is no part of Leninist theory or practice on the question of the party. (B) The ability of a party to play a vanguard role (and thus to truly be able to exercise discipline) is not given a priori. It is gained through a process of demonstrating to the masses of people that it is able to define and attack the burning questions of the day, that it is able to articulate and organize popular aspirations in a framework of class struggle, that it can recognize and correct mistakes before they lead it to catastrophe or irrelevance. (C) The notion that the party leads by virtue of being the guardian of the "science of Marxism-Leninism" inevitably leads to distortion of the scientific character of Marxist theory, and a misunderstanding of the potential of the party to operate "scientifically." (D) The so-called "party principle" must be cleared of any implication that runs contrary to the central Marxist thesis that the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself." (pp. 8-9)

The Boston group subsequently left the Federation, and in 1976 STO merged with two other groups (Workforce in Kansas City, which had been involved in the Federation from the start, and the Haymarket Organization in the Quad Cities, which was new the discussions), retaining the name STO. By the end of the 1970s, STO, having maintained its anti-Stalinist stance, had abandoned its party-building ambitions more or less entirely.

Interview

Administrator — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:55:37 +0000

Just a heads up that an interview I did in the fall on my research has been published in AREA Chicago, a great resource for community social movements here. I was interviewed for a special issue on 1968, even though STO wasn’t even a glimmer in anyone’s eye during that pivotal year. But because the group was in many ways an outgrowth of the events of 68, it does make sense to consider the group’s legacy in that context. Anyway, check it out here.

Toward a Revolutionary Party

Administrator — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:09:06 +0000

One of STO’s first publications ever was a dense pamphlet with the less than scintilating title "Toward a Revolutionary Party." Despite its age, and despite my anarchism, I still find this to be one of the most valuable documents ever produced by STO. It details a whole range of problems commonly found in revolutionary organizations, and attempts to sketch an alternative perspective. I recommend highly.

A few months back, someone sent me the link to a lengthy analysis of TARP, written by another anarchist revolutionary, on the blog Bedtime Theory. This piece is pretty thoughtful, and is one of the most extensive engagements with TARP that I have read, but I thought it got a number of things wrong. So, I wrote a reply, which was posted to the blog. Check it out.

UPDATE: A response to my reply is now up here.

Republic Windows

Administrator — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:06:38 +0000

By now, the workers’ occupation of the Republic Windows factory here in Chicago is national news. Last night I took the kids down to deliver some soda to the workers, and show support for the occupation. It was quite the scene, with tons of media waiting around outside for a press conference that didn’t happen until after we had to leave. Inside the factory were dozens of workers and their families, including a lot of little kids. We talked with one of the workers on the Security Committee, who was staffing the door, and he was very friendly and willing to share his perspective on things. There were also some politicians scattered among the crowd, and several other people there in solidarity, including a number of Wobblies.

Sofia was very sad that we couldn’t go inside the factory (only workers and their families were allowed inside), because (she kept saying) she wanted to "go see the workers." It was kind of cute.

As far as I know, this is the first factory occupation in the US in several decades. It has an intriguing tie-in to STO as well, via the union that has backed the workers on their occupation, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, or UE for short. UE is one of the oldest unions in the US outside the AFL-CIO and Change to Win structures, having been expelled from the CIO for refusing to black-list Communist members in the late 1940’s. In the mid-1970’s, radical workers at the Stewart-Warner Factory on the north side of Chicago, including several former members of STO, kicked out the corrupt union that had "represented" them for decades, and brought in the UE to replace them. UE later came under harsh criticism from workers and other leftists for failing to resist the closure of the S-W factory in the 1980’s. In the present context, a handful of radicals have talked about the Republic Windows situation as a welcome turn-about from the conservatism of UE in the S-W situation two decades ago.

By the way, a good, regularly-updated source for news is the blog Pilsen Prole.

You You

Administrator — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:56:38 +0000

It’s been far too long since I put anything up here. I’ve been busy, but that’s no excuse. Here’s a little teaser anecdote to tide you over until I can post something more substantial.

Last spring, my wife and I were engaged in a little battle regarding our daughter Sofia’s musical tastes. Anne was training her to answer the question "What is your favorite music?" by saying "House!" (which is actually Anne’s favorite music). I retaliated by trying to get Sofia to say "Punk rock!" (which is only sometimes my favorite music). Part of my plan involved repeated exposure to classic punk music — the Clash in particular. And Sofia really liked the Clash, especially their cover of the reggae classic "Pressure Drop." For months, every time we got in the car, she would demand to hear "the you you." As you may recall, the opening line of "Pressure Drop" is "It is you, you, you, oooooh yeah." I can’t say that I won Sofia’s heart to punk rock, nor did I really want to (I have a soft spot for house music myself), but it was really cute the way she would ask again and again for that song.

So, you may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with STO. Well, in 1982 the Clash toured the US on behalf of the not-so-great album Combat Rock, and in every city they tried to make contact with local radicals. In Chicago, for whatever reason, the local contacts set them up with some STO members, who acted as tour guides for the day, taking them to the cemetery where the Haymarket martyrs are buried. They also visited a small alternative high school in a Puerto Rican neighborhood, which was closely tied to the Puerto Rican independence movement. The irony (according to the STO tour guides, and confirmed by a former teacher at the high school) was that none of the students had ever heard of the Clash, and seemed totally uninterested in their presence. Mostly, it seemed, they were remembered afterwards as the weird looking guys from Britain.

Anyway, just another small tidbit of STO’s cultural history, paired with a tangentially related anecdote about how cute my daughter can be. I promise that the next post to the blog will be more substantial. Promise.

Islamophobia, Antisemitism, and Fascism: Challenges for Anti-Capitalists

Administrator — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:56:09 +0000

[This is the text of my remarks for the panel "Islamophobia, Antisemitism and Fascism: Challenges for Anti-Capitalists" at the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference in Vermont earlier this month. The panel also featured remarks by Rami El-Amine and by my brother, Peter Staudenmaier. A brief but productive open discussion focused heavily on questions of solidarity. The panel was an outgrowth of my presentation at the National Conference on Organized Resistance last spring in Washington DC. Also worth looking at is the exchange between myself and Rami El-Amine in the latest issue of Upping the Anti-. At some point the panel should be available online as an audio file, and I will link to it here.]

Hi, my name is Mike. A big part of the reason I was interested in this panel is that many (possibly most) of the defining political experiences of my life have come through participation in either anti-imperialist or anti-fascist work. For most of my adult life I have engaged in solidarity work with the struggle for Puerto Rican independence, and I have been less centrally involved in support work with other Latin American revolutionary movements. At the same time, on a largely parallel track, I have been part of multiple Anti-Racist Action-led organizing efforts against the Klan and against neo-Nazis, including a lengthy midwestern campaign against the World Church of the Creator and its now-imprisoned leader Matthew Hale.

These experiences, along with a lot of reading and discussion, have led me to certain conclusions about the character of capitalism and about the prospects for a liberatory revolution, which resonate with the concept of the “three way fight” that has been developed in fits and starts over the past several years, largely through the blog threewayfight.blogspot.com. The three way fight analysis is far from being any sort of coherent theory, but in essence it represents a refusal to group all bad politics as being somehow part of the same capitalist system, and a related refusal to accept all resistance movements as automatic allies.

About a year ago, I began to reflect on the ways in which the three way fight framework might help move beyond some simplistic and one-sided sorts of analysis that I saw coming out of contemporary anti-imperialist and anti-fascist milieu. In a post-9/11 world, many of these questions were most prominently highlighted in the context of debates around Israel/Palestine, and the related issues of islamophobia and antisemitism within the left itself. (Although, had I chosen to speak primarily from my own experiences, I might have focused on a range of issues more centered on the Western Hemisphere – immigration and the Minutemen, Chavez’s “Bolivarian Revolution,” the resurgence in Guatemala of dictator-turned populist Efrain Rios-Montt, or the twists and turns of the Puerto Rican independence movement over the past decade – all of which touch on similar questions in somewhat less high-profile settings.)

And so, last spring I gave a talk in Washington DC at the National Conference on Organized Resistance, in which I argued that radical movements needed to embrace “both anti-fascism and revolution.” I don’t want to rehash the arguments made in that talk (which can be read, along with a response by my co-panelist Rami El-Amine, in the brand new issue of the journal Upping the Anti-, which is probably available for sale somewhere around here). Instead, I want to focus my attention on a handful of key points: the question of fascism; the resilience of capitalism; the character of solidarity; and the importance of revolution. Each of these has some abstract implications for theory, but I will attempt to focus on some of the ground-level strategic aspects of each.

First, fascism. This is a troublesome little word for a big and troublesome problem, one that has defied neat and tidy definitions for decades. It has never been a singular, unified term. There are the differences between fascism as a movement and fascism in power, electorally-minded fascists and those committed to direct action, fascism as corporatist economics and fascism as racialist ultranationalism, etc. And there are differences between those who view fascism as a top-down phenomenon, the last resort of capitalism in crisis, and those (myself included) who view fascism as an insurgent challenge to capitalism from the right.

I tend to adopt my comrade Matthew Lyons’ working definition, knowing that there are almost certainly exceptions and variations: “Fascism is a revolutionary form of right-wing populism, inspired by a totalitarian vision of collective rebirth, that challenges capitalist control of the state while defending class exploitation.” I’m not thrilled with this definition, but it will work for now. And I will readily concede that those of us advocating for a three way fight analysis have probably overplayed fascism as a metaphor for right-wing revolutionary movements that look substantially different in the details from the historical models. But I believe that the term still has significant value insofar as it forces people to critically assess movements like al-Qaeda, or Rios-Montt’s Guatemalan Republican Front, or – closer to home – some factions of the Minutemen, that are in clear opposition to dominant forms of capitalism and imperialism but also propound an anti-liberatory politics that leftists must oppose. Even if we as radicals don’t think that fascism is the proper term for these and other movements, we still need to recognize that not all forms of anti-capitalist radicalism are liberatory.

Second, capitalism. The three way fight analysis takes a sort of unity-in-diversity approach to understanding capitalism, which while hardly novel is worth restating here. While US imperialism is currently the dominant economic structure in the world today, it is hardly the only one. China, Russia, and the EU all constitute competing factions within global capital. And of course capitalism is increasingly transnational and autonomous from any and all nation-states. Yet on a number of issues – the “global war on terror” is a key example – these division are routinely set aside in the interests of preserving the hegemonic position of global capital in all its many forms. Capitalism has also been known to jettison features that have previously been defining, all in the interests of expanding profit; thus, women in much of the world are now incorporated directly into production in ways that were uncommon even a generation ago.

More interesting still, is the well-documented ability of capitalism to reel in seemingly radical organizations and one-time revolutionaries with the promise of immediate success through reform struggles and/or elections. An entire generation of anti-imperialist movements across the third world learned this lesson the hard way in the 1980’s. I’m sure everyone in this room has had experiences of this sort on a smaller scale, and to accept this reality does not in any way imply a rejection of reform struggles as such, because the efforts made by capital are not always unalloyed successes. The “Bolivarian Revolution” in Venezuela, for instance, includes both pro-capitalist and anti-capitalist elements. From where I sit, the struggles in Lebanon being led by Hezbollah seem to contain similar contradictions. But in a world where the prospects for revolution depend upon the defeat of these pro-capitalist elements through popularizing and expanding existing participatory democratic tendencies into a dual power within social movements, a complicated picture of Chavez or of Hezbollah – one that neither sanctifies nor slanders the movements they lead – is essential.

Third, solidarity. Another tricky term. Recently there has been a renewed discussion within the anti-imperialist left of the proper form for solidarity to take, in part resulting from a confrontation at the US Social Forum in Atlanta, where a Jewish Israeli woman was criticized for presuming to define the acceptable limits of Palestinian resistance. The woman was speaking on behalf of an international feminist human rights organization named MADRE, which subsequently issued a press release clarifying their stance on what they described as “strategic solidarity.” In response, a number of left groups and Palestinian solidarity organizations produced a written response, defining solidarity in the terms offered by a Palestinian participant in the initial confrontation: “Stand behind me, don’t divide me, and don’t speak for me.”

This dispute is strikingly reminiscent of the debates around “unconditional support” that consumed the Latin American solidarity movement of the 1970’s and 80’s. While some groups in essence argued that it was effectively pro-imperialist (if not outright racist) for white North American radicals to publicly criticize Castro’s Cuba or Sandinista-led Nicaragua, others responded that when “unconditional support” became uncritical support the real losers were everyday people struggling to realize their revolutionary aspirations not only in Cuba and Nicaragua, but in countries throughout Latin America. MADRE as an organization emerged from the Latin American solidarity milieu, but their press release made mention of a different historical example: the attacks against Iranian feminists and communists under the Islamic Republic in the early years of the revolution. I won’t attempt to defend the initial actions by the woman at the Social Forum (I wasn’t there, but it sounds like she behaved inappropriately), but I think the MADRE press release is mostly unobjectionable, if a little uninspiring. And the “stand behind me” model of solidarity should be troubling in an era where the Zapatistas have deliberately encouraged a version of solidarity that calls for struggling side by side rather than behind one another. Similarly, a recognition of divisions within movements should not be mistaken for an attempt to create divisions where there are none. And, of course, admonitions against speaking for others should not be used to silence those who would speak for themselves.

Finally, revolution. I use this word a lot, and I think of it as a dividing line of sorts. Movements that are committed to revolutionary struggle are movements that I tend to take seriously, both for their liberatory and for their repressive potentials. But revolution is another tricky word, often used to advertise things that ought not really be thought of as revolutionary, be it Chevrolet or Chavez. How can we help renew the anarchist tradition? I suggest that we can help reconceptualize revolution, and liberatory revolution in particular. A liberatory revolution must be anti-capitalist, but it must be more than that: it must challenge (in the words used to describe this panel) “a series of oppressions that are not neatly reducible to ‘class’”, including white supremacy, patriarchy and heterosexism. It must challenge islamophobia and antisemitism wherever they are encountered. It must be both anti-imperialist and anti-fascist.

The White Skin Privilege Concept: From Margin to Center of Revolutionary Politics

Administrator — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:43:25 +0000

[This is the text of the presentation I gave at the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition Conference last weekend in Vermont. The discussion afterwards was pretty good, I thought, mostly relating to the various experiences attendees had accumulated over years of working in "multi-racial" or "all-white" or "people of color" projects, organizations, and campaigns, and lessons people had learned as a result. The session was recorded, and once an audio file appears on the internet, I will offer a link here.]

When I was eighteen, my older brother Peter gave me some essays to read on feminist philosophy. Those essays contributed to me becoming a philosophy major in college, and they contributed to me identifying radical feminism as one of the most important political influences on me during my college years. In preparing for this talk, I’ve been re-reading some older feminist writings that speak to questions of privilege. The work of bell hooks (whose early book Feminist Theory from Margin to Center was the source for my title this morning) and Marilyn Frye have been getting my attention these last few weeks. Frye in particular is one of my favorite philosophers, and her book The Politics of Reality is one of my all-time favorite books of philosophy. The sharpness and clarity of her writing, in essays like “Oppression” and “On Being White” hold up quite well 25 years later, and I will come back to these writings periodically during this talk.

But I’m not a philosopher anymore, now I’m a historian. And as a historian, I’ve spent much of the past several years researching the history of a small, mostly white revolutionary group based largely in Chicago during the 1970’s and 80’s: the Sojourner Truth Organization. STO, as it was often known, was never very large, and it is largely forgotten today, even within the revolutionary left. During its existence, the group was frankly notorious for its attachment to the white skin privilege analysis. It was never the only group to adopt this understanding of white supremacy, but it was one of the most vocal. This talk isn’t strictly speaking about STO, but my research informs the core of my trajectory today.

* * *

But before we get to the seventies, we have to go a few steps back. The roots of the white skin privilege analysis lie in the work of WEB DuBois, a black Marxist historian whose most important book was Black Reconstruction in America: 1860-1880 (published in 1935). Here, DuBois used a provocative phrase “the public and psychological wage” in order to explain the pervasiveness of white racism during the period after the Civil War. In his words:

“It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent upon their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them.”

For three decades, the white left was supremely unconcerned with this idea of the “wages of whiteness” (to use the historian David Roediger’s phrasing). But in the 1960’s, a handful of white radicals began to explore the broader implications of DuBois’ analysis, expanding its application beyond Reconstruction and turning it into a general theory of US History. Foremost among this small number were Noel Ignatin (now Ignatiev), who, not coincidentally, helped found STO at the end of 1969, and Ted Allen, later the author of The Invention of the White Race. (In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that Allen and Ignatin met initially through their membership in a small Stalinist sect, and that both men remained attached to a version of Stalinism throughout the 1960’s. It is a central premise of my talk that the white skin privilege concept can and should be assessed independent of its founders’ Stalinist background.)

According to Ignatin, Allen coined the term “white skin privilege,” in a 1965 speech commemorating John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry. Throughout the late 60’s and early 70’s, these two men produced a flurry of essays detailing the philosophical, political, and historical aspects of their emerging theory. Allen and Ignatin never built their argument around moralistic sermonizing of the sort that some radicals now associate with the term “white skin privilege.” Instead, they made what amounted to a strategic argument concerning the prospects for revolution in the United States, maintaining that white skin privilege kept white people from uniting with people of color in anti-capitalist struggle. In the earliest elaboration of their theory, the pamphlet “The White Blindspot” (another DuBois reference, naturally), Ignatin argued that:

“As long as white supremacy is permitted to divide the working class, so long will the struggle of the working class remain on two separate planes, one [whites] concerned with their ‘own’ class demands and the other [blacks], on a more elementary plane (but with a much higher degree of class consciousness) fighting first for the ordinary bourgeois rights which were won long ago for the rest of the workers. As soon as white supremacy is eliminated as a force within the working class, the decks will be cleared for action by the entire class against its enemy.”

As the building block for this analysis, it is essential to understand what white skin privileges are, and what they are not. In Ignatin and Allen’s view, the privileges covered a wide terrain, including the opportunity to be first hired and last fired in an employment context, access to preferential treatment at the hands of police and government bureaucrats, and in general the same sort of deference and courtesy that had been described in Black Reconstruction. These privileges were relative rather than absolute: first hired and last fired, for instance, meant that whites could expect that they would always get jobs more easily than blacks, not that there were always jobs available for any whites that wanted them.

While rejecting the notion that racist ideas and attitudes were hardwired into white people, Ignatin and Allen refused to accept the liberal position that racism could be eliminated simply by changing people’s minds. Further, despite the use of the word “skin” in white skin privilege, Allen, Ignatin, and others, argued strenuously that “whiteness” itself was a political rather than biological category. This fluidity allowed groups of people, such as various immigrant communities, eventual access to “whiteness” and its privileges, contingent upon their willingness to reject any solidarity with black people. This was a dynamic historical process, not some abstract permanent feature of genetics. Thus, according to Ignatin and Allen, what could be done could also be undone. White skin privileges could be repudiated in struggle, and this created the possibility of a reunified proletariat capable of overthrowing capitalism. One more passage from “The White Blindspot” can illuminate this point, despite the Leninist overtones of its rhetoric:

“Communists (individually this is the task primarily of white communists, although collectively it is the responsibility of the whole party) must go to the white workers and say frankly: you must renounce the privileges you now hold, must join the Negro, Puerto Rican and other colored workers in fighting white supremacy, must make this the first, immediate and most urgent task of the entire working class, in exchange for which you, together with the rest of the workers will receive all the benefits which are sure to come from one working class (of several colors) fighting together.” (“White Blindspot”)

* * *

STO was by no means the only group to take the white skin privilege concept seriously. As early as 1969, the initial statement by the Weather faction of SDS (later the Weather Underground) made extensive use of the idea that white workers were “privileged.” In contrast to STO, however, this version of the white skin privilege analysis was often interpreted as a basis for writing off the revolutionary potential of the white working class and focusing the efforts of white revolutionaries on solidarity work with revolutionary nationalists both domestically and internationally. When the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee was initiated in 1974, it also adopted this version of the theory.

Ignatin and Allen both challenged this particular form of the analysis, because both men were strongly committed to organizing within the white working class as a part of a comprehensive strategy for revolution. But these differences were minor compared to the differences both STO and WUO/PFOC had with the vast bulk of the white left during the first half of the 1970s. Maoists, Trotskyists, and anarchists were never more united than in their dismissal of the white skin privilege concept. It was denounced as moralistic, guilt-tripping, counter-productive and impractical. In retrospect, we can see the kernel of truth in these criticisms when looking at the more extreme articulations of the WUO/PFOC version of the analysis. But in the form developed by Allen and Ignatin, and by STO organizationally throughout the 1970’s, this criticism seems to miss the point.

Despite the best efforts of its detractors, there was a slow but steady diffusion of the white skin privilege idea over the course of the 1970’s, aided somewhat by the shrill attacks on the theory that were advanced in movement publications like the Guardian newspaper. A growing number of young radicals were drawn to the analysis, including many white women (and especially lesbians) who saw parallels between their experiences under patriarchy with those of black people under white supremacy. In fact, one could argue that the adoption of the white skin privilege concept by a segment of the white feminist movement was the catalyst for the general diffusion of the idea within the white left over the course of the 1980’s. The relative openness to feminism of groups like Prairie Fire, and the often dismissive attitude taken by STO, meant that some versions of the analysis were more widely disseminated than others, much (I would argue) to the long-term detriment of the theory and of the white left.

In the early 1980’s, the emerging feminist and lesbian presence within the academy further contributed to the good fortune of the white skin privilege analysis. The pioneering work of lesbian philosopher Marilyn Frye (who I mentioned earlier) represents the best elements of this work, grounded in a real-world analysis of oppression and resistance. For instance, in the essay “Oppression,” she articulates quite clearly the every-day stakes involved in patriarchy, using the framework of (but not the term) privilege:

“Being a woman is a major factor in my not having a better job than I do; being a woman selects me as a likely victim of sexual assault or harassment; it is my being a woman that reduces the power of my anger to a proof of my insanity. If a woman has little or no economic or political power, or achieves little of what she wants to achieve, a major causal factor in this is that she is a woman. For any woman of any race or economic class, being a woman is significantly attached to whatever disadvantages and deprivations she suffers, be they great or small. None of this is the case with respect to a person’s being a man. Simply being a man is not what stands between him and a better job; whatever assaults and harassments he is subject to, being male is not what selects him for victimization; being male is not what would make his anger impotent – quite the opposite. If a man has little or no material or political power, or achieves little of what he wants to achieve, his being male is no part of the explanation. Being male is something he has going for him, even if race or class or age or disability is going against him.”

Too often, however, popular trends in academic theory converged with the jargon potential inherent in a formulation like “white skin privilege” to generate a range of “privilege”-based analyses. Many of these, such as male privilege, heterosexual privilege, middle class privilege, able-bodied privilege, and others, make sense on an elementary level as a description of reality, but have proven highly problematic when they have been incorporated into elaborate theories, convoluted analysis of popular culture and daily life, or under-examined resistance strategies.

Among anarchists, however, even an enthusiasm for radical feminism during the 1980’s didn’t result in a quick embrace of the white skin privilege analysis. Most anarchists of the 1980’s adopted a sort of flattened view of oppression, in which all forms of hierarchy were basically interchangeable and only a sort of under-theorized anti-statism really defined what anarchism meant. There were rumblings of a different approach in magazines like Kick it Over and Open Road, (why are the Canadians always so ahead of the curve like that?) but the sea change really began with the formation of Love and Rage at the end of 1989. Initially conceived as a continental anarchist newspaper, Love and Rage eventually became a “Revolutionary Anarchist Federation.” By the time of L&R’s demise nine years later, the anarchist movement in North America had changed dramatically in its assessment of capitalism, of oppression, and of resistance. Love and Rage consistently challenged the old orthodoxies of anarchism, and in particular focused less attention on “class” as it had previously been understood, and more attention on forms of oppression like white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, among others. In this context, the adoption of privilege-based theories of oppression was unsurprising.

In the decade since Love and Rage disbanded, privilege-speak has become commonplace throughout the anarchist milieu. Publications as divergent as the Northeastern Anarchist and Green Anarchy have run pieces that incorporate the language of privilege. The most important exceptions to this shift are, naturally, older anarchist publications like the Fifth Estate and Anarchy Magazine, although even these have probably included references on occasion.

* * *

Some of you may have noticed that the published description of this talk used the phrase “for better AND for worse” to describe the impact of the white skin privilege analysis on anarchist politics. By this point it should be clear that I have mixed feelings about the general category of “privilege” and the current manifestations of the white skin privilege analysis in particular. In essence, I endorse the basic outline of white skin privilege as a framework for understanding how white supremacy operates on a day-to-day basis. The same is true, generally speaking, for male privilege, heterosexual privilege, and other conceptualizations built on the same model. I know that in my personal life I have benefited from these three sets of privilege, among others.

Beyond simple accuracy as a narrative of oppression, the various privilege-based theories have another major advantage over other understandings of oppression: they provide a helpful challenge to traditional top-down approaches that focus exclusively – sometimes even conspiratorially – on the actions of the ruling class. By emphasizing the participation of everyday people in the continuing experience of oppression, privilege narratives provide at least the opportunity to place human agency at the center of strategies for revolution. Once again, what has been done can be undone. And again, Frye sheds some light on this in her essay “On Being White: Thinking Toward a Feminist Understanding of Race and Race Supremacy:”

“There is a correct line on the matter of white racism which is, in fact, quite correct, to the effect that as a white person one must never claim not to be racist, but only to be anti- racist. The reasoning is that racism is so systematic and white privilege so impossible to escape, that one is, simply, trapped. On one level this is perfectly true and must always be taken into account. Taken as the whole and final truth, it is also unbearably and dangerously dismal. It would place us in the hopeless moral position of one who believes in original sin but in no mechanism of redemption. But white supremacy is not a law of nature, nor is any individual’s complicity in it. … I do not suggest for a moment that I can disaffiliate by a private act of will, or by any personal strategy. [More on this point in a moment.] Nor, certainly, is it accomplished simply by thinking it possible. To think it thinkable shortcuts no work and shields one from no responsibility. Quite the contrary, it may be a necessary prerequisite to assuming responsibility, and it invites the honorable work of radical imagination.” (“On Being White”)

Most of my concerns with regard to the white skin privilege analysis (and with the other theories modeled on it) arise when the analysis is incorporated too easily into particular strategies for social change. I will close my talk by briefly outlining four different problems that plague present-day versions of the white skin privilege concept. I will call them: 1) the substitution problem; 2) the voluntarism problem; 3) the liberalism problem; and 4) the avoidance problem.

The substitution problem was one that afflicted STO almost from its inception. Put simply, the issue was that STO behaved as if the black revolution was the proletarian revolution. A classic example of this confused logic can be seen in an early STO pamphlet titled “The United Front Against Imperialism?,” where the group argued that

“If, in regard to education, equality for blacks required that children be bused, then we support busing; if it requires that they not be bused, then we are against busing. If equality .in housing requires open-occupancy laws, then we are for open-occupancy laws. If it requires black control of black communities, we are for that. If it requires both open-occupancy laws and black control of black communities, then we are for both. If equality in employment means that the seniority system must be destroyed, then we are for scuttling it. If it requires the preservation of the seniority system, then we defend it. Organizations, whatever their defects, that fight for equality for black people are worthy of support, in our eyes. Organizations that reinforce white supremacy, whatever their virtues, we regard as reactionary. And so forth.” (“United Front?”)

When the black movement increasingly turned toward reformism, entrepreneurship models and electoralism, the flaws inherent in this line of argument became crystal clear. Nonetheless, many white leftists today use a similar litmus test to assess social movements, believing that the repudiation of white skin privilege can be completed via the knee-jerk endorsement of movements of color. In some ways this is akin to the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic so common among those who identify as anti-imperialists today.

The idea of “repudiation” is also the core of the voluntarism problem, which too often applies even to those white radicals smart enough to avoid the substitution problem. Race Traitor, for instance, approaches white skin privileges as if they can single-handedly be cast off by people who have previously been identified as white. Unfortunately, however, privileges of this sort are granted by others, not affirmatively chosen by individuals. As Frye noted, it is not possible to volunteer oneself out of the white race, no matter how much we might wish to do so. Rather, the destruction of white supremacy will necessarily involve an overhaul of society, or it will not come to pass at all.

The nature of this overhaul is at the heart of the liberalism problem, which I have argued previously is exemplified by the work of the Catalyst Project, despite the best intentions of its participants. To the extent that white skin privilege is understood to be an impediment to “racial justice” and “liberation,” the strategy for ending white supremacy is reduced to a process of ameliorating of social inequality, apparently within the confines of capital and the state. Revolution is reduced to a transformation in consciousness and what the situationists called “everyday life,” rather than indicating a comprehensive process for re-working all social relations, whether economic, political, or cultural.

Finally, there’s the avoidance problem, which has been highlighted quite effectively in a thoughtful essay by the Philadelphia based activist Michelle O’Brien, “Whose Ally? Thinking Critically About Anti-Oppression Ally Organizing.” O’Brien argues that the rhetoric of white skin privilege provides a convenient way for white radicals to exempt ourselves from the substantive work of combating white supremacy while feeling good about ourselves because we have a sophisticated analysis and speak in a sort of jargon or code that other white radicals will be impressed by. She offers the following example from her personal experience:

“On my way to moving to Philly, I stopped at an anarchist bookfair in western Mass. One discussion there was particularly revealing. It was a mostly white group. A few people of color in the room started talking. What the people of color said was fairly complex and subtle, and included a few criticisms. All the white people in the room start freaking out inside. None of us know what to say. Then a white person, clearly remembering some antiracism workshop of some sort, starts bringing up how we should focus on our white privilege, dealing with the racism in our movements. A few other white people perked up, recognizing the language involved, and launch into a lengthy discussion that seems straight out of a white-ally meeting. The statements of the people of color in the room got boxed into the narrow confines of this workshop rhetoric, and the people of color get erased completely. A dozen utterances of ‘our racism’ later and all the white people started actually believing the room had only white people in it. The people of color got totally ignored, now totally excluded from the discussion. Whatever challenge or threat they might have posed to white people’s arrogance was thoroughly contained, managed and diffused. They were reduced to just the crude caricature of workshop rhetoric. And all the white people, clearly, were feeling great about being so on the ball about racism.” (Whose Ally?)

I will admit that as I re-read the text of this talk last night, this description hit dangerously close to home; I will leave it to others to determine whether I am myself engaged in a process of avoidance. Anecdotes like this don’t necessarily invalidate the conceptual framework provided by the white skin privilege concept, but they do call into question its frequent, sometimes all-purpose usage among white anarchists and other white radicals. The question then becomes: does the analysis help us make sense of society and oppression in the new millennium? And if it does, can it still be saved at this late date from its problems?