Anarchism vs Bevin's 21st century catalogue of revolutionary failures

[ska invita]

Has anyone read or heard Vincent Bevins speak about his latest book

If We Burn -

If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, the second book by Vincent Bevins, author of The Jakarta Method

vincentbevins.com

TLDR version is 21st century has seen historically high volume of revolutionary street movements seeking to overthrow governments/dictators, .. book concentrates on Tunisia,Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Turkey, Brazil, Ukraine, Hong Kong, South Korea,and Chile.... all mass participatory and tending to be organised on horizontal lines, and all failing to different degrees. I think he makes the claim it is the decade with the most protests in human history.

The lesson he draws is that such movements need a stronger degree of party organisation or else they get brushed aside by those better organised and therefore more powerful.

Whether intentionally or not it becomes a deep criticism of anarchism in revolutionary practice.

I'm wondering if anyone has their own countercriticism of the case being put or any other thoughts

 

[belboid]

oh, I've just missed him speaking in Sheffield, you could have asked us this earlier!

 

[LDC]

That's tempted me back here (briefly)...

I started it a few weeks ago and got distracted, even though it had very interesting and thought-provoking first chapters. He's got a good interview on Novara as well. Will try and get back into the book, from my reading so far it does raise some important questions, less specific to anarchists and more to the wider left/activist 'strategy/strategies' for social change. (Short version is that I think it's more that those social movements problems isn't the organisational form so much as the strategic form and content.)

 

[ska invita]

oh, I've just missed him speaking in Sheffield, you could have asked us this earlier!

hes done a lot of youtube talks so no excuses please

----

"Nine years after the events of June 2013, I asked them the main lesson they learned. They both said the exact same thing. Não existe vácuo político—“There is no such thing as a political vacuum.”The idea is that if you blow a hole in the center of the political system,taking power away from those who have it, then someone else is going to enter the empty space and take it. Unclaimed political power exerts an irresistible gravitational pull on anyone who might want it, and at every moment in recorded history, someone has wanted it.

Personally, in the years since2013, I would often use the language of a theatrical performance to say something similar. If you want to knock the main players off the stage, you should be paying attention to who is going to take their place. These might be local or foreign actors. If is not going to be you, then you had better like the people who are waiting in the wings."

 

[ska invita]

"Not everyone I met came out of the decade adopting positions in favor of formal structures, in support of “verticalism” and hierarchy, insisting that representation matters. Mayara, for example, remains mostly true to the ideals she adopted as a young punk. But everyone moved in the same direction. I spent years doing interviews, and not one person told me that they had become more horizontalist, or more anarchist, or more in favor of spontaneity and structurelessness. Some people stayed in the same place. But everyone that changed their views on the question of organization moved closer to classically “Leninist” ones."

 

[ska invita]

a bit later

"David Graeber insisted, as the alter-globalization movement gave birth to a new protest repertoire, that the means were the ends. He recognized that anarchist-inspired approaches do not work very well in a war. But the problem, at least in the mass protest decade, is that if you are actually successful, someone is going to declare war on you. This might be political warfare, or it might be literal, violent war.

If you score any kind of political victory, there is likely going to be someone who feels they will lose, and these people usually go on the attack—and have no philosophical objections to using hierarchy, formal organization, and “authoritarian” internal command structures—in a phrase, effective collective action, the kind of stuff that works really well, especially in a conflict. In the 2010s, the dominant repertoire of contention ended up working too well if the idea was to avoid war.The mass protest decade made unexpected trouble for powerful forces, and they fought back."

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Anarchism only has a real chance of success when it becomes a mass movement. The anarchist mass movements of the 19th and 20th centuries were destroyed by fascism/capitalism/Soviet communism. Based on trades unions they are unlikely to recover in the short term future. But Rojava and the Zapatistas show that mass anarchistic movements are still possible, even if they are less than perfect from a purist stance. Expect the unexpected.

What remains as true as ever is that Leninism or centralist movements will never lead anyone to the promised land, or anywhere near it. Not anywhere I want to go.

 

[ska invita]

my position on anarchism in general is that its the fundamentally correct political compass to check everything by, the ultimate critique of power, and should be applied at all times, but that doesn't mean that party politics should be abandoned - not just for reasons made clear in this book.

"pure" anarchist organising can work well at small group scale (even then it needs good procedures) but once an organisation gets past a certain size there will be increased need for delegation and relative hierarchy, and the trick is to try and write into constitutions and processes to stop abuse of power within those bigger structures....recallable delegates, one member one vote etc

in response to the post above I dont know enough about the internal politics of the Zapatistas and PKK to tell how well they pass the 'anarchist org' test, even if both groupings are deeply influenced by anarchist ideas.

 

[Lurdan]

Saw him give a talk at the Radical Book Fair last November. Some of the examples he referred to were interesting, but at the end of the day he came across as yet another proponent of the notion that the 'insurgent masses' need middle class leadership in order to be 'effective'.

He cuts a slightly unusual figure today I suppose - seems to me there were many more people like him in the 60s and 70s. And in 'learning the lessons of past defeats' I think one could also profitably contemplate the rather depressing career trajectories of many of those predecessors.

 

[LDC]

Anarchism only has a real chance of success when it becomes a mass movement. The anarchist mass movements of the 19th and 20th centuries were destroyed by fascism/capitalism/Soviet communism. Based on trades unions they are unlikely to recover in the short term future. But Rojava and the Zapatistas show that mass anarchistic movements are still possible, even if they are less than perfect from a purist stance. Expect the unexpected.

What remains as true as ever is that Leninism or centralist movements will never lead anyone to the promised land, or anywhere near it. Not anywhere I want to go.

Rojava/NES and what happened there and why is a good case for discussions on this topic. They (the PKK/TevDem) cadre/leadership were very clear that any gains made by the movement there also needed to have the ability to defend those gains from outside attack, or they would be fruitless - or arguably worse as the loss of them might end up being worse than if they had never been made. Bevins bring this up when he says that movements need to ask themselves some hard questions as when what they try and fail at often ends up with the situation being worse than it was before.

For me it's not so much a case for needing a leadership or some mass party/organisation (although I am sympathetic to needing something like that at times or for specific purposes) but more that the whole idea of having mass uprisings or bigger and bigger demonstrations/occupations until we reach a critical mass when the goverment falls is a flawed idea. Rojava is also a good case for discussing that...

 

[ska invita]

Saw him give a talk at the Radical Book Fair last November. Some of the examples he referred to were interesting, but at the end of the day he came across as yet another proponent of the notion that the 'insurgent masses' need middle class leadership in order to be 'effective'.

He cuts a slightly unusual figure today I suppose - seems to me there were many more people like him in the 60s and 70s. And in 'learning the lessons of past defeats' I think one could also profitably contemplate the rather depressing career trajectories of many of those predecessors.

but what lesson is there to learn from the cases of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Turkey, Brazil, Ukraine, Hong Kong, South Korea,and Chile other than a failure of organisation?

Also does he make a case for the class background of any leadership or do you think leadership defaults to middle class?

 

[ska invita]

For me it's not so much a case for needing a leadership or some mass party/organisation (although I am sympathetic to needing something like that at times or for specific purposes) but more that the whole idea of having mass uprisings or bigger and bigger demonstrations/occupations until we reach a critical mass when the goverment falls is a flawed idea. Rojava is also a good case for discussing that...

Greece in the aftermath of 2008 is one that I think about...endless back to back rioting and local level anarchist mutual aid...the fundamental political outcome of which was Syriza winning power.

Syriza was and is a failure, but I wonder if it might have been different, such as if they left the euro and went back to the drachma. But even that decision aside, Syriza is one formation made up of a small group of people in the top positions, and how that plays out is very dependent on those personalities...Alexis Tsipras was not the right person for the time.

Anyhow my point is that there is a relationship between active 'anarchist' street movements and political party victories, and ideally the political distance between those two poles should be as little as possible.

 

[ska invita]

Bevins also nods to this book in the conclusion, anyone read it?

Neither Vertical nor Horizontal

A decade ago, a wave of mass mobilisations described as “horizontal” and “leaderless” swept the planet, holding the promise of real democracy and justice for the 99%. Many saw its subsequent ebb as proof of the need to go back to what was once called “the question of organisation”. For something...

www.versobooks.com

"he writes about an “ecology” of organizations and affirms that different types of organizational schema can, and should, interact with one another. To put it in the terms that emerged in this book, a mass explosion can make a ruckus and create a political vacuum, and it would be rational to do so if the people back the group that will fill it. The crucial distinction is to not use the explosion in order to form the organization. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, it was the groups that were already there, prepared, that did the best when the explosion came—whether they were Hoxhaist Communists in Tunisia or the nationalist extremists in Ukraine, these groups punched above their weight"

(i'll stop copying out bits from the book now )

 

[redsquirrel]

That's tempted me back here (briefly)...

I started it a few weeks ago and got distracted, even though it had very interesting and thought-provoking first chapters. He's got a good interview on Novara as well. Will try and get back into the book, from my reading so far it does raise some important questions, less specific to anarchists and more to the wider left/activist 'strategy/strategies' for social change. (Short version is that I think it's more that those social movements problems isn't the organisational form so much as the strategic form and content.)

Nice to see you back LDC - hope you do stick around.

 

[JimW]

How accurate do you find his accounts of these movements? Not read it, first I've heard of the man, but instantly wonder if he's interpreting the goals and practice of these movements to fit his theory.

 

[ska invita]

How accurate do you find his accounts of these movements? Not read it, first I've heard of the man, but instantly wonder if he's interpreting the goals and practice of these movements to fit his theory.

i think its fair...he did interview a ton of people, its good journalism...the two cases i was most familiar with are egypt and hong kong and it matched what id seen elsewhere....

 

[hitmouse]

Few thoughts on this:
1) at the risk of sounding like one of the dreaded formal anarchist chiefs with their fancy holidays, I think there's an important distinction to be made between the tradition of revolutionary anarchism, and then ideas like structurelessness and horizontalism. Like, to say that formally organised groups have an important role to play in a revolutionary process is not at all an argument against anarchism, it's completely compatible with saying "if only there'd been a Tunisian CNT/FAI/Friends of Durruti/FORA/ACG/etc, then things could've turned out so much better." Unfortunately, I can't really claim to be a platformist/especifismist or syndicalist true believer on this point cos I think that, as desirable as they might be, we're not likely to see a return of mass anarcho-syndicalist unions or platformist federations any time soon. But that is a coherent position I think, and one that's presumably compatible with the observations made in the book (as far as I know, not actually read it).

2) it'd be interesting to see a survey of the regimes that did emerge and manage to seize power out of those events, and how many of them are still in power now. I do have a fair amount of sympathy for the idea that the multiple interlocking crises of our era, things like climatechangeworldfinancialcrashesglobalpandemicssyriaukrainegaza and so on, are not the kind of thing that are amenable to being easily solved by national governments, and so factions who succeed in gaining national state power in the short term are likely to emerge more discredited in the long run, from Syriza to Bolsonaro. From that perspective, not ending up in the President's chair when the music stops might not actually be as much of a defeat as it seems.

3) the point about "to not use the explosion in order to form the organization... it was the groups that were already there, prepared, that did the best when the explosion came" is an interesting one. Certainly, there can be pitfalls to not having an organised group ready when a social explosion comes, but there are also pitfalls to being a group that's permanently stuck in the mode of preparing for a social explosion when it isn't happening. To the extent that I fall more on the spontaneist side, I suppose that's at least partly a consequence of having lived in the UK at a time when there's not been many social explosions, but plenty of small ineffectual groups who see their role as offering leadership when one comes. Possibly a bit of crossover here with the CPGB/weirdos discussion on another thread, and then other questions like what is the role of an organisation, what are the correct ideas and where do they come from, etc etc.

 

[LDC]

Certainly, there can be pitfalls to not having an organised group ready when a social explosion comes, but there are also pitfalls to being a group that's permanently stuck in the mode of preparing for a social explosion when it isn't happening.

I broadly agree, but generally I think the organisations, networks and groups needed both for effective political activity now and to make use of any collapse/social explosion/withdrawal of the power of State and Capital are pretty much indistinguishable. For me that goes for activity as well as organisational form; struggles that create strength, trust, genuine connections between people and groups, as well as improving our material conditions in the here and now.

(Absolutely think all that weird anarcho-prepper stuff learning da skillz for da collapse is deluded nonsense, which is the stuff you often see with that outlook and maybe what you were referring to?)

 

[LDC]

Nice to see you back LDC - hope you do stick around.

Thank you.

 

[hitmouse]

I broadly agree, but generally I think the organisations, networks and groups needed both for effective political activity now and to make use of any collapse/social explosion/withdrawal of the power of State and Capital are pretty much indistinguishable. For me that goes for activity as well as organisational form; struggles that create strength, trust, genuine connections between people and groups, as well as improving our material conditions in the here and now.

(Absolutely think all that weird anarcho-prepper stuff learning da skillz for da collapse is deluded nonsense, which is the stuff you often see with that outlook and maybe what you were referring to?)

Think you're probably right about prepper stuff, but I wasn't thinking of that specifically so much as things like... well, on the Marxist side stuff like the sparts or Socialist Appeal/RCP, on the anarcho side a lot of insurrecto stuff that's pitched at the level of everyone being ready to kick off all the time right now. I wasn't around for the heyday of pre-97 Class War, but I'd dare to venture a theory that they were perhaps a group that were very well suited for the conditions of '81 or the Poll Tax, and by the same token extremely badly suited for conditions from the mid-90s onwards?
And it's a real tightrope, cos I think as well as whatever failures come from people not having enough of an organised group in advance, you have to bear them in mind alongside all the failures that've come from organised political groups that aim to be revolutionary but turn out to be a deadweight when the test comes, suppose the SPD in 1919 and the CNT/FAI joining the government are the classic examples but could also add the various shenanigans of the CPs in places like France and Italy, Militant during the Poll Tax, the SWP being a wet blanket in various situations and so on.
So I think of it as a kind of tension, if your organisation doesn't make any attempt to adjust to the society it currently exists in you end up with the Sparts, if it adjusts too well then you end up with the SPD (or insert your preferred betrayal narrative here). I like the line that irrc Dauve pinched from the Christians, about being in the world but not of the world.

 

[ska invita]

Just became vaguely aware of this book

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-revolt-of-the-public-and-the-crisis-of-authority-in-the-new-millenium-martin-gurri/7351770?ean=9781732265141

from what i can tell it makes a case that internet technology has blown a hole in states ability to monopolise information and repeatedly leads to an ever growing clash between publics v elites, peripheries v centre... originally written in 2014 so perhaps not as much of a revelation now.

crucially though i gather it says there isn't a dominant political ideological current driving these clashes, or at least not strong enough to lead to a conclusive enough challenge to orthodoxy.

In relation to this thread then, maybe its less a problem of organisational forms than it is ideological end goals. People know they want change, the internet helps them foster those feelings and even organise (in a networked, horizontal way) against the status quo, but there isn't enough of a communal vision and shared ideology to push demands to the final stages.

??

I remember with Occupy there were arguments about Demands. I seem to remember David Graber making the case for no demands? My memory is crap though, might have got that wrong. It was a criticism of Occupy even from the right, What Do You Want? Occupy Wall Street did come up with demands and took out adverts in US papers IIRC. Anyhow, having some demands isn't the same as a more concrete ideology. The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood were the initial winners in Egypt is a good example...not just about being better organised but also more ideologically united.

 

[hitmouse]

Just became vaguely aware of this book
View attachment 416359

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-revolt-of-the-public-and-the-crisis-of-authority-in-the-new-millenium-martin-gurri/7351770?ean=9781732265141

from what i can tell it makes a case that internet technology has blown a hole in states ability to monopolise information and repeatedly leads to an ever growing clash between publics v elites, peripheries v centre... originally written in 2014 so perhaps not as much of a revelation now.

I wonder how much the author still holds that view? I feel like about 2014 was just about the last possible moment you could still feel optimistic about technology, since then we've just seen more and more use of the internent by rival states, distant elite factions and so on, which is harder to fit into a broadly upbeat framework. A world of hasbara and wumao. I see it does promise "Originally published in 2014, The Revolt of the Public is now available in an updated edition, which includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit", so must at least touch on that stuff.

crucially though i gather it says there isn't a dominant political ideological current driving these clashes, or at least not strong enough to lead to a conclusive enough challenge to orthodoxy.

In relation to this thread then, maybe its less a problem of organisational forms than it is ideological end goals. People know they want change, the internet helps them foster those feelings and even organise (in a networked, horizontal way) against the status quo, but there isn't enough of a communal vision and shared ideology to push demands to the final stages.

??

I remember with Occupy there were arguments about Demands. I seem to remember David Graber making the case for no demands? My memory is crap though, might have got that wrong. It was a criticism of Occupy even from the right, What Do You Want? Occupy Wall Street did come up with demands and took out adverts in US papers IIRC. Anyhow, having some demands isn't the same as a more concrete ideology. The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood were the initial winners in Egypt is a good example...not just about being better organised but also more ideologically united.

Yeah, Graeber talks about it a bit here. Think the most developed form of that argument I've seen came from Crimethinc a while later. Never found that line of argument particularly convincing fwiw, Wayne Price critiques it here. Although on the other side, I do think some bits of the left tend to get a bit mixed up between having demands and having a strategy, especially on the more social democratic side of things.

 

[ska invita]

Yeah demands are an interesting topic at this moment. For example I see Jeremy Corbyns outfit are pushing this at the moment:


...basically campaigning around a set of demands rather than ideological or deeper political traditions....and then fudging the issue of a political party to bring them in. Its Policies First and airbrushing away the harder political questions, presumably as a way to bring new people in?? Im not sure what the strategic thinking there is.

Can potential policies/'demands' be more effective as a rallying point than Identifiable Political Traditions?

 

[Karl Masks]

Anarchism only has a real chance of success when it becomes a mass movement. The anarchist mass movements of the 19th and 20th centuries were destroyed by fascism/capitalism/Soviet communism. Based on trades unions they are unlikely to recover in the short term future. But Rojava and the Zapatistas show that mass anarchistic movements are still possible, even if they are less than perfect from a purist stance. Expect the unexpected.

What remains as true as ever is that Leninism or centralist movements will never lead anyone to the promised land, or anywhere near it. Not anywhere I want to go.

What are you defining as Leninism and why will it inevitably fail?

 

[hitmouse]

Yeah demands are an interesting topic at this moment. For example I see Jeremy Corbyns outfit are pushing this at the moment:
View attachment 416370

...basically campaigning around a set of demands rather than ideological or deeper political traditions....and then fudging the issue of a political party to bring them in. Its Policies First and airbrushing away the harder political questions, presumably as a way to bring new people in?? Im not sure what the strategic thinking there is.

Can potential policies/'demands' be more effective as a rallying point than Identifiable Political Traditions?

Huh, had just been thinking of Labour's 2019 campaign as one example of that - they had absolutely loads of demands/policies then, loads of them sounded really good, I'd still definitely like lots of the policies from the 2019 Labour manifesto if anyone fancies doing them... but crucially the step of the plan that involved getting Corbyn into power so he could do those policies turned out to be a bit unreliable in practice.
Also with demands, there's so much variation in things like scale, so in the immediate term I think things like "we want a pay rise", "no redundancies", "sort the mould in this house out" and so on obviously make loads of sense, but I dunno how you turn that into a larger, more ambitious movement for social transformation. One of my problems with a lot of left stuff, the above included really, is that it seems like it's on a level where it's not as achievable as "sort the mould in this house out" but also not as inspiring as "full communism now", but maybe there is room for some kind of intermediate thing between those two.

 

[ska invita]

Wayne Price critiques it here.

this is a really interesting read, thanks

 

[ska invita]

Huh, had just been thinking of Labour's 2019 campaign as one example of that - they had absolutely loads of demands/policies then, loads of them sounded really good, I'd still definitely like lots of the policies from the 2019 Labour manifesto if anyone fancies doing them... but crucially the step of the plan that involved getting Corbyn into power so he could do those policies turned out to be a bit unreliable in practice.
Also with demands, there's so much variation in things like scale, so in the immediate term I think things like "we want a pay rise", "no redundancies", "sort the mould in this house out" and so on obviously make loads of sense, but I dunno how you turn that into a larger, more ambitious movement for social transformation. One of my problems with a lot of left stuff, the above included really, is that it seems like it's on a level where it's not as achievable as "sort the mould in this house out" but also not as inspiring as "full communism now", but maybe there is room for some kind of intermediate thing between those two.

My take on Corbyn's reign was it was in fact a very successful run, came close, it could've been better though of course and was fundamentally derailed by the unavoidable car crash of Labour dealing with Brexit more than anything else. Maybe Corbyn should've stepped aside in 2018, yes should've done more with the grassroots, yes should've kicked out more right wing Labour traitors, yes should've fought back a bit stronger to the attacks, but the messaging and manifesto was effective, practical, achievable, well thought out, and they even did the leg work of squaring all the financial aspects with the city who seemed unphased. I think it had the balance you mention..

If anyone ever got a chance to run on that ticket again from within Labour they might just do it next time. Not that a next time seems possible for a long while yet

 

[ska invita]

Wayne Price critiques it here.

i like "Perhaps the most persuasive argument in favor of making concrete demands is that if we don’t make them, others will.” That is, liberals or even fascists.

 

[Rob Ray]

The short argument against the idea that these movements failed because they lacked a central revolutionary leadership is that the masses rejected such leaderships despite not having a clear grasp of alternative organisational methods. None of these movements were consciously "anarchist," either in theory or practice, they weren't debating the merits of the Platform or flattened union hierarchies. What they did was reject authoritarian forms that had not only failed repeatedly, but done so spectacularly in ways that created notoriously brutal autocracies. A critique that suggests they prove anarchism wrong is looking in entirely the wrong direction - it was the wannabe vanguards that failed to achieve any of their aims or intercede successfully in modern uprisings.

 

[hitmouse]

My take on Corbyn's reign was it was in fact a very successful run, came close, it could've been better though of course and was fundamentally derailed by the unavoidable car crash of Labour dealing with Brexit more than anything else. Maybe Corbyn should've stepped aside in 2018, yes should've done more with the grassroots, yes should've kicked out more right wing Labour traitors, yes should've fought back a bit stronger to the attacks, but the messaging and manifesto was effective, practical, achievable, well thought out, and they even did the leg work of squaring all the financial aspects with the city who seemed unphased. I think it had the balance you mention..

If anyone ever got a chance to run on that ticket again from within Labour they might just do it next time. Not that a next time seems possible for a long while yet

I mean, one hand that that's fair enough, but at the same time like, if you're going to argue that various movements failed for the lack of a party structure, then Britain 2015-2019 certainly seems to show that directing all the oppositional energy into a party structure doesn't necessarily pay off either. Similarly with Syriza.

Re: demands and stuff, I suppose the other thing I'm thinking about here, as I mentioned over on the Palestine vs strategy discussion on the ACG nationalism thread, is there's this genre of post-BLM criticism from people like Cedric Johnson and Amber Frost, that says movements like Occupy and BLM failed for not having sufficiently clear practical demands, and what people should do instead is to have universalistic class politics with demands that would improve people's lives, like free healthcare and so on. And again, those demands don't sound bad to me, it would be great if the yanks got a NHS, but it still feels a bit frustratingly vague to me, like is the plan to make Biden, or indeed Trump, do social democracy, and if so how does that work? Or is it to get Sanders elected, and if so then how does that step of the plan work?