Organising versus activism?

[Jeremiah18.17]

This article poses activism and organising as two separate approaches with organising as far preferable. Is it as simple as this? Plenty of food for thought.

 

[Dragnet]

Really like this article. From a position of agreement, it's thrown up some interesting questions for me. I.e. how do organisations approach struggles (for example, a tenants' association in a particular block of flats) that they are not personally involved in, without assuming some sort of vanguardist position? I'd suggest that would be by contacting them to find out their needs, and then using the organisation's resources to help push for them.

The main difficulty of the organizing approach, for militants, is that it requires interaction with people that they don’t already agree with on larger principles such as economic system or political standpoint.

Agree that this is difficult, but it's a double-edged sword; it's beneficial in that it's the only way revolutionary organisations can have any link with the wider class. I think the question here is the degree of disagreement. No organisation would work with a dyed-in-the-wool fascist, but it's inevitable that they'd come into conflict with racist or sexist views, for example. How would this be dealt with? Here, I'd say by pointing out how they divide and weaken the class as a whole.

I realise I'm answering my own questions a bit there, but I'm interested in what others think.

EDIT: probably slightly off-topic here as these questions are a bit tangential to the main argument.

 

[crossthebreeze]

This article poses activism and organising as two separate approaches with organising as far preferable. Is it as simple as this? Plenty of food for thought.

Its just coming up as "loading tweet" for me - you got any other link for it?

 

[Cid]

Its just coming up as "loading tweet" for me - you got any other link for it?

Organizing Versus Activism - Organizing Work

 

[Pickman's model]

It's no surprise that the anti-poll tax campaign was such a success, in those places where it was organised rather than activised.

 

[Patteran]

Adolph Reed makes an associated distinction, doesn't he. Contrasts contemporary activism around protesting racism as a concept (abstracted from capitalism) with historical challenges to specific, concrete examples of racialised policies.

The postwar activism that reached its crescendo in the South as the “civil rights movement” wasn’t a movement against a generic “racism;” it was specifically and explicitly directed toward full citizenship rights for black Americans and against the system of racial segregation that defined a specific regime of explicitly racial subordination in the South. The 1940s March on Washington Movement was also directed against specific targets, like employment discrimination in defense production. Black Power era and post-Black Power era struggles similarly focused on combating specific inequalities and pursuing specific goals like the effective exercise of voting rights and specific programs of redistribution.

(I'll link it rather than paraphrasing/quoting further - it's been posted before
Antiracism: vague politics about an nearly indescribable thing )

 

[8ball]

I'd always figured activism just meant "doing something", and so "organising" would come under that general umbrella.