Radicalism in the age of Neoliberalism: “What’s Left?” June 2011, MRR #337

They are valid questions.

If I’m such a rad, hardcore ultra-commie, why haven’t I spoken out in solidarity with workers’ struggles recently raging in Wisconsin and other Midwestern states? Why haven’t I voiced opposition to the US instigating yet another war with the bombing of Libya?

I guess I’m just tired with how much of an uphill battle progressive politics has become. I’m reminded of an article by Calvin Woodward and Sam Hananel on the Huffington Post about organized labor beyond Wisconsin entitled “Labor Movement Roars Again, But It’s A Wounded Sound,” that went on to detail exactly how it got that way. And it’s not like bombing the shit out of the third Muslim country within a decade has resulted in massive protests in America’s streets. It doesn’t help that leftist organizations like ANSWER openly laud madman Muammar Gaddafi as a premier anti-imperialist, or that Wisconsin’s labor leaders proclaimed their willingness to give away wages, safety standards, and health care and pension benefits, all to preserve the right for union bureaucrats to collectively bargain for their rank-and-file. The sad, uninspiring level of such struggles doesn’t make it easy to write about them, let alone participate in them.

But, hold on, haven’t most of the political struggles I’ve engaged in ever since the ‘60s been uphill, made more onerous by self-important, self-serving political organizations pretending to advance those struggles? At least in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, it felt like I was on the winning side of history. These days, even overwhelmingly positive actions feel like mere holding actions against a rising tide of rightwing reaction. I’ve spent several past columns bemoaning that the various uprisings of the 1960s never managed to go further, seeking reasons why those movements petered out due to internal failings. There is another way to approach this subject. There seems to have been a decisive turn that occurred between 1975 and 1980, the emergence of some external factor which worked to defeat the ‘60s upsurge. Whether it’s Timothy Brennan (Wars of Position) who postulated that the rise of postmodernism in academia after 1975 disarmed the Hegelian Left and a generation of student activists, or Franco Berardi (The Soul at Work) who dates the rise of semiocapitalism’s digital panlogism and a willingly subservient cognitariat from 1977, or David Harvey (A Brief History of Neoliberalism) who sees in neoliberalism’s rise in the 1970s a reconsolidated ruling class force sufficient to defeat the strength of insurgent workers and rebellious peoples around the world, there is a consensus that something happened in the mid to late 1970s that tipped the scales decisively toward resurgent capital.

Personally, I place the blame on neoliberalism, but I don’t accept Harvey’s analysis that neoliberalism is merely a passing historical phase, soon to be superceded. Instead, I’m with the Aufheben folks who contend that, because of the close economic relationship between China and the US, neoliberalism is an expression of capitalism’s longterm, steady growth, and is bound to last for decades. As such, I don’t think we’re going to see a revitalized labor movement challenge the power of capital, or a revived antiwar movement take on the American empire, anytime soon. No matter how much I would wish otherwise.

But isn’t that when support and solidarity is most important, when such movements are at their most beleaguered? Shouldn’t I be willing to do political work and make personal sacrifices, given the level of assault working people and people around the world are under at the hands of the US government?

I’m no fan of the Leftist politics of discipline and sacrifice. Instead of boring you with a long explanation as to the why and wherefore of this however, consider this story as illustration. Abbie Hoffman, along with Jerry Ruben and Paul Krassner, founded the Youth International Party (YIPpie!) in 1967, which celebrated sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, and an anarchic politics best summarized by the slogan “Revolution for the hell of it!” Amidst the rebellion of youth and students during the 1960s, Abbie participated in a number of creative political actions, like tossing money onto the floor of the NY Stock Exchange, which produced a mad scrabble of stockbrokers to possess it. He was a member of the Chicago Eight, a group of activists tried for conspiracy to foment riot during the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. And he wrote perhaps the essential text for mischief, mayhem and anarchy within industrial capitalism, entitled Steal This Book.

Hoffman claimed to have been set up for a cocaine bust by the Feds because of his politics in 1973, at which time he went underground. He continued to be involved in political activism while on the run, and said that he became a communist as a result of his experiences. When he resurfaced in 1980 he immediately jumped back into politics, specifically, anti-CIA protests. But the political climate had changed considerably in the intervening years, leading Abbie to flip a 60s adage “never trust anybody under 30,” and to quip that American campuses had become “hotbeds of rest.” So depressed was Abbie Hoffman by the lack of rebellion and protest among students and youth during the 1980s that he swallowed 150 Phenobarbital pills in 1989, committing suicide at the age of 52.

I’m sad enough having to grow old in a hyper capitalist America without inviting suicidal depression by fighting for the Left’s numerous already lost causes.

Lifesavers for a new life: “What’s Left?” March 2009, MRR #310

I moved to Oakland from San Diego in 1991. In my initial exploration of the Bay Area, I discovered two invaluable resources I relied on for many years to come. The first was an 8.5×11 piece of paper, printed both sides, in very small type, called the Bay Area Progressive Calendar. Produced by Ken Cheetham, it detailed every progressive event brought to its attention and offered, by mail, a directory of local progressive groups and organizations. Incredibly cool. I first encountered the Progressive Calendar in the free literature zone at the old Cody’s Bookstore on Telegraph, and I made a point of seeking out this valuable little ecumenical leftie calendar.

The second was The List. In the day, it was an 8.5×11 piece of paper, folded widthwise, printed in colorful, incredibly small type, as a smart little four pager produced by Steve Koepke listing all the punk, hardcore, ska, rocakabilly, yada, yada, yada shows in the immediate Bay Area. Incredibly cool. I came upon The List at MRR HQ on Clipper Street, as a shitworker typing, scanning, and laying out the magazine’s now extinct Classifieds Section. I regularly attended shows back then, so I kept a copy of The List handy.

My memory is a bit fuzzy, so I can’t recall if these were weekly or monthly publications, or something in between. Both the Progressive Calendar and The List augmented their street presence with mailed subscriptions and, when it became common, emailed information. And both eventually dropped their physical distribution altogether to bookstores, record shops, political events, shows, and other venues. The Bay Area Progressive Directory and adjunct Calendar are now entirely web based, and can be found at bapd.org. The List still can be had via snail mail by writing The List, P.O. Box 2451, Richmond, CA 94802. You can also get it through email by writing to skoepke@stevelist.com. This information is obtainable online at calweb.com/~skoepke/, and several www versions of The List are available, most notably at foopee.com/punk/the-list/ and kzsu.stanford.edu/~calendar/orig_list.html.

The Progressive Calendar and The List were my lifelines when I moved to Oakland. They helped me get established and oriented, meet people, find things to do, and make the Bay Area my home. They required that I make an effort to go out and about to initially find them, and to subsequently keep track of them. Hunting down a copy of the Progressive Calendar or The List got me out of my tiny apartment to experience the weather, other people, the Bay Area in all its disappointing glory, and the real world. Eventually, I subscribed to both by mail, and I still occasionally refer to them online. What I miss though is that street presence, their physicality, the ability to walk into my local bookshop or record store and find them in with all the other free literature.

It’s the disappearance of a physical geography implied by the evolution of the Progressive Calendar and The List that most upsets me. Now, it’s all about an amorphous digital geography, which I found troublesome. Those who champion cyberspace and tout the virtues of the virtual would call me old fashioned, and point out how much more accessible and available both the Progressive Calendar and The List are, now that they’re online. No doubt, these are some of the same folks who defend CDs over vinyl, and MP3s over CDs.

Personally, I never could tell much of a difference between music on vinyl versus CDs. But I can hear the difference between MP3s and these previous media. The digital revolution is turning the music I like to listen to into low quality crap, much as it’s converting physical community into that sorry-assed excuse for human interaction called the online community. Anyone who has attended a real, live record swap, book fair, concert, or farmers market and then dares to compare them to the shadowy, flame-ridden, cowardly and anonymous, so-called community of your average online chatroom or forum deserves the lobotomy that prolonged internet exposure all but guarantees.

On an unrelated note, I did a column awhile back on political syncretism in general, and the rise of national anarchism on the fascist right in particular. Spencer Sunshine has written a comprehensive article on the latter, called “Rebranding Fascism,” for The Public Eye Magazine, available at publiceye.org/magazine/v23n4/rebranding_fascism.html. A rather anemic debate on the article took place on infoshop.org (news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20081220225130728), which has only reinforced my disdain for modern anarchism. Anarchists no longer have the cajones to defend their politics from such vile interlopers, and thus anarchism fully deserves to be relegated to the dustbin of history.

National anarchists have established a nominal presence in the Bay Area, and they’ve already publicly attended an all-too-conventional, ANSWER-sponsored anti-AIPAC protest in San Francisco on December 11, 2008. Presumably, they also participated clandestinely in the anti-authoritarian bloc called by UA of the Bay for the equally stodgy January 10, 2009 ANSWER demo protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza. At least the national anarchists advertised the call on their website. No one can tell what kind of anarchist you are, whether anarchist at all, if you’re dressed all in black and wearing a black bandana over your face. Australian national anarchists who’ve jumped into Leftist demos explain that “we cover our faces to protect us from the persecution of the other political groups.” Meaning, they dress anarchist in order to avoid getting their asses kicked by Leftists, and other anarchists. And rumor has it that black bloc participants in the anti-globalization protests in Genoa, Italy on August 23, 2001 weren’t all anarchists or autonomists. Aside from the usual quota of police agent provocateurs, a number of young Italian fascists swelled the ranks of the black bloc, in the guise of national autonomists.

I’m looking forward to the day when a group of national anarchists openly try to join a regular local anarcho event, such as the ho-hum December 20, 2008 SF march in solidarity with Greek anarchists and the New School occupation. I bet that such an attempt will produce general consternation and confusion, not to mention much hand wringing. But in the end the regular anarchists will wimp out and let the national anarchists join in. Unchallenged. Any takers?

For someone who has just decried the pernicious effects of the digital over the real, I sure use a lot of internet sources.

UPDATE FOR 2014:

Most of the links mentioned in this column have held up quite well over the years. Can’t say the same for the postal addresses. Even more digital versions of The List can be found by simply googling.