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Posted by Mike E on November 21, 2011
“We should welcome ideas go for the whole thing –that express we are not about merely pressuring on the monsters who rule this world.
“When words are spoken that (suddenly! finally!) invoke that idea of negating a whole system or structure (i.e. “Occupy Everywhere!” “All power to the General Assembly!” “Long live the Oakland Commune!”) — every nerve should go on alert. We should tune in intently to the reception.
“Who is speaking? Who is listening? Who is answering back?…
“We should take note as the stone hits the pond, and read the ripples. Because we are wanting to generate waves.”
This emerges from a discussion of “When do we discuss power? Long live the Oakland Commune?“
by Mike Ely
Any complex human task, (any!) that you speak the words quite a bit in advance of the actual moment, in order to be able to act when the actual alignment of stars is “just right.” And you often have to speak them with poetry that won’t hold up to lawyerly textualism (“We want the world and we want it now!” or one of my favorite Pantherisms “Blood to the horse’s brow, and woe to those who cannot swim.”)
If you think about it: Any revolutionary cause needs contagiousagitational slogans the preconfigure in the mind the visions and goals that will (eventually, hopefully) give rise to action slogans.
That is how ideas change matter: When revolutionary ideas become grasped (understood, taken up and creatively morphed) by large numbers of people, matter itself is changed (meaning that social relations are overthrown and their defenders are challenged and defeated).
“Drive the U.S. Out!”… “End Apartheid”… “Free the Land!”…. these are not action slogans — but ways of confronting numbers of people with the possibility of taking up large and complex tasks, and it gives them the means to pass that message on (if they agree with it).
And there are times when an agitational slogan can become an action slogan — precisely because the agitational work was well conceived and well received, and the conditions changed in a very favorable way.
An example from the past, for some months in Russia’s 1917 year of revolution — the slogan “All power to the soviets” was an agitational slogan — and it was (at the beginning) considered the slogan of crazy people, because it announced the withdrawal of support for the supposedly-radical post-Tsarist Kerensky government, and as more conservative elements took over many Soviets (in some of their assemblies) — “All power to the Soviets” became an indictment of those conservative leadership of the soviets, who had no intention of fighting for power. And then (after September 1917 and the Kornilov events), “All Power to the Soviets” became an action slogan — as the revolutionary communists prepared an actual armed insurrection in October that aimed at overthrowing Kerensky and bringing increasingly radicalized Soviet councils to power country wide.
And expect this: When revolutionary people raise slogans which break with business as usual (and which obviously early agitational slogans for revolution — “All power to the people!” “Occupy Everything,” “Revolution is the solution”), some people often show up to lecture us all that “the time is not right for this.”
For some reasons, their assumption is that you can only speakcertain words when the time is actually ripe for putting them into action. And that you can only raise a slogan if you actually, literally, intend to do it soon.
The work of revolution requires preparing minds and organizing forces for revolution, and that requires speaking about revolution (dreaming about it, brainstorming about it, probing its unpredictable forms and mysteries and future difficulties) long in advance of “ripe” conditions.
The time IS ripe
Here is the truth: The time is now ripe (for the first time in a long time) for widely speaking about revolution and radical change. Not because the time is now ripe for actually overthrowing the U.S. empire and capitalist property system, but because ears and minds are open to the new, and because we can make this conversation anew.
And (does it need to be said) if we waited to talk about revolution (or “power to the people!”) until the crisis is so deep that we couldconceivably make a revolution — then it would be too late for plans, core organizations, theory, conferences, training of specialists, supporting projects, party building, etc. etc. And our waiting would have squandered the crisis, not exploited it.
Often the demand “wait to raise revolution until the time for revolution has arrived” is a plan for never making revolutionary changes — and somewhat consciously so.
Agitation plants the seeds for future harvest
Once we have made this distinction between agitational slogans and action slogans…. once we jointly recognized the fact that “Occupy Everything” is just such an agitational slogan, not some non-existent plan/call for what to actually go do early next Tuesday morning…..
Then we can get to the actual question….. what are the agitational slogans that are best for this moment? What pushes the envelope? what will give the revolutionary minded a pole to group around, and an intriguing new thought to share with everyone around them? What is the presentational form that makes the unthinkable thinkable? That crystallizes the radical hope just emerging in the recessed lobes of our collective mind? What poses the question to which we (in large numbers over the time ahead) should pose to ourselves and each other — to energize that genius that only exists when large numbers of people take up a vast work of creation together?
And the “we” here is not some small circle — who will sally forth “one-to-many” with the slogan for all. The creative process of inventing a beloved new “agitational slogan with traction” is (inevitably and always) a collective creative process. (The Bolsheviks didn’t invent the Soviets — some of them crankily refused to support or join the Soviets when they first formed as motley gatherings in 1905.)
SKS expresses a preference for a “commune” slogan, and says we shouldn’t suggest that a society (or even a revolution) could be run on a consensus model (which it obviously can’t!)
I feel this: We should welcome the raising of ideas that suggest that a new radical movement should go for the whole thing. That what we are about is not merely protest, or a mere pressuring on the “state of affairs” (and the monsters who rule that state). When words are spoken that (suddenly! finally!) invoke the idea of “the whole thing” (i.e. “Occupy Everywhere!” “All power to the General Assembly!” “Long live the Oakland Commune!”) — every nerve should go on alert, we should listen intently to the reception.
Who is speaking? Who is listening? Who is answering back?
I don’t know the forms through which the “whole thing” is going to be discussed. I am not convinced yet, which agitational slogans will press that forward best (and perhaps we should write our own and try them out!) But we should take note as the stone hits the pond, and read the ripples. Because we are wanting to generate waves.
