Syndicalism and Resistance

Rudolf Rocker's Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice is a short introduction to anarchist theories. In particular, the syndicalist form of anarchism holds that anarchism will be achieved only through united collective struggle via radical unions (syndicates). These unions would not only advocate better worker conditions, but demand direct worker control.

A key focus of unions is therefore teaching members, in both anarchist theory as well as self-sufficiency. Sort term, unions can demand better conditions and pay, but the long term goal must be creating entirely new power structures that can eventually grow and overtake the state and private business.

One thing I liked about the book was the concise summary of the history of anarchist thought. While acknowledging that many cultures historically held views similar to anarchism, modern anarchism was born from the ideas of thinkers like Godwin and Proudhon, who wrote that "[private] property is theft". Bakunin built on Proudhon's ideas, firmly believing only struggle would win because the ruling classes were too proud to allow even modest reform without a fight. Kropotkin expanded Bakunin's ideas even further into the realm of anarchist communism, believing the community owned not only the means of production but the products themselves to ensure everyone has basic needs met. Essentially, while all anarchists share the same end goal, there are differences of opinion on how exactly to get there. Some of those differences were very important, and discussed in the final chapter in which Rocker tracks the evolution of anarcho-syndicalism itself through the modern era.

The other thing I like about Rocker's book is that it gives a list of actions that can be taken by workers. Roughly, the possibly direct actions include:

Boycott. Workers boycott certain products and companies, not only for personal use but also for industrial use at the workplace.

Sabotage. Contrary to the typical English meaning, it comes from French and refers to doing work in a "clumsy" manner. In other words, deliberately working slowly so that one is technically following the rules and laws but is still impacting the bottom line of the company. Extreme versions of sabotage could include altering or damaging the equipment to prevent further work, even if new workers are brought in.

Sit-down strike. Workers strike but do so while occupying the workplace so that other workers can't be brought in so easily to replace them.

General strike. Workers in all industries strike together in order to bring the whole economy to a halt and make the elite pay attention to demands. Police and/or militia can be expected to respond at that point, but Rocker points out that a general strike by its nature is very decentralized, which spreads police forces thin and makes it easier for workers to resist.

All in all it is a short (about 100 pages) book that makes a great introduction if you're looking to learn the basics of anarchist thought.

Anarchism and Social Revolution

My recent readings from Bookchin and Kropotkin had me interested to learn more about anarchism. I was recently at the Big Idea co-op bookstore in Pittsburgh, and while browsing came across a series of books. The first is "What is Anarchism?" by Alexander Berkman, which is actually two of his essays combined into a book. It seemed like a perfect introduction and so I bought it (as well as a few others that I'll hopefully write about soon -- stay tuned!).

What is Anarchism? is a fantastic read to get a "lay of the land" on anarchist philosophy. The book is written in an almost conversational tone with a natural flow from one chapter to the next, sort of meant to be an on-going conversation where the author anticipates and answers your questions as they come up at the end of each small chapter. In this way it is similar to Kropotkin's books; not sure if that's a trend of anarchists or just lucky, but either way I have greatly appreciated the "down-to-earth" writing style that isn't too heavy in jargon. I find a lot of socialist material is weighed down by Marxist economic terminology, and while I can (mostly) follow it, I always think about how inaccessible such writings can be to the general public. If our goal is to grow the movement, then we need better educational materials. Berkman's writing is clear and informative and I think would be interesting to any worker that has started on the path to questioning capitalism.

A short summary of, What is Anarchism? is that Berkman essentially makes an argument that the only realistic way to bring about change -- what he calls the social revolution, to distinguish from political or violent revolution -- to end the entrenched capitalist system is by organizing for a general strike. A general strike would mean as many as possible -- ideally everyone! -- would go on strike simultaneously, and not just those from a particular industry or business. Berkman argues that only a complete shutdown of our economy and politics would be enough to force concessions and ultimately win an anarchist socialist society. It's a pretty convincing argument, citing other authors as well as Berkman's own experience following the Russian revolution and its successes and failures.

But why is it needed in the first place? The goal of social revolution is "the abolition of government and of economic inequality, and the socialization of the means of production and distribution". In particular, social revolution is not about fighting and destruction but instead about construction -- about constructing a new system. We don't destroy farms and factories, but we take ownership of them for the workers. We "reorganize conditions for the public welfare", as Berkman says. He argues that much of the poverty and inequality that we see today is a result of capitalism, and is upheld largely by coercive forces of government authoritarianism in the form of "private property" laws, meant to keep wealth and power in the hands of a few rather than the collective benefit.

Therefore, we must at once abolition capitalism and government and replace it with a new system that ends inequality and creates democracy, and his view is that a general strike is the most likely method to be successful. Berkman calls for a social revolution because he deems that a political revolution is not possible because political parties are designed to protect capitalism and cannot be infiltrated within or via independent politics. He also deems a violent revolution undesirable and likely to fail because a citizen army cannot resist the full might of the state's police and military forces; plus, as he points out, our goal must be construction and not destruction. So to Berkman, a general strike creating a social revolution is the only way to win victory, for politics and the military machine cannot function if all of the workers throw down the tools and refuse to work for them or uphold the system any longer.

Of course, organizing up to that point will take a lot of work and convincing, and so Berkman talks about the need to educate and organize now until the movement is strong enough. A "weak" strike too early that does not include all workers can fail and hurt the workers more as capitalism retaliates. Berkman therefore argues that until the social revolution, we must spend our time organizing, educating, and building unions that treat all workers as equals and are focused on attacking capitalism and establishing grassroots democracy as a whole rather than only demanding smaller changes like higher wages. He cautions against organizing only around manual labor unions, as he cites intellectual labor like engineering will also be necessary to construct a new world. Even within manual labor, agricultural work is at least as important as industrial work. Thus a united general strike in solidarity between all manual and intellectual labor must be well organized.

The real fight isn't even so much the strike itself, but constructing a new system that can last and not fall right back into the traps of authoritarianism and capitalism. Berkman reminds us, similarly to Kropotkin's call in The Conquest of Bread, that the revolution will fail unless its first priority is getting food and basic needs to all. So a high priority of the social revolution must be unionizing farms, and creating community gardens for self-sufficiency prior to a full strike and action. Once action is under way, Berkman argues citizen committees would form to ensure everyone gets needed housing and supplies, again a call back to Kropotkin's plan. As communities become self-sufficient and needs are met, the interest in returning to the old system and economy will wane and be replaced with an anarchist society that respects the rights of individuals and encourages mutual aid and cooperation without the use of force that capitalism and authoritarian government require.

In short, it's a great read if you'd like to learn about what it means to be an anarchist and that anarchist vision for change. Like many references, a little light on details of organizing -- what exactly does it mean to organize? How do you remain united and organized prior to the general strike? How do you win enough small victories to keep workers united toward the end goal? These are difficult questions for sure, but ones I think worth visiting. While I am definitely confident a non-violent social revolution largely based on strikes and mutual aid would  be successful, I'm not sure that I entirely agree that electoral politics is worthless. Expecting to reform an entire system from within is probably a little much, but I think municipal elections can be won and used to create more democratic communities. I also think independent politics at the state and even national level can be valuable as educational tools, but as we see with the Greens can also backfire if we aren't careful how we present ourselves and our vision for change. Overall, Berkman's arguments are intriguing and I will definitely be thinking about them more as I learn and organize.

The Alternatives to Policing

The problem is not police training, police diversity, or police methods. The problem is the dramatic and unprecedented expansion and intensity of policing in the last forty years, a fundamental shift in the role of police in society. The problem is policing itself.

Alex S. Vitale starts the book "The End of Policing" with this summary. In fact, it appears on the cover, not just inside the book!

The central thesis of Vitale's book is that policing itself has been a failure at dealing with societal problems. After an introductory chapter on the history of policing, which traces how the earliest police forces in the US were formed not to combat crime but to brutally break worker strikes and intimidate and capture black slaves and freedmen after the Civil War, the remaining chapters of the book address a number of "case studies," specific issues that have not been addressed by increased policing or harsher punishments.

The first police forces in the US, especially in the northern states, were used to break striking workers during the Gilded Age. Business developed close ties with government and elected officials, who hired police and deputized private security forces to effectively allow them to legally assault workers. The violence was blamed on the workers, and used as an excuse to arrest workers and break up strikes and unions. A lot of this occurred actually right here in western Pennsylvania and the region, since it was the site of early coal and steel strikes that resulted in more militant unions (and events like the Battle of Homestead in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, where unions clashed with the Pinkerton private detective agency). In fact, the first US state police force was the Pennsylvania State Police, and was modeled on military occupation forces in the Philippines after the US captured the territory from Spain, so right from the beginning police have been militarized and cultivated to look at themselves as occupiers more than anything else. It's an eye-opening read that shows that unfortunately this isn't just a recent trend, but a continuing theme among police forces.

A number of issues are brought up as social problems. The author looks at the problems, or at least the perceived problems by the elite, and discusses how "reform" has already been tried and largely failed for each of these issues, then proposes some alternatives to addressing the issues without the need for police or the court system.

• Schools -- Policing in schools has been a failure, only growing the "school-to-prison" pipeline by criminalizing student misbehavior that traditionally was settled outside of the courts. The growing placement of full time officers in schools contributes to schools feeling more like prisons than places of learning, and emphasizes punishment over teachable moments. Vitale suggests police should be removed from the schools, and the schools should receive more funding and resources to hire the needed counselors and support staff to work with students. A shift toward restorative justice for managing behavior issues needs to occur, one that emphases learning and contributing to the community, rather than the typical policing behaviors of control and punishment.
• Mental Health -- Individuals with various mental health disorders may act "disorderly" and even commit some crimes, but the police response has been disproportionate due to a lack of understanding of mental health. Too often these encounters end in the police severely injuring or killing the individual, and even when that doesn't happen, individuals become stuck in a court system that does not have the mental health resources necessary to help the individual. Vitale suggests that while police definitely need more training on de-escalation and mental health, that isn't enough. We need to massively overhaul our mental healthcare system to ensure more resources are devoted to helping people early on, before any "disorderly" conduct even occurs. We treat it as a health problem, not a criminal problem.
• Homelessness -- Many homeless people are actually mentally ill (so see above), but many others are the result of economic problems and the unaffordability of housing costs. Unfortunately, policing only puts homeless people into a court system and gives them criminal records that make it hard to ever find a job again, creating a cycle of poverty and homelessness. While some reforms tried to create "Homeless Courts" to help, these courts still criminalize poverty and do not have the appropriate resources to help people out of homelessness. Vitale suggests providing long-term housing (not just emergency shelters) and jobs (not just job training) to homeless in order to end the problem, not policing.
• Drugs -- The criminalization of drugs can largely be traced to institutionalized racism. Most drugs were legal until the early/mid 1900s. Opium (and derivative opiods) were first criminalized as a reaction to increased immigrants from China that set up opium shops in the US. Blacks were given cocaine regularly as slaves and servants to keep them working even when hungry, and so after slavery ended, cocaine was used as an excuse to harass and raid Black families. Similarly, cannabis (marijuana) was criminalized after an influx of immigrants from Mexico, as well as it becoming popular among Blacks in the jazz era, and many White leaders looked for a reason to keep the races from mixing. Cannabis was also used as an excuse to investigate anti-war activists during Vietnam. There is large evidence that criminalization has encouraged police to become drug dealers themselves. Instead, Vitale argues for the need for decriminalization and establishment of needle exchanges and clinics to help those that are addicted. In other words, we treat drugs largely as a health problem and not a criminal problem.
• Sex Work -- Sex work has been criminalized since a moral panic swept through the country in the early 1900s. The US has used its position to push for criminalization of prostitution worldwide ever since. The result has been a confusion between prostitution and human trafficking, which are not the same thing. Religious moral arguments always frame criminalization, and even more liberal attitudes like the "Nordic model", as a way to save women from "degrading" work, but that is a poor characterization when many sex workers are actual consensual and enjoy the work. For example, many women in Asian countries prefer sex work to the alternative "dignified" work under the capitalist model, which is long hours for low pay doing hard, tedious work at factories. Police arrest sex workers then push them into a court system that forces them to get "job training" and push them into capitalist work that they don't want to do. Vitale suggests that sex work should be decriminalized so that sex workers can form their own unions and companies that would provide healthcare, retirement, etc., without fear of police raids.
• Gangs -- Gang suppression became more common as a moral panic spread that the youth were involved in drugs and violence. Police developed violent suppression tactics and use of SWAT forces to combat gangs described as "hoodlums". However statistics show that most gang members join the gang for economic reasons; gangs provide a sense of security between jobs, and most members peacefully quit after a couple of years when a job opens up. Vitale suggests that the best way to eliminate gangs is not with police, but with greater economic opportunity in poor neighborhoods.
• Immigration -- Historically, the US was a near open border, only enforcing basic customs rules on international commerce and trading. A concern about policing immigration effectively started in the mid 1800s during a large wave of Chinese immigrants. Many of the border policing language referred to the "Mongolian hoarde" and was aimed at using immigration laws to prevent Chinese immigrants from being able to own property or become involved in government. The idea also spread to the Mexican border and targeted Mexican and Central/South American immigrants. So the beginnings of border security started with racist goals, then became about continuing the drug war (see above about drugs). New policing organizations like ICE were created and given authority over "constitution-free" zones near borders where all sorts of human rights violations occur. Vitale suggests that the proper way to handle immigration is by working with other nations to form not "free trade" but "fair trade" agreements that reduce economic inequality and violence, the main reasons for the influx of immigrants. Immigrants that wish to come should be put into a proper pathway to citizenship.
• Politics (protests) -- Many police forces, including the FBI, essentially started as forces to monitor political dissent. In particular, in the early days it started with surveillance of "anarchists", "socialists", and "communists" but evolved into environmentalists and social justice protesters in the modern era. Police still use surveillance to track protesters and even infiltrate political groups under the guise of "anti-terrorism". Police have evolved a focus on "controlling" protests by setting rules on when, where, and how people can protest, and the intimidating protesters into obeying the rules with riot gear and aggressive tactics. Vitale suggests that the rules for protests and permitting be taken away from police departments and put into local governments, where there will be transparency and opportunity for people to speak in favor or against proposed policy; while not perfect, it would protect 1st amendment rights much better than letting the police bureaucracy privately decide and police those rules. Vitale also suggests that any concern over protests would be minimized by creating a truly democratic system responsive to citizen concerns; most protests are driven into the streets by a government that does not listen and a distinct lack of choice on the ballot.

I've outlined the major arguments but the book is full of really great discussion as well as a lot of statistics and facts that back up all of these assertions.

I've always known we needed to change our criminal justice system, but I am now sold on the idea that in most cases, we don't even need policing in the first place. What we need is a fair and just economic system and real democracy, and most crime won't even exist.

Democracy at Work, and what we get wrong about socialism

What if I told you many of those that call themselves "socialist" are in fact arguing for capitalism -- state capitalism, as opposed to privately-owned capitalism, but capitalism nonetheless?

Richard Wolff's book Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism is a short but very interesting and informative read that essentially argues just that. Wolff starts with a history of modern capitalism in the US and tracks the development of capitalist and Marxist thought through the 20th century. As Wolff looks at economic crises from the Great Depression up to the Great Recession of 2008, and even to other countries such as the collapse of the "socialist" government of Russia in the 1980s, Wolff points out how the common thread of them has been a failure of capitalism.

Classic Marxist thought puts an emphasis on who owns the property (or the modes of production) directly, which sets up a clash between capitalism as the private property system versus socialism/communism as the public property system. Typically in history, socialism's call for the end of private property has translated into a call for state ownership of the property. Wolff's central idea is that state ownership of property actually doesn't fix the problem, and simply replicates the capitalist hierarchical structure within government instead of a corporation. Instead of a CEO and board of directors, we now have a governor and committees, but the hierarchical, oppressive structure is the same. Countries like Russia or Venezuela that the media often describes as "socialist" or even "communist" are far from it, and actually mirror a capitalist structure more than anything else. And that is the same capitalist structure that is now eating the US economy right now.

Wolff instead revisits Marx to find a new definition of the capitalism versus socialism battle. Instead of ownership of property, Wolff defines the struggle as deciding who has ownership of the surplus; roughly speaking, who owns the profits of labor? Under private capitalism, it is clear that the capitalist class owns the profits of the workers, and can manage those profits in any way they see fit including giving themselves high salaries and bonuses; however, even with state-owned property, the profits are simply now owned and managed by the state, and still not the workers themselves. In both scenarios, some small group of elite -- whether business managers or government bureaucrats -- own and therefore direct the usage of the surplus. Therefore in this sense, most modern "socialist" countries are better described as "state capitalism".

The cure is therefore to democratize the surplus, and allow the workers themselves to directly and democratically decide what to do with any profits. True socialism is democracy in the workplace as well as politics, not a "socialist" government that controls and directs the economy.

Wolff goes on to describe how such a democratic worker self-directed enterprise (WSDE for short) would function. He makes several strong arguments that WSDEs would be able to provide workers with better jobs, better benefits, and be more resilient to economic and technological change. WSDEs would treat workers as equals, and rotate leadership positions in order to simultaneously promote leadership training for all members while also ensuring no single person or small group becomes "the leader" that "leads" them back into capitalism (it's that old adage that power corrupts, so we have to spread out the power as much as possible). He points out that WSDEs would be in a far stronger place to put environmental rights and human rights above profits, as the whole worker community would have a say in decisions. He also points out that WSDEs would generally do best rotating workers to different jobs, not only gaining everyone a little experience in many things, but also letting younger workers gain experience and decide what job path to take on their own within the WSDE. I think that's actually a fantastic idea, to let new workers try a few different things and pick their own path, it results in much happier and more productive workers. Of course, as technology changes and automation increases profits without labor, unlike corporations that might lay off employees to save on wages, WSDEs would be able to simply cut the amount of working hours -- say from 40 hours per week down to 35, or even lower! -- of everyone. In short, WSDEs due to their democratic nature will do a much better job at putting people first over profits than our current capitalist system.

I really like Wolff's characterization of socialism as ownership over the surplus (profits), and democratic decision making on what to do with said surplus. I think this emphasis on democratic decision making by the workers meshes well with the decentralized economy envisioned by the Green Party, and in fact, Wolff at the very end of the book makes a short plea for an independent political party focused on labor and making democracy in the workplace a thing. While this could be an entirely new Labor Party, I also think the Green Party is well established and already contains decentralized, grassroots democracy in both government and economics as part of its platform.

I believe Greens should read Wolff's book and really internalize it. Let's work to ensure the Green platform lives up to these concepts, and that we start a strong education campaign to let voters and workers know that Greens support their efforts at democratizing the workplace.