Matt asked me to write something for a zine he’s doing for the upcoming protests against the RNC here where we live. He suggested several things, I’m still not sure what I want to write. I was thinking of trying to write something on organizations (mass and political) and on organizing, as those are things I want to get clearer on. I’m not sure I can get that done by the deadline, though.
Matt and several other great people I know have been heavily involved in this (most but not all folk from my IWW branch, and some of those in their capacity as members and some in their capacity of wearers of other hats). There seems to be a lot of activity around all of this locally and beyond - various networks and so on.
In addition to Matt’s project, I know of at least two other publications related to this. An old friend from the Free Association wrote to me recently to say that a publication they’re part of, Turbulence, is issuing something for the protests. The good folk at Team Colors have also done a publication for it.
I’ve not been part of this stuff at all, except in coordinating a bit with some friends, comrades, and members of similar organizations to make sure they have housing. I’ll be going, but only to some of the events. My lack of participation is partly my being tired and burnt out. I have too much on my plate as it is. It’s also partly that I’m not very excited about demonstrations and mobilizations of this sort and haven’t been for a long while, nor am I excited about aspects of some of the left - mostly cultural, really. (That’s not a criticism, it’s a statement of where I’m at.) I’m more excited about and more oriented toward other sorts of work. I will say, though, that there’s been some good coordination and relationship building around the Red and Black Bloc, with endorsements by various class oriented anarchist groups (such as the Workers Solidarity Alliance, which I’m a member of though I chronically forget to pay my dues because I’m a bit of a flake).
This last, the organizational endorsements, gets to the other piece of where I’m at with all this. Like I said, I’m more into other work. I’m most interested in organization right now. This means two things to me. One is mass organization, the other is political organization. Todd and I did an interview in the first issue of Turbulence, where we talked about organizing. That grew out of an article we co-wrote for ASR (which, I’m flattered to say, has been reposted here.)
In that when we talked about organizing it was exclusively about mass organizations - building them and the fights they carry out. Since then, mostly from talking with Todd, I’ve become more convinced of the utility (Todd would probably say necessity, which I’m not sure of - at least in a philosophical or logical sense) of distinguishing between mass and political organizations, and of having a political organization. Those talks are part of why I started looking around at existing anarchist organizations, and ended up joining the WSA.
So - organizations and organizing, political organizations and mass organizations. I don’t really like those terms but they’re the best ones I have for now.
Organizing in the sense I’m using it here means basically talking to people who are not already part of a common effort with us, in order to identify their interests and built relationships, and use those interests and relationships to get them involved in a common effort, specifically some kind of struggle. This can happen temporarily - like organizing a group to get a stop sign put in on our street so less kids will get hit by cars, when when we get the stop sign the group dissolves - or it can happen in a way that tries to build permanent organization.
The type of permanent organization I have in mind here is what I call a mass organization. A mass organization is an organization of people acting based on their interests and relationships - immigrants fighting for better conditions for immigrants, tenants fighting for better conditions against landlords, oppressed minorities confronting the forces of oppression such as police or organized oppressive groups, workers fighting bosses. As I see it, mass organizations want to grow and to improve conditions for their members and constituents.
Political organizations are for developing an analysis and perspective based on some set of values, and propagating that vision and set of values. Obviously at this level of generality this also describes mass organizations to some extent (an organization of tenants who oppose really abusive landlords hold at least implicitly to a vision and set of values in which tenants should not have abusive landlords). Another way I think of this is that mass organizations want to find people, get to know them, and get them involved in actions they weren’t previously part of, based on common self-interest. Political organizations want to develop a shared ideology and attract members based on a shared ideology. I think both are more effective when permanent.
I worry about this protest mobilization stuff because I’m not sure if these questions are on the table. I also think that the mobilizations most rely on people who already agree (in the sense which I think political organizations largely attract members somewhat passivel based on ideology, though some do and all should recruit actively as well) rather than talking to people who aren’t on board yet, at least they don’t involve enough of that latter sort of outreach in my opinion. They also rely on semi-permanent relationships between people but which are not formalized and so less accountable and also less capable of developing a clearer/deeper point of view and analysis. (I think. I also think I’m hitting a wall here a bit, and my head hurts, so I’m going to get off the computer in a moment and will perhaps write something else for Matt.)
More notes…
- who is here? why?
- who is not here? why?
- what next?
- movements and organizations, movementism and organizationism