The ‘Peaceful Revolution in Egypt’: Protest through the eyes of the powerful and the nature of the uprising

What are all these references to the ‘peaceful revolution in Egypt’ that I’m hearing in the media? From the images I saw, it was moltovs, sticks and organized resistance beating back the government thugs and plain clothes police officers who were attempting to attack and discredit the protest movement.

The dust hasn’t even landed on the floor yet in Egypt and already the spin masters of the media and political figures are already laying out a revisionist narrative of what happened as somewhat akin to “fluffy peace demonstrations” in the words of one friend. I think this is interesting because in trying to co-opt an uprising against a dictator held in place by the US for decades and which will be a huge blow to US power in the Middle East (especially if it spreads further) I think we are able to glimpse in action how power structures either co-opt or demonize protest movements.

So are the recent protests in Egypt peaceful? They could be termed non-violent if non-armed confrontation and property destructive fit into that definition, but certainly not peaceful. But being one of those folks who during the WTO protests back in 1999 was attacked (and even threatened to be punched in the face believe it or not) for breaking codes of ‘non-violence’ by bringing out newspaper stands into the street when riot police were attacking people with tear gas or forming a line to push back police who were beating on people doing a sit down blockade of an intersection, I have a hard time listening to the rhetoric of a ‘peaceful revolution’ in Egypt.

Revised Repost: Revolutionaries in High Places, Van Jones

Van Jones with fist in the air

Note: Bringing this back with a revised version. This commentary piece was removed after the attacks by right-wing blog and media sites on Van Jones intensified and led up to Obama washing his hands of Jones with his resignation. Right-wing sites cited “left wing blogger Machete408” as further ‘proof’ of Obama’s undercover socialist credentials (read an actual socialist refute this total non-sense here). As for Jones’ himself, he’s likely made some major political transitions. A mentor of his touts the “pro-business, market-based ideas Van has promoted for years, including in his best-selling book, The Green Collar Economy.” (link) Though I think it’s fair to say that the tendency on the revolutionary left, Van Jones formerly included, which views alliances and involvement with the state and electoral politics—state power if you will— as a strategic orientation is alive and well. (See link, link, link and critique, critique) See also my follow up piece “On Van Jones’ Resignation.”

Did anyone catch the news that Van Jones of Green Jobs for All, and formerly of the Ella Baker Center in Oakland and a revolutionary organization in the Bay Area, was recently tapped by the Obama administration to serve as an advisor around green jobs? The position was officially dubbed the Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation on the White House Council on Environmental Quality, that is before Obama accepted Jones’ resignation following attacks by the right-wing blogosphere and Glen Beck on his radical past.

I’ll get back to that in a minute. I was having a conversation with a friend the other night about the legacy of sixties revolutionaries and Marxists who attempted to “proletarianize” themselves or as some called it “colonize the working class.” Many of these radicals, who were largely from more middle-class backgrounds and college graduates (or those who after becoming radicalized dropped out of college), got jobs in factories and various industries with the goal of bringing the messages of socialism and revolutionary politics to the working class. (For more on this see Max Elbaum’s excellent history of the sixties communist left with Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Che and Mao) Many of them also became active in the unions at these workplace, whom were largely conservative bureaucracies if not outright reactionary.

Relaunch and Recommended Readings

Machete 408 is back serving you up with a new series of postings after a summer hiatus. A continuing state of joblessness and downgrading to a slower internet connection both put a bit of a damper on the political juices that went into the blog. But despite these, there’s a nice backlog of recently published pieces that I hope Machete 408 readers will check out. Below is a collage of recommended and recently published articles and commentaries.

Did anyone notice a coup happening somewhere? Writing on the recent coup in Honduras, Jose Antonio Gutierrez of Ireland’s Worker Solidarity Movement (WSM) as well as the Frente de estudiantes Libertarios (FeL) in Chile, provides analysis with “Coup in Honduras: The Return of Guerillas or the Tactics of Attrition?.” Also is a piece on the potential of the recent popular uprising in Iran in response to stolen elections. “The Iranian Election, A ‘Legacy of Martyred Flowers’” is by Farah, an Iranian whom is also a member of the WSM. Both pieces appear on the Anarkismo international anarchist news and publishing site and Farah’s is followed by a lively debate in the comments section.

Looking at a global trend is “Workers Creating Hope: Factory Occupations and Self-Management” by Shawn Hattingh from Monthly Review Zine, which gives a brief overview of the growing factory and workplace occupations around the globe. The piece concludes, “The actions of these workers [involved in occupations] are inspirational. It seems likely that more and more workers will begin adopting and adapting the idea of factory occupations as a viable way to save jobs and reclaim the dignity that bosses have tried to take away from them. Perhaps what we are also seeing through the occupations, takeovers, and self-management is a glimpse of what a post-capitalist world, created by the workers and the poor themselves, would look like.”

On the movement and political analysis tip is the Advance the Struggle blog, founded earlier this year and written by Bay Area writers influenced by various strains of Marxism. Of interest are several pieces debating the movement that surrounded the killing of Black, 22 year old Oakland resident, Oscar Grant at a BART station on New Years Day 2009. Included is three pieces. “Unfinished Acts” is an insurrectionary anarchist piece created in the format of a composite narrative play; “Justice for Oscar Grant: A Missed Opportunity?” is a solid piece with excellent critical analysis of both the role of the RCP and the non-profit dominated CAPE coalition that led much of the community response; and “Bring the Struggle, Advance the Ruckus” a response to “Missed Opportunity” by Oakland members of the revolutionary group Bring The Ruckus is also worthwhile as well. I won’t link the pieces individually, instead you should go to their blog and find them.

For all those in the labor movement disillusioned with the lack of passage of EFCA (suprise, suprise) is the article “Introducing the Employee Liberation Act” by Daniel Gross of the IWW. There is much to be critical about of the EFCA (See the Machete 408 piece on EFCA here), but what Gross provides us with is a total rethinking of what ails the labor movement and what changes in the legal arena might actually allow for advances by workers instead of card check recognition. Its a bit of a wish list, but what he proposes is a three pronged bill that would: 1) Make discrimination against organizing in the workplace on par with federal civil rights protections around race and gender discrimination. This would make worker rights a recognized civil right as it should; 2) End the second class, modern Jim Crow status of undocumented immigrants in workplace across the US; and 3) Eliminate legal barriers and restrictions on strikes, which would unleash worker’s most powerful weapons against the power of bosses: that of solidarity and the ability to bring profits to a halt.

On an uplifting note is an AK Press blog picture report on the 2nd Annual LA Southern California Anarchist Conference, with nice shots of the jewlery, cultural and publishing vendors, as well as some of the performers and presenters for the event.

Finally, on the anarchist political organization theory front we have the long awaited English translation of “Huerta Grande” by a good comrade at The Left Winger blog. The 1972 piece is considered a seminal theoretical text of the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU), which played a leading role in spawning the especifist current within the South American anarchist movement. Also be sure to read this “quick and dirty rought history piece” on the FAU for background and context.

As well, we have a recent translation of South American Anarchist philosopher Angel Cappelletti (1927-1995) posted on the AK Press Blog “Revolution by the Book.” Cappelletti was born in Argentina and spent the later half of his life in Venezuela, becoming a key intellectual figure in the libertarian left, authoring several works on philosophy, anarchism and Latin America. Supporters have recently created a Spanish language archive site of his work. And last but not least is another piece from Jose Antonio Gutierrez, who again offers us some worthwhile thoughts, but this time on strategy and the role of anarchist organization with his Considerations About the Anarchist Program. Here’s an excerpt:

The essence of the Platform is how to build an organisation that unites like-minded anarchists based on concrete proposals and tactics – that is, a “political organisation” as opposed to what is a purely ideological group. In this tradition, it is perfectly fair that we ask ourselves how many of our organisations, leaving aside any pretensions, have actually managed to reach the level of development of a political organisation. At present, the majority of these groupings are only propaganda groups. The principle difference between a political organisation and a propaganda group is not its number of militants nor its level of militancy, nor even the political insertion of its members. The principle difference is the simple answer to the question: what can we offer the people? While propaganda groups can not offer more than a political and ideological vision and, in the best cases, a few slogans, the revolutionary political organisation can offer a course of action; a programme; a tactical line; a strategy; short-, medium- and long-term objectives.

On Van Jones’ Resignation

Over the Labor Day weekend Van Jones resigned his position as an special adviser on green jobs to the Obama administration amid a flurry of controversy around attacks by the usual suspects on the right raising a fit over his past associations with the left. Its hard to speculate whether it was his own decision to resign and leave the attacks behind or whether this brought from above by an administration hoping to polish its image (as well as engage in some political capitulation) while under attack from an aggressive right.

Either way, Jones seems to have been thrown under the political bus by the White House. As Rosa Celemente, former Green Party Vice President candidate, put it in a commentary piece, Jones was a “high-profile casualty of an administration that started at the center and continues to move to the right.”

Previously, Machete 408 had written about Jones in a commentary piece “Revolutionaries in High Places- Van Jones, “ which right wing blogs picked up as a source for the pieces discussion of his membership in STORM (Standing Together to Organize Revolutionary Movements). Interestingly, shortly before his resignation, Eva Paterson, who first hired Jones as a legal intern in the early 1990’s, wrote a piece defending Jones from the right-winger attacks. Here she characterizes his recent book, The Green Collar Economy, as “a veritable song of praise to capitalism, especially the socially responsible and eco-friendly kind” and as someone who had left behind his flirtations with radical politics to move on to “more effective and attainable solutions [ie mainstream politics and questions of policy for the capitalist state].”

There are two points that I think are worth drawing from this situation. The first goes back to my original commentary on Jones and the analogy I was attempting to draw with the labor movement in “Revolutionaries in High Places- Van Jones,” which is pointing out that the top ranks of the mainstream unions in the AFL-CIO are full of those who think of themselves as opposing capitalism and supporting some form of a socialist economy, or at least at one point did. Even Samuel Gompers himself was once a socialist (see Fletcher and Gasapin, Solidarity Divided, page 14). But the question remains, what has been the practical effect of former or current anti-capitalists in positions of power with either the state or in large, reformist and top-down business unions?

Lastly, is the issue of whether of Jones’ advocacy around green jobs is a strategy to help capitalism, which Clemente raised, or a strategic approach  the larger political landscape that the left should take up? I think as “a business-based solution to attack poverty” relying on capital to promote job creation and make up for the decline of the manufacturing sector, I think it clearly rests in the first camp. But what’s striking is that this approach is exactly in line with a popular analysis of the state centered socialist left, that advocated by Carl Davidson, ex-SDS member and founder of Progressives for Obama, in his November 2008 piece “The Bumpy Road Ahead: Obama and the Left.” Interestingly it continues the idea that we can divide capitalism into worse and a better (“progressive”) half, rather than a rotten system as a whole with contradictory aspects and players. Here’s an excerpt from Davidson’s piece:

Obama is carving out a new niche for himself, a work in progress still within the bounds of capitalism, but a ‘high road’ industrial policy capitalism that is less state-centric and more market-based in its approach, more Green, more high tech, more third wave and participatory, less politics-as-consumerism and more ‘public citizen’ and education focused. In short, it’s capitalism for a multipolar world and the 21st century. The unreconstructed neoliberalism and old corporate liberalism, however, are still very much in play. The former is in disarray, largely due to the financial crisis, but the latter is working overtime to join the Obama team and secure its institutional positions of power, from White House staff positions to the behind-the-scenes efforts on Wall Street to direct the huge cash flows of the Bail-Out in their favor … there will be a major tension and competition for funds between two rival sectors–a new green industrial-education policy sector and an old hydrocarbon-military-industrial sector. It’s a key task of the left and progressive movements to add their forces to uniting with and building up the former, while opposing and weakening the grip of the latter. This is the ‘High Road’ vs. ‘Low Road’ strategy widely discussed in progressive think tanks and policy circles.

"The Green Collar Economy" by Van Jones

Looking at the Contours of the Crisis

  With “Contours of the Crisis” in the latest issue of Upping the Anti #8 (see two posts previous), Aidan Conway interviews three leading thinkers on contemporary capitalism who also each happen to be professors of political economy at York University in Toronto as well. They are David McNally, Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch. Below are three highlights that raise worthwhile points to think about around the financial crisis and building “the other world that is possible” as we might say.

  Here on the relationship between class struggle at home and imperialism abroad, which are intracately interwoven.

  Sam Gindin: If and when, during the next decades, the foundations of American empire were to really crumble, class struggles within the imperial heartland itself would likely play a major role in bringing this on – precisely because of the way in which the external and internal dimensions of American empire are intertwined. At the same time, the ability to pacify the citizens of the empire is critically dependant on the ability to maintain wider structures of global exploitation and integration. (emphasis added)

Civil War in the United States?

  Could the ever deepening financial crisis lead the US or other powerful nations into civil war or some other type of major internal conflict? Clearly large sections of the population feel a strong disillusionment if not outright disgust with capitalism as a system. Even my mother says “Now maybe we need some socialism” because what we have now clearly doesn’t work.

  But left social movements which would have the potential to respond in a meaningful way to the crisis, which largely exist in small and scattered pockets in the US, have yet to garner the strength to have a national level impact. The only exceptions are probably the UE sit-down strike at Republic Doors and Windows, perhaps the Sacramento tent city encampment of homeless and potentially the immigrant rights protests this coming May 1st.  Each though are largely spontaneous events or one day mobilizations, rather than longer term movements (though May Day protests though could be seen as a mobilization by both smaller grassroots as well as larger institutional forces of larger bases) . The right though seems to have already begun their mobilization and response with the April 15 Tea Party Protests, which seek to channel discontent with the economy and the bailouts into hatred for Obama (and of course the fact he’s Black is no doubt a strong part of it), as well as fears of “socialism” and immigrants. Whether their efforts will be a flash in the pan or something with more longevity is yet to be seen.

   The below article by Immanuel Wallerstein asks this question and explores the growing uneasiness of the world economic elites. While some like Pepe Escobar of The Real News take Wallerstein’s piece (watch his video segment here) as further confirmation that an eruption of rebellion and class conflict is right around the corner, I think that’s a little premature. The elites are afraid not because something will happen, but because they believe that it could happen. With the Texas Governor’s recent bombastic comment in support of succession while speaking at a Tea Party protest, we need to keep in mind that conflict may not be initiated from below, but perhaps by above as well.  -AW

 Civil War in the United States?

By Immanuel Wallerstein, March 15, 2009 

We are getting accustomed to all sorts of breakdowns of taboos. The world press is full of discussion about whether it would be a good idea to “nationalize” banks. None other than Alan Greenspan, disciple of the superlibertarian prophet of pure market capitalism, Ayn Rand, has recently said that we have to nationalize banks once every hundred years, and this may be that moment. Conservative Republican Senator Lindsay Graham agreed with him. Left Keynesian Alan Blinder discussed the pros and cons of this idea. And while he thinks the cons are a bit bigger than the pros, he was willing to spend public intellectual energy writing about this in the New York Times.

Well, after hearing nationalization proposals by arch-conservative notables, we are now hearing serious discussions about the possibilities of civil war in the United States. Zbigniew Brzezinski, apostle of anti-Communist ideology and President Carter’s National Security Advisor, appeared on a morning television talk show on February 17, and was asked to discuss his previous mention of the possibility of class conflict in the United States in the wake of the worldwide economic collapse.

Brzezinski said he was worried about it because of the prospect of “millions and millions of unemployed people facing dire straits,” people who have become aware “of this extraordinary wealth that was transferred to a few individuals without historical precedent in America.”