Beyond Campaigns
I just got back from three days at the International Tar Sands Summit held outside of Missoula Montana. It was an inspired and hearty bunch that both organized it and showed up. ( We slept in wood heated box cars and the temps are in the single digits.)
"Tar sands" is that nasty goo they dig out from under vast tracts of land and process using vast amounts of water and natural gas and nasty chemicals into, eventually, oil.Venezuela has it, Canada has it (Alberta) and it turns out Utah has it. Of course they need pipelines, which people are fighting, and gargantuan pieces of machinery, which is where Missoula fits in. They are proposing that the machinery come through here on trucks.Rising Tide hopes to stop them.
Seasoned veterans from other campaigns ( mountain top coal removal, saving old growth, stopping the war, etc) gave workshops on developing campaigns, strategy, tactics, etc and it was good to see a dedicated cadre of people ready to take risks and focus on non-violent direct action. A few of us could remember participating in demos against the Viet Nam war, there were some in their 30's or 40's and a lot of younger folk.
Unfortunately, the campaigns success or failure depends on how it is defined. We may stop the trucks for awhile and raise awareness of tar sands development and even slow IT down. But it will not stop global climate change. Energy development will shift elsewhere if we make this less profitable.China will build more coal plants. The US will drill deeper farther offshore. There will be new campaigns and summits and workshops with break-out sessions to talk about goals, strategy, tactics, objectives ad nauseum.
Because the only logical goal, and the one that was never ever mentioned by any of the so-called and self identifying "radicals", is ending capitalism. Using the same logic of capitalism, the organizers wanted to focus on "achievable, short term, goals" and so the only real solution was framed out of the "discussion" before we ever got there. My attempts to broaden the discourse were met with implicit and explicit rebukes. I was told we have to "meet people where they are".
Unfortunately, "people" are on a death march to intellectual as well as physical oblivion and I don't want to go there.It's unfortunate that the radical wing of the environmental movement is stuck in such an old, tired and unsuccessful meme, that they all went to the same facilitator trainings,(corporate model), that they don't see that they didn't stop wars or the destruction of habitat or globalization or any fucking thing with their "campaigns".By the time you start a "campaign, it is too late.
Capitalists are the real revolutionaries, always changing and adapting and extending their vision of what is possible. The left can't even acknowledge that.
posted by troutsky @ 6:01 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
"Capitalists are the real revolutionaries, always changing and adapting and extending their vision of what is possible. The left can't even acknowledge that."
That's because the left's ideology is rigid and immovable. You should be able to see quite clearly that this is a grave limitation.
I believe capitalism's skill in reshaping itself has been more widely perceived than you credit it, trout.
It started to implode pretty much on schedule and has managed to rescue itself.
I've come to realize that the rescue has come largely with the assistance of the social democrats, capitalism cannot survive without the liberals.
It's put me into a pretty deep funk as I come to realize that we are just going to have to let the construction continue until it just gets to the point where people are hurting enough.
Let it go down? Or is Kultur correct and it's going down regardless?
Pagan: Capitalist ideology is "rigid" if we are talking about first principles. As it should be. It's not an ideology if it's first principles bounce back and forth.( private property rights, markets for efficiency,benevolent self-interest, etc) Yet it dominates.
What is flexible is strategy. The use of hard and soft power, primitive accumulation and investment, co-opting horizontal structure, etc..
Ducky: I know it wasn't a revelation that capitalism is crazy malleable,but that thinking happens at the theoretical level which "activists" consider too wonkish.
I get criticized a lot for focusing so much of my attack on liberalism. Liberals themselves are shocked when I describe what liberal capital flows are, liberalized labor markets, neo-liberal economic theory.One of the women at the summit taught business and was blathering on about "free" markets! I had no words.
The line outside the welfare office here stretches around the block (in sub zero weather) Men are leaving homes to search for work. Food pantries are overflowing. Is that "hurting enough"?
Not yet apparently.
Trout,
The Tar Sands crowd really brings me down too! They are supposed radicals and yet they don't get that radical means grabbing the issue at the root: capitalism.
Not only will they not stop these trucks, they will discourage all of those who believed they could from ever organizing against the status quo. They will not stop these trucks or any other. They are pathetically focused on symptoms and don't learn from history despite their smugly self-assured attitudes about what works.
It is nauseating to say the least. What cracks me up is they say things like meeting people where they are yet they don't pay attention to how "people" aren't even where they imagine them to be. This explains why they are incapable of hearing the abundant "fuck you's" and seeing the numerous middle fingers they provoke around Missoula (a supposed liberal bastion in Montana). They don't read the letters to the editor which abound in opposition to their cause. They live in a bubble and hardly meet "people" where they are. "People" want abundant/endless cheap energy sources and don't give much of a fuck about the environment.
Che Bob returneth! Welcome back to Liberalville
Get this headline from Tues. Missoulian: Council Raises Truck Fee
So the anti-truck forces pack the meeting and get the city to raise the fee to $200 dollars! Victory! Sticking it to the man!
I love this quote: "It's proof positive that this body can come up with a good solution when it needs to" said Ed Childers.
In other words: Democracy works. Laws and regulations will protect us. Trust the system. Do petitions and letters to your Congressman. Lord Help Us if this is what radical has become.
LORD THAM THEM ALL!!!
These criticisms seem to be far too on point judging from what I've heard from friends who were able to attend the summit. People are dying of rare bile-duct cancers in scores, the greenhouse emissions increase exponentially by the hour, the modules *will* move through and Exxon *will* get their way and our corrective tonic is......more reformist organizationalism.
Not a harsh condemnation of those dedicated people who feel they're only doing what they can, just a general statement of "what the fucking hell".
I agree, the anti-capitalist critique needs to be brought to the forefront. The hard-right is coming out with some positions lately that makes me think we'll be watching minstrel shows for entertainment again the next couple of years. If those fucks can up the ante, so should we.
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