John Holloway: cracking capitalism vs. the state option | ROAR Magazine - 0 views
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Holloway sets out a hypothesis: it is not the idea of revolution or transformation of the world that has been refuted as a result of the disaster of authoritarian communism, but rather the idea of revolution as the taking of power, and of the party as the political tool par excellence.
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to create, within the very society that is being rejected, spaces, moments, or areas of activity in which a different world is prefigured. Rebellions in motion. From this perspective, the idea of organization is no longer equivalent to that of the party, but rather entails the question of how the different cracks that unravel the fabric of capitalism can recognize each other and connect.
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Wage labor has been, and still is, the bedrock of the trade union movement, of the social democratic parties that were its political wing, and also of the communist movements. This concept defined the revolutionary theory of the labor movement: the struggle of wage labor against capital. But its struggle was limited because wage labor is the complement of capital, not its negation.
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Latin American Social Movements Map Solidarity with ALBA Alliance - 0 views
All dissidents now: Russia's protests and the mirror of history | openDemocracy - 0 views
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In an effort to resurrect a spirit of resistance against continuing state oppression, Voina dedicated its action to dissident writers who died in prison camps during the 1970s and 1980s, as well as to Sergey Magnitsky. The past year has seen an influx of historical images into Russian political and cultural life. Although they were present before, the protests have reinvigorated a range of historical symbols as opposition groups, their supporters and their opponents attempt to gain purchase on the situation at hand. Rightly or wrongly, for a range of different groups and individuals, the struggle of dissidents against Soviet power has become a historical source of experience, understanding and symbolism for contemporary protest.
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For the demonstrators, the move out on to the public square to protest against the false elections and the Putin administration paralleled the 1825 Decembrist revolt against the accession of Nicholas I.
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Moulded into a key part of Russian culture over the past 180 years, the Decembrists were important for 1960s intellectuals as practical and symbolic models of resistance. This took many forms, including the 1975 demonstration on Leningrad’s Senate Square in honour of the 150th anniversary of the revolt, which named the Decembrists as the 'First Dissidents of Russia.' One of the most famous incarnations was the 1968 verse 'Petersburg Romance' by the guitar-poet and playwright Alexander Galich. This song focuses on the inner torment of the conspirators before they went out on to Senate Square: Our era is testing us.Can you go out on the square?Do you dare go out on the square At the agreed time?
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Cycles of violence in Egypt | openDemocracy - 0 views
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Despite the chaos, opposition groups are learning from each subsequent wave of protest. As the state repeats its familiar tactics of repression, NGOs and activist organisations are becoming more adept at evidencing the brutality of the regime, from filming and capturing events on camera to uncovering and exposing false autopsy reports. Recent widespread civilian action in Port Said, ranging from government workers to microbus drivers, indicates a growing impatience that spans all sectors of society. It is common to hear people sitting in ahwas (street coffee houses) speaking of their latest plans to demand better conditions at work through strikes and walkouts. This culture of protest has been present in Egypt for years within certain groups and sectors, but now appears to be more prevalent than ever.
Ecuador's Correa Seeks South American Allies in Conflict with Anti-Mining Social Movements - 0 views
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“This is something we have to deal with together, Colombia included, because Peru has the same problems. There have been outbreaks of violence from activists who are full of talk about democracy,” he stated. Correa warned that radical anti-mining groups were contradicting themselves as “they never protest against highly polluting mining,” but instead they protest against “clean mining” that does not harm water supplies or the environment.
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Correa also strongly criticized the “so-called environmentalists” who are opposed to the development of “ecological mining” and suggested they intend native communities to live in poverty “as part of folklore and the environment.”“When we want to develop good mining practices, these so-called environmentalists come out claiming that human beings are not much more than a nuisance to the environment and that poverty is all part of folklore,” he said.
social movements, organizational theory, and Mayer Zald « orgtheory.net - 0 views
Discursive Power and People's Movements: Why Chávez's Re-election is Importan... - 0 views
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Chávez won a clear majority in elections that were heralded as fair, peaceful and democratic. A stunning 97% of the population (over 19 million people) registered to vote and 82% of those registered, voted.
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Indeed, President Obama’s domestic and international centrism has drawn much criticism but, with the hope that he embodies, miraculous transformation is still expected of him upon re-election.
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That as it may be, Chávez was the first president of Latin America to declare himself of African descent, as important symbolically for Venezuela’s often marginalized population of African descent (who make up an estimated 34% of the population) and the entire region’s Afro-American community as Obama’s victory was for African-Americans in the United States.
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How Class Tunnel Vision Hurts Social Movements | NationofChange - 0 views
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In the U.S. “playing defense” has dominated liberals and centrists since Ronald Reagan became President. Canadians started that disastrous policy more recently. This summer, I learned that in the United Kingdom the British have joined the defensive trend, along with too many places on the continent.
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The rationale keeps changing but the strategy is the same: starve the budget and run down the service until so many people get fed up that capitalist-friendly “solutions” — like charter schools and vouchers — start to look good by comparison.
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Another breakthrough insight happens later, during debriefing. Someone remembers that the initiative to get together to overpower the owning class usually comes from the working class!
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The Assassination of Martin Luther King and the Peace Movement » Counterpunch... - 0 views
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When Dr. King finally opposed the war on Vietnam he incurred the wrath of liberals in the Johnson Administration, the liberal philanthropic community, and even a significant number of his colleagues in the clergy. The liberal establishment was scathing in its condemnation of his position and sought to punish him and his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), in a manner similar to their assaults on the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), when it took an anti-war and anti-imperialist position much earlier than Dr. King and SCLC.
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Today the array of forces in support of U.S. military aggression is similar to what we saw from the establishment in 1968, except for one important factor: in 1968 there was an organized, vocal anti-war movement that applied bottom-up pressure on the liberal establishment in power and on the Nixon Administration. Today, however, not only have significant elements of the contemporary anti-war and peace movement voluntarily demobilized during the Obama era, many of those individuals and organizations have entered into what can only be seen as a tactical alliance with the Obama Administration and provided ideological cover for imperialist interventions around the world.
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The murder of Dr. King was not just the murder of a man but an assault on an idea, a movement and a vision of a society liberated from what Dr. King called the three “triplets” that had historically characterized and shaped the “American” experience – racism, extreme materialism and militarism.
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""As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask - and rightly so - what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government. - Rev. Martin Luther King, Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence," Riverside Church, April 4, 1967. "
CRITIQUE AND DIPLOMACY, STRATEGY AND ALLUSION: The case of Bruno Latour | AGENT SWARM - 0 views
Taksim Square Protests in Turkey Spread to other Cities, Police accused of Brutality | ... - 0 views
Being realist about social movements: ontological stratification and emergenc... - 0 views
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The whole point of distinguishing between the transitive and intransitive dimensions of reality is to remind us that sense-experiences alone cannot be used to define what is real. In accepting that there is ontological depth to reality, realists reject any causal explanations that are based simply on patterns of events.
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The purpose of such theorizing is to allow for an analytical toolset by which we understand the duality of agency and structure. As the argument goes, people interact to create social structures that are then irreducible to the individuals involved, that is, social structures are the emergent products of human interaction.
At the Mexican Embassy in London: Demand for an End to the Attacks on the Zap... - 0 views
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Today, 26th April, 2013, the UK Zapatista Solidarity Network held a protest at the Embassy of Mexico in London in solidarity with the Zapatista support base (BAZ) community of San Marcos Avilés in the municipality of Chilón, Chiapas, Mexico. The protestors delivered a letter demanding an end to the threats, aggressions and acts of violence being made against this community by members of the Mexican political parties, with the aim of displacing the Zapatistas from their homes and their lands. This is being done, explained members of the Network, with the full support and backing of the Mexican state, in an attempt to put an end to the advances in Zapatista autonomy.
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The group ended the protest by saying “We wish through our actions today to send a message of solidarity to our dignified sisters and brothers of San Marcos Avilés. They have our full support.”
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