No one and nothing works until everyone and everything works: Toward an Unlimited Wild General Strike

Yesterday I received some flack from a friend and comrade about my position on Occupy Wall Street's demands working group, specifically a demand for full employment called “Jobs for ALL – A Massive Public Works and Public Service Program" that they intend to bring to the general assembly where hopefully it will get shot down.  More of a state-run socialist program than a demand (i.e. a program that strengthens both domination of the state and capital over our lives), the program calls for" massive public works and public service programs with direct government employment at prevailing (union) wages, paid for by taxing the rich and corporations, by immediately ending all of America’s wars, and by ending all aid to authoritarian regimes to create 25 million new jobs to":
-Expand education: cut class sizes and provide free university for all;


-Expand healthcare and provide free healthcare for all (single payer system);


-Build housing, guarantee decent housing for all;


-Expand mass transit, provided for free;


-Rebuild the infrastructure—bridges, flood control, roads;


-Research and implement clean energy alternatives; and


-Clean up the environment.




These jobs are to be open to all, regardless of documentation/immigration status or criminal record.”


My initial response to this program was this:
"no full employment. employment=exploitation. since the systems that exploit us don't work for us, we shouldn't have to work for them either. Fuck capital/ Fuck labor. #strikeoccupytakeover. "


In response, a friend and former union organizer with the TWU local 100 in NYC chided me and questioned my supposed distance from reality: 


"I (think) understand the sentiment behind your statement, but I feel likes it's far removed from reality for a majority of people. Are you saying that people who are unemployed shouldn't demand jobs because they're opening themselves up to exploitation? What happens when unemployment checks run out? Do you really think that people will look at their families and advocate that they not eat or have housing or have the ability to get to school for this idea that ALL work is exploitation and as such we must boycott it?"


My response follows in two parts. First, I address the assumptions and underlying logics of my friend's critique. Second, I respond to the terms of his critique and elaborate on my position by way of a tactical outline.


 First, the coded language here is not difficult to deconstruct, but it is important to deconstruct it, not for the purpose of defending myself, but for foregrounding its problematic and paternalistic logics. The charge of "being far removed from reality for a majority of people" is commonly thrown at anarchists, anti-authoritarians, autonomists, and insurrectionists. It serves two functions. One, to marginalize anarchists and other ultra-leftists as being out of touch with some objective and uniform social reality that union organizers, socialists, liberals, non-profits/ NGO hacks and others seem to grasp. Second, it rests on an unspoken claim that anarchists generally posses forms of privilege (gender, race, class, ability, citizenship status, sex etc.) that blind them to this supposed objective social reality; a reality that everyone else seems to get. Finally, such a claim rests on a more insidious and paternalistic assumption, one that speaks for rather than listens to marginalized and precarious populations. In speaking for "a majority of people" (an interestingly homogenous and universal phrase to use considering that the author seems to be chiding me for my white racial framing and lack of attention to difference), my friend erases both the political desires and histories of struggle of marginalized and precarious populations who choose to act against and outside a state that has historically abandoned, incarcerated, killed, enslaved, occupied, exploited, and raped them. So I have a question of my own, how do you know what the majority of these low-income working people want? Interestingly, I never claimed to speak for this silenced majority when I stated my desire for the collective withdrawal of labor from a system of exploitation beyond domination. 
II.
 If we take a look at the language of "jobs for ALL- a Massive Public Works and Public Service Program", it sounds like nothing more than a new New Deal. And just as a reminder, the New Deal excluded both farmworkers (who were predominately immigrant and migrant workers of color) and domestic workers (who were predominately women of color). In this respect, the language of "jobs for ALL'" sounds intentionally vague and universal. From my perspective, like most socialist programs, this particular demand sounds toothless and passive. Additionally, it is profound ahistorical, it rests on some lethal liberal combination of fantasy and nostalgia- that a return to Keynesian is the return to the good life (a vision of the good life that "a majority of people", i.e. everyone who wasn't white, male, straight and middle class, did not have access too).

III.


My critique of a program like "jobs for ALL"is  primarily tactical not ideological. If anyone is out of touch with reality it is this unfortunate assemblage of liberals, Trots, and other socialists who assume that the State will some how concede this socialist paradise of "full employment" freely and easily. I agree with the concept of "full employment" (how could I not?) but I think that we should actually work to make it happen rather than merely demand it from the State. We need to actually think through the premises and foundations of such a demand. The problem with a demand like "Jobs for ALL" is that it rests on the same universal claims as the 99%. Additionally, it neutralizes the promise of open conflict and antagonism between Capital and Labor. What exactly would full employment look like and for whom? How can we achieve it without attacking capital and its agents, the police- without actively withdrawing our current or potential labor power?  


In short, full employment without strong labor is a complete sham and it allows capital to dictate its terms and conditions. Labor, in the form of Big labor, is too weak and ineffectual at this time to actually achieve anything like full employment or a new New Deal. The decline of unions, the weakening of labor laws and the NLRB, as well as the recent assault on unions in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, demonstrate the general impossibility of full employment, especially in the public sector, without real occupations, sitdown strikes, wildcats, and sick-outs. In an age of austerity our labor power is one of the few weapons that we have left in the war against capital. Why should we continue to use our labor power to produce and maintain our own exploitation? Why not provide for each other? Why not, occupy our jobs?


Thus a negation of this demand, is an offensive tactic rather than merely a reformist desire that keeps capital in its current position. The refusal to work goes beyond an understanding that all wage labor is exploitation. That is, it is not merely a negation of work which then leaves marginalized, precarious, and vulnerable populations even more vulnerable and precarious to an austerity state that doesn't for them or about them. The strategy of refusal keeps in the spirit of the demand for full employment but goes one step further to actualizing it. It operates under the logic that no one and nothing works until everyone and everything works: an unlimited wild general strike . No partial concessions and limited demands.


 It calls for both a large-scale resurgence of old-school militant labor tactics such as strikes, sabotage, and attacks, but also what the Italian autonomists called "autoreduction": "the act by which consumers, in the area of consumption, and workers, in the area of production take it upon themselves to reduce at a collectively determined level, the price of public services, housing, electricity; or in the factory, the rate of productivity." Imagine paying 50 cents for a subway ride because the MTA conductor agreed that it was too expensive? 


So to answer some of my friend's questions: No, I'm not out touch with reality; whatever that means. These very rhetorical questions themselves speak to a profound poverty of the radical (and tactical) imagination in an area of endless austerity-- where everything and everyone has been cut, furloughed, incarcerated, and laid off. The recent global struggles against austerity, from the California student-worker movements of 2009 to the London riots have already demonstrated that another world is possible without demanding it.  No, I'm not advocating that families starve their children so we can all be hella radical. What I am saying is that the unemployed shouldn't just demand jobs because we should be and already are working to build a society free of the necessity of wage exploitation. Most of the current wage jobs that youth, vulnerable, and precaious populations have access to don't even provide the basic conditions of survival anyway, but the forms of mutual aid practiced in the communized spaces of the occupations do. What happens when unemployment checks run out? Go to the commune and the neighborhood assembly. What happens when there is no money for rent? Occupy vacant homes, condos, office buildings, and  churches?  What happens when there is no money for food? Go to the commune. ALL work is exploitation and we shouldn't return to it  unless we have some control over our lives and working conditions. We want more than jobs, my friend. We want freedom! We want dignity! We want to build a world together that we can actually live in! And demanding "full employment" without building and defending informal structures of aid, support and care- without sabotaging and attacking capital, without taking over and running community spaces such as medical clinics and daycare centers, is an insult to the work we have already started doing in the communes we have built from Oakland to Santiago. 


In solidarity


Fuck capital/ fuck labor! We should no longer work to maintain a system that has never for worked us! No one and and nothing works until everyone and everything works! 

And then Jameson puts my foot in my mouth....

From "Lost Generation" to Occupation Generation: youth, anti-capitalism, and the revolt of the future

"Capitalism? No thanks. We'll burn your fucking banks." - anti-globalization chant from the early 2000's


“Fuck the police, we don’t need ‘em. All we want is total freedom”- anti-capitalist chant during a recent march in Oakland


"We're new subjects of class struggle, uttering unexpected words with ever more confidence." - "a few unexpected subjects of class struggle – notes on recent university strikes"

I.
Whatever the merits and failures of OWS are, one thing is perfectly clear: we are no longer a "lost generation". In the streets and in the plazas we have finally found something that they can never take away from us, or control: each other. This is the reason that cops beat us and arrest us even when we march on the sidewalk or sit down in the street- they want us to go home, to get back to work or school, to be alone. They are starting to understand that our individual precarity is a collective weapon- that the flexibility and mobility we were forced to learn as low-wage workers is our strength. They are not afraid of what we do or where we go, they are afraid of the fact that some of us take their baton blows and jabs with rage and joy. Zip-ties and holding cells only make us laugh. Now that we have been through this once we have no hesitation do to it again. 

Anti-capitalist bloc leading the first march out of Oscar Grant Plaza on day five of Occupy Oakland

The cops and the banks that own them are afraid of the fact that we are no longer afraid and that we are growing every day. Every time we see those fucking orange nets come out or an NYPD truck full of barricades barreling through the night the message is clear: ok kids, its time to get back inside. The NYPD and the banks that manage it really don't get it. They are under the impression that these protests are like some giant global recess- that if they give us time to play we will go back to class obedient, even thankful for being allowed a little fresh air. They want us to pretend like we can go back to a world that we are now beginning to abandon, or a world that has systematically excluded, brutalized, murdered, and abandoned many of us from the beginning. The reality is that we can never go back and nor we do want to. Our lives before this moment seem boring, haunting, and painful compared to the world we are building together today.  Why would we shut the fuck up and go home when we are only just getting started? Today we are caring for each other, tomorrow we could be taking care of all that stands in our way: banks, cops, governments and universities. The possibilities seem too limitless to stop now. 

Anti-capitalist banner from the 2009 California student uprisings

II.
In an age of austerity there is nothing left for the state and political parties to give us anyway- everything has been cut. The new global consensus is one of calculated abandonment, bare life stripped of its rags. We should be happy that our supposed "representatives" have decided to leave us alone. It was this dissensus that enabled us to find each other, to find consensus-- to care for and defend each other and to occupy together.  But this coming-together is only building the groundwork for the reality now facing us: either capitalism burns or we burn with it.  In this sense, burning a bank or storming a government building is not act of violence or despair, it is act of hope. What could be more hopeful than a world without banks? 


Its time to acknowledge that prefigurative politics is about more than just mutual aid . The fires that burned in Rome yesterday, the black smoke swirling around the Coliseum, to borrow from a CA anti-capitalist slogan, illuminate our future- a world without cops, cars, and banks. As these global struggles advance we must have the courage to realize that now is not the time to bargain for concessions or chew the few scraps they decide to throw at us. Jobs bills and calls for the "restoration of the American Dream" are violent liberal fantasies. A "good middle class job" is predicted upon the exploitation of undocumented immigrants, prisoners, unemployed workers, and everyone else rendered vulnerable and precarious in the age of austerity. A "good college education" is not only predicated on debt and unemployment but the exploitation of low-wage workers and low-income students of color. 


We cannot retreat into liberalism and take refuge in school anymore: the University is waging class war just as much wall street; and sometimes they wage war together. We must realize that the diploma factory seduces us with a future that is absent. We have to find the courage to abandon our old dreams and desires in order to find new ones. We have to be brave. It's not that we have nothing left to lose but that together we have everything to win. And we are strongest when we come together outside of the instituions that exploit and divide us: in our neighborhoods, parks, and streets. 

III.
 When I was released from my holding cell at around 3:00 a.m. with my fellow comrades I was shocked when I realized that we were all taking the train to the same place: Zuccotti Park. As our subway car grinded to halt at the Wall Street station I saw small groups of friends with backpacks rubbing their hands (a sign that they had been in zip-ties earlier) and smiling as they slowly climbed up the stairs. They were smiling because, like us, they were going home. 

Tear Down Wall Street, Evict the Cops! : On Trash and Tactics

The Battle of Zuccotti Park


Unfortunately, I am unable to make it out to Liberty Plaza tonight, but since I have no intention of sleeping tonight I will be staying up all night following/ tracking the latest developments from Liberty Plaza as the occupiers organize their defense and prepare for eviction. Alternet columnist Sarah Jaffe, who is tweeting from Liberty Plaza, recently posted, "Feel like we're going to war in the morning. Tense. Fierce." Indeed, others have framed the impending eviction in this rhetoric, calling tomorrow morning's showdown "The Siege of Zuccotti". And let's not forget Willie Osterwell's excellent account of the Brooklyn Bridge Takeover, "The Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge". If we understand OWS's most radical and promising moments as a sequence of roving, unpredictable confrontations with the cops then it is clear that in most of these battles between anti-capitalists and cops, cops were on the defensive. As blogger Malcolm Harris tweeted, "the police didn't lead us on to the bridge. They were backing the fuck up." Harris's observation is indicative: In the war between OWS and the NYPD, the NYPD has largely been confined to a defensive strategy of containment. And more importantly, we have been in control. Despite the tactical limitations of the Brooklyn Bridge Takeover, protesters were still in a position in which the only choice left to Commanders was one of containment. Even in moments when cops have brutally attacked protesters or attempted to stop an action, they were eventually forced to withdraw and retreat knowing full well that more protesters could be mobilized quickly and in greater numbers.


 So what does all of this say about the impending eviction? What shape can resistance take outside of the usual non-violent arrest tactics (going limp)-- tactics that already foreclose the possibility of real resistance in the first place? In other words, how can the defense of the encampment at Liberty Plaza transcend or disrupt its overtly passive dimensions? How can we transform "the siege of Zuccotti" into the Battle of Zuccotti? What and where are the possibilities for attack? How can we fight back? 

Obviously a lot of these questions are contingent upon the forces that show up between now and 6 A.M. During the Battle of Seattle, rank and file steelworkers defended anti-capitalist youth in the streets when they came under attack from riot squads and tear gas. And there have been reports on twitter that Big labor, including the AFl-CIO, is putting out the call to mobilize its rank and file. Yet, we have no idea what that call says or how likely it is that rank and file will show up to defend protesters against the cops on Friday morning (between the hours of 4 and 6 a.m. no less!). It is after all a work day. Additionally, we have to remember that rank and file TWU local 100 workers are still pissed off about being kidnapped by the NYPD during the mass arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge. And after a failed injunction attempt against the NYPD we can only assume that anger remains. As another mass arrest appears imminent we will have to wait see if that anger among the rank and file translates into action. One thing, however, is perfectly clear: there is no way the NYPD has enough vehicles to transport the entire population of Liberty Plaza. We can only hope that this time the TWU will refuse to transport protesters to jail. Or as Willie Osterwell suggested, we can only hope that the bus drivers take all the protesters home. Right now we have no idea how many people will show up and in what capacity, but we do know that the official plan coming from the GA involves circles of occupiers linking arms. Here are few tactical suggestions for ways to expand the level of resistance and confrontation in this strategy:
1. If the GA has already resigned itself to the notion that eviction is inevitable and are now preparing for "evacuation:, why not set up barricades and other obstacles to prevent easy entrance to the park? If the cops are going to trash the park anyway why are we spending so much fucking time trying to clean it up? A clean, orderly park is an open-air police pen not an obstacle to arrest. If there ever was a time to trash Liberty Plaza now is the time. Anything that will get in the cops way will work. 
2. Why not take these passive circles of protesters and have them circle paddy wagons instead of merely wait to be arrested? If and when people get arrested the goal should be to truly make those arrests as difficult as possible. If we've learned anything about the NYPD over the last month it's that there's nothing more a fat white police commander enjoys than beating the shit out of a bunch of passive protesters. 
3. There are two actions planned for tomorrow morning-- "#operationwallstcleanup" and a "Emergency defense" action. While #Operationwallstcleanup sounds like more of the usual boring marches around Wall Street (with the addition of brooms) it is, at the very least, an open-ended action. This leaves the potential for snake marches and street-lockdowns. Right now this open-endedness is our only hope. That is, unless we intend to go quietly... 




** Labor Update: 
Greg Mitchell of The Nation reported earlier on "Total solidarity....Training for arrests being taken seriously.... "Looks like SEIU, CWA, and UAW all promising to show up at Zuccotti Park in the morning, according SEIU announcement." In addition, Josh Harkin over at Mother Jones tweeted, "unions are bringing in big show of support @ 4 a.m., including @ 100 who will get arrested." Finally, there is an unconfirmed rumor circulating on twitter that the AFl-CIO released an email entitled, "Go To Wall St. Now". Apparently the email asks, "members to show up at #OWS at midnight in anticipation of this move by the police very early tom. morning.'"

"Escape From No Future" : An update on the blog and the latest on OWS

"Escape From No Future" : An update on the blog and the latest on OWS


"I'm as much an asshole as I've ever been"- Titus Andronicus, "The Battle of Hampton Roads"


"Wall Street, demolish it! Student debt, abolish it! "- student chant during Occupy Boston march this afternoon


Ok, so I've been spending a lot of time traveling between Western Mass and NYC over the last few weeks which means that I've been slacking on the blog and life in general. I've been unemployed (i.e. liberated from wages but still working without pay/ hustling) for over a month and I'm slipping into what Michael Foucault once called "busy inertia"- a state of intellectual restlessness. The informal economy is a fun, relatively autonomous way to get by and virtually everyone is doing it, but it doesn't offer much of a future or a stable income. On a recent car ride back to Western Mass from NYC, I described my situation to my housemate in terms of a dead corpse: there's only so many times that you can poke it and stare at it before you get bored and hopeless. My life in Northampton is starting to feel a lot like that dead corpse- the initial sense of fascination and fun is starting to fade from these long days and nights. 


So I've been plotting my "escape from no future" as Titus Andronicus (themselves former members of the loser club) call it and I'm not finding any answers in Western Mass. Not that I haven't been enjoying hanging out with all the good people here, but I have no intention of waiting for the "opportunity" of spending four years as a dishwasher at The Roost so I can spend another four as barista. FYI valley-dwelling jobseekers: the partial owner of The Roost is a total trust-fund douche in a American Apparel hoodie. His pretentiousness levels are off the charts. I went to an experimental private liberal arts school so I should know a thing or two about pretentious douche bags and idiots.  To say the least, you know you are living in a sad faux-liberal college town when the top position on the hierarchy of low-wage jobs still only pays minimum wage (but mad subcultural status, bro); or nothing at all. But hey on the bright side the shitty post-apocalyptic  hipster haircut you need for the job doesn't cost much. So comrades please help me help myself, if you know of any collective/co-op/ cheap rent housing situations opening up let me know. If you know of a job as well, I'm willing to degrade myself in the wage system in order to pretend to be happy. Location is not really an issue at this point. In the meantime it looks like I'll be joining the other 85 percent as I struggle with chronic/intermittent joblessness, debt, and boredom at home. I guess for the time being I'll be joining up with the global contingent of fellow (radical) losers, precariats, freelancers and slackers. For what its worth, it's not so bad. And we all know work sucks anyway. Although, there is really no way to avoid self-management and self-exploitation when you spend as much time online as I do. But enough about me, I want to briefly address the latest OWS developments now that I'm back. 


First, a disclaimer for radical folks who have yet to make it to, or are en route to, OWS.  Today notorious defender of the right to protest, King (mayor) Bloomberg issued a royal decree informing his peasants and peons that he has permitted OWS to stay indefinitely. Before we all get down on one knee and kiss his ring, I think this is far from a victory. In fact, I think the King's advisers, including Goldman Sachs and Raymond Kelley, are having a ball ordering white shirts to club, beat, pepper-spray, surveil, and arrest OWS protestors so why stop now? And for their part, white shirts and blue shirts alike seem to be enjoying the workout, as well as the overtime pay. As I posted on facebook and twitter earlier this afternoon: "OWS is now a corporate-sponsored open air cop holding pen complete with real live folks practicing mutual aid and "freedom of speech" for gawkers, bourgeois tourists and other corn-fed idiots." Additionally, OWS offers King bloomberg and the rest of his blood thirsty capitalist thugs a perfect excuse to clamp down on direct action throughout the city since he was nice enough to give us a space to protest and all... As Research and Destroy noted today, "This is what building the new world in the shell of the old means today – an assembly ringed by cops." My advice: Don't get caught being a jester in King Bloomberg's court or a DNC cheerleader, break out of your cages and pens before the NYPD throws away the key! In authorizing the encampment (yes, encampment not occupation) at Liberty Plaza, king Bloomberg has officially declared OWS business as usual. Let's show him he's wrong before it's too late.  As crimethinc recently reminded us: ""We’re not just here to “speak truth to power”—when we only speak, the powerful turn a deaf ear to us. Let’s make space for autonomous initiatives and organize direct action that confronts the source of social inequalities and injustices." Stay tuned for a special slacker edition of the weekly roundup.