{"id":861747,"date":"2022-10-30T20:06:01","date_gmt":"2022-10-30T20:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=c82b7895dd93910d20ffc2523f61618b"},"modified":"2022-10-30T20:06:01","modified_gmt":"2022-10-30T20:06:01","slug":"whats-the-problem-with-taking-state-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/10\/30\/whats-the-problem-with-taking-state-power\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the Problem with Taking State Power?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2002, in the midst of a wave of global resistance to corporate globalization that would produce major protests at trade meetings from Seattle to Genoa to Hong Kong, a book appeared that captured much of the spirit of the period\u2019s activism. Written by John Holloway, an Irish-born political theorist who had long made his home in Mexico, it was entitled \u201cChange the World Without Taking Power.\u201d The volume, which argued that \u201cthe radical change that is so urgent cannot be brought about through the state,\u201d made Holloway a prominent voice on the international left. A decade later, U.S.-born anthropologist David Graeber gained a wide hearing while championing the anarchist elements of Occupy Wall Street and defending the movement\u2019s suspicion of engaging with established political institutions. \u201c[T]he refusal to make demands,\u201d he would write, \u201cwas, quite self-consciously, a refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the existing political order of which such demands would have to be made.\u201d<\/p>\n

In staking out such ground, these two thinkers took firm positions on a question of perennial concern to social movements: Should we maintain independence and function as a critical force outside of mainstream politics, or should we attempt to take hold of the levers of institutional power in order to create change?<\/p>\n

In the period between the end of the Cold War and Occupy\u2019s emergence in the Obama years, a pronounced anarchist disposition held sway on the left, both in the U.S. and internationally. This was particularly true in the mass protest movements that produced some of the era\u2019s defining confrontations. This sensibility was profoundly distrustful of the American two-party system and wary of mainstream politicians who might attempt to co-opt movement issues and energies. For thinkers such as Holloway and Graeber, the price of playing the game of insider politics was simply too high. Movements, they believed, did better to work from the outside.<\/p>\n

Recently, however, the prevailing mood on the left has changed \u2014 especially since the unexpectedly successful 2016 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, who presented a vigorous challenge to Hillary Clinton while running as an open socialist in the Democratic primaries. Subsequently, interest in mounting radical drives from within the electoral system has greatly increased. In recent years, organizations ranging from Justice Democrats and People\u2019s Action to the Sunrise Movement, Our Revolution and the Democratic Socialists of America have entered electoral politics with new vigor. The dividends of this changed approach are already becoming evident with the rise of \u201cThe Squad\u201d in Congress and with a variety of high-profile wins in city and state politics throughout the country. Veteran activists who have lived through earlier periods when the left\u2019s political marginalization was taken for granted have noted the altered strategic orientation, as well as the reanimating spirit that has come with it.<\/p>\n

There is certainly cause to celebrate this shift. And yet, a move toward insider politics cannot be undertaken lightly. While writers with anarchist or <\/span>autonomist<\/a> <\/span>leanings such as Graeber and Holloway may have been unduly fearful of cooptation and overly pessimistic about the possibilities of creating change through entering the system, they also voiced some valid concerns. In fact, their critique of bureaucratic institutionalization presents a critical challenge to progressives looking to chart a path forward in the coming decade that involves entering mainstream politics. Their central warning: As much as activists may seek to transform the state, the state may succeed in transforming them instead.<\/p>\n

Breaking Out of Anarchist Self-Isolation<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The anti-statist mood that long prevailed on the left was a logical outgrowth of the end of the Cold War. As Leo Panitch, a Canadian political scientist and prominent socialist thinker, <\/span>observed<\/a> <\/span>in 2020, \u201cFollowing the demise of the communist regimes, and the collaboration of so many social-democratic parties in neoliberal, capitalist globalization, a strong anarchist sensibility emerged, quite understandably, on the radical left, and remained influential for a considerable period of time.\u201d This predominant mood, Panitch remarked, \u201creflected a widespread suspicion, if not disdain, for any political strategy that involved going into the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Panitch pointed to Holloway\u2019s work as the key text that gave theoretical backing to this position. \u201cChange the World Without Taking Power\u201d expressed profound disappointment with a century of socialist failures to implement a truly transformative program through attempts to win state control. In it, Holloway argues that radicals who took up arms and established governments in the name of the people \u2014 in the Soviet bloc and beyond \u2014 \u201cmay have increased levels of material security and decreased social inequities in the territories of the states they controlled, but they did little to create a self-determining society or to promote the reign of freedom[.]\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, reformers who pursued change through electoral avenues gradually accustomed themselves to becoming part of the political establishment. By the 1990s, many center-left parties around the world ceased pursuing socialist aims at all, instead turning towards neoliberalism and becoming partners in deregulating the market and whittling away the welfare state. As Holloway explains, \u201cmost social-democratic parties have long since abandoned any pretension to be the bearers of radical social reform.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, the result has been the same: \u201cFor over a hundred years,\u201d Holloway writes, \u201cthe revolutionary enthusiasm of young people has been channeled into building the party or learning to shoot guns; for over a hundred years, the dreams of those who have wanted a world fit for humanity have been bureaucratized and militarized, all for the winning of state power by a government that could then be accused of \u2018betraying\u2019 the movement that put it there.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the U.S. context, Bill Clinton\u2019s implementation of \u201cwelfare reform,\u201d his pursuit of corporate deregulation, and his championing of neoliberal trade deals dispelled any notion that, in the wake of the Cold War, the Democrats would reverse the advances of Reaganism. For David Graeber, Barack Obama\u2019s subsequent failure to push radical policies was perhaps even more galling. After all, Obama was elected on a platform of \u201cchange,\u201d came to power with strong Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, and possessed a sweeping mandate to address the failures of capitalism that were laid bare by the financial crisis of 2008.<\/p>\n

\"David
David Graeber speaks at an Occupy Movement public debate on June 13, 2012 in Milan, Italy.<\/figcaption>
Pier Marco Tacca \/ Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And yet, under his watch, Wall Street emerged unscathed, with its \u201ctoo big to fail\u201d institutions bailed out and its political power left intact. As Graeber put it in \u201cThe Democracy Project,\u201d his book about Occupy, \u201cClearly, if progressive change was not possible through electoral means in 2008, it simply isn\u2019t going to be possible at all. And that is exactly what very large numbers of young Americans appear to have concluded.\u201d<\/p>\n

To break from what they identified as this history of failure, the likes of Graeber and Holloway venerated uprisings that were playful and inventive, but not necessarily oriented toward winning control of the state. As Holloway quipped, they were more about having a \u201cparty\u201d \u2014 creating celebrations of resistance that could create cracks in the system \u2014 than about building a \u201cParty\u201d in the organizational sense. The theorists found beacons of hope in the Zapatistas in southern Mexico and the Kurds in <\/span>Rojava<\/a>; they celebrated communities in El Alto, Bolivia that used popular assemblies to run the city\u2019s water system, and workers in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who at least temporarily took over factories and other enterprises in the wake of the country\u2019s financial crisis in 2001. Graeber identified their approach as a form of \u201cdual power\u201d strategy, oriented toward creating \u201cliberated territories outside of the existing political, legal and economic order\u201d and developing \u201cdirectly democratic alternative[s] completely separate from the government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Citing a similar set of examples, scholar and activist Marina Sitrin, a leading advocate of the decentralized organizing model known as <\/span>horizontalism<\/a>, wrote that \u201csince the 1990s, many popular movements around the world have been animated by something that I would call an anarchist spirit \u2014 a way of organizing and relating that opposes hierarchy and embraces direct democracy.\u201d For her, this was \u201ca spirit that we should applaud and help to flourish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others, however, were more skeptical. In a probing 2001 <\/span>essay<\/a> <\/span>on \u201cAnarchism and the Anti-Globalization Movement,\u201d Barbara Epstein, a professor in the history of consciousness department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, acknowledged that anarchism regularly served as \u201ca too-often ignored moral compass for the left,\u201d bringing a focus on democracy and egalitarianism, while also integrating art and creativity into movement practice, insisting that radical politics did not have to consist of dull and repetitive marches. Yet, at the same time, she contended, its \u201cabsolute hostility to the state, and its tendency to adopt a stance of moral purity, limit its usefulness as a basis for a broad movement for egalitarian social change, let alone for a transition to socialism.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the anarchist sensibility retained influence into the Obama era, a shift away from it became pronounced by 2016. As journalist and popular podcaster Daniel Denvir <\/span>writes<\/a>, Occupy, immigrant rights protests, and Black Lives Matter had energized the left in the years prior. And yet, \u201cthe idea that we might and must win state power didn\u2019t become clear until Bernie Sanders\u2019 2016 Democratic primary challenge. That run shattered the decades-long presumption that the left would be a protest movement and not a governing force, and with it, our self-righteousness, the belief that our very marginality signaled our correctness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Panitch noted the international context for the change: \u201c[R]ather suddenly,\u201d he wrote, \u201cthere seemed to be a widespread realization that you can protest until hell freezes over, but you won\u2019t change the world that way.\u201d Mass mobilizations in city squares in Madrid and Athens gave rise to new parties that reshaped politics in Spain and Greece. This momentum, in turn, influenced electoral insurgencies inside the U.K.\u2019s Labor Party and the Democrats in the United States. In short order, the prospect of taking institutional power was back on the table for the left.<\/p>\n

In truth, in other parts of the world \u2014 notably in Latin America \u2014 this shift had begun years before. Mass protests in places such as Bolivia and Uruguay against neoliberal trade policies, austerity and privatization were much more quickly linked with rising progressive parties and electoral campaigns. Many of them emerged victorious. By 2009, left-of-center presidents had won election not only in those countries, but in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Paraguay and El Salvador as well.<\/p>\n

\n
\"John
John Holloway giving a lecture in Berlin in 2011. (Wikimedia \/ Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung)<\/figcaption>
<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Even Holloway granted that \u201cThe rise of the \u2018pink\u2019 governments in Latin America had the effect, both in the countries directly concerned and internationally, of giving a new legitimacy to state-centered attempts to bring about radical change.\u201d For him, this was an unfortunate development. But as progressives in office pushed forward redistributionist social policies, and as they offered a plethora of rich examples to examine, many protesters were ready to take a closer look at what upstart parties might do in government \u2014 and how social movements might respond, whether collaboratively or critically.<\/p>\n

The activist left had experienced a taste of power, and a new generation would no longer be satisfied with romantic evocations of the Zapatistas that failed to acknowledge this changing reality. <\/p>\n

The Danger of Losing Radical Critique and Alternative Vision <\/strong><\/h2>\n

Left organizers may now be more enthusiastic than their predecessors of a decade or two ago about pursuing an approach to creating change that marries outside protest with inside maneuvering. But this shift does not come without its own difficulties. Even as today\u2019s more electorally-minded activists may disagree with the strategic choices of dissidents averse to engaging in party politics or brokering compromises with policymakers, they would do well to acknowledge that thinkers like Graeber and Holloway raised problems that must still be tackled if radicals are to maintain the integrity of their movements.<\/p>\n

Specifically, these thinkers raise three challenging points about the costs of cooperating with the system: that movements aspiring to inside influence have a track record of muting their radical vision and critique; that they over-rely on the power of official players; and that they fail to grapple with the challenge of bureaucratic cooptation.<\/p>\n

First, Graeber and Holloway charge that by attempting to win control of mainstream institutions, movements risk losing their ability to uphold a radical vision for change.<\/p>\n

Those who agree to engage with the system on its own terms have trouble giving full voice to the pain and disenchantment of the oppressed. For Holloway, radical politics starts with what he calls \u201cthe scream\u201d \u2014 a cry of anguish and revulsion at the injustices of dominant systems. \u201cOur scream is a refusal to accept,\u201d he writes. \u201cA refusal to accept the inevitability of increasing inequality, misery, exploitation and violence\u201d presented by global capitalism.<\/p>\n

Holloway explains that the scream involves opening ourselves to profound questioning: We ask, \u201cWhy is there so much inequality in the world? Why are there so many people unemployed when there are so many others who are overworked? Why is there so much hunger in a world where there is such abundance? Why are there so many children living on the streets? We attack the world with all the stubborn curiosity of a three-year-old, with the difference perhaps that our \u2018why\u2019s are informed by rage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The call to be realistic and work within the constraints of status quo institutions stands in tension with the scream\u2019s disgusted rejection of our current predicament. For hard-headed realists who follow Machiavelli in concerning themselves \u201conly with what is, not with things as we might wish them to be,\u201d the urgent questions raised by the scream quickly become regarded as naive and utopian. When running candidates, building a political party, or working with insiders to craft winnable compromises, it becomes more difficult for movements to simply denounce the system as illegitimate. And yet, as Graeber argues, there are times when just such a rejection is warranted \u2014 when, in his words, we must \u201cdeclare the entire political system to be absolutely corrupt, idiotic and irrelevant to people\u2019s actual lives, a clown show that fails even as a form of entertainment, and try to render politicians a pariah class.\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside dissidents \u2014 especially those of an anarchist bent \u2014 often charge that, in seeking to take control of an institution for the purposes of making it better, reformers end up legitimizing a structure that should be dismantled. For example, some prison abolitionists argue that, in seeking to run progressive district attorneys who will promote criminal justice reforms, activists end up justifying the existence of an office that is inherently repressive and ultimately part of the problem. Likewise, candidates trying to win electoral office have a difficult time convincing the public that the system itself is fundamentally corrupt. In order to compete for votes, they must accommodate themselves to unjust rules, and this acceptance \u2014 however hesitant \u2014 comes to resemble complicity. The very act of attempting to play the inside game gives credibility to the existing political establishment.<\/p>\n

With reference to Occupy, Graeber contends that the movement\u2019s rejection of politics as usual sent a powerful message: \u201cIt is true that anarchists did \u2026 refuse to enter the political system itself, but this was on the grounds that the system itself was undemocratic \u2014 having been reduced to a system of open institutionalized bribery, backed up by coercive force,\u201d he writes. \u201cWe wanted to make that fact evident to everyone, in the United States and elsewhere. And that is what [Occupy Wall Street] did \u2014 in a way that no amount of waving policy statements could have ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scream is not merely one of rejection and delegitimization. In giving a full-throated denunciation of injustice, it creates space for imagining something better. As Holloway writes, \u201cOur scream, then, is two-dimensional: the scream of rage that arises from present experience carries within itself a hope, a projection of possible otherness.\u201d<\/p>\n

In contrast, Holloway believes that those who have embraced the practicalities of insider politics and focus on controlling the mechanisms of the state end up becoming apologists for the way things are. In the name of pragmatic action, they inevitably mute their calls for true alternatives.<\/p>\n

Overestimating the Power of Inside Players <\/strong><\/h2>\n

A second problem with engaging in party politics and focusing on gaining insider credibility is that it causes movements to overestimate the power of elected officials. The mainstream media, and consequently the American public, overwhelmingly looks at politics through a <\/span>monolithic<\/em> <\/span>lens. It sees actors such as mayors, presidents and senators as the drivers of social change, attributing political progress to the convictions and cunning of such individuals.<\/p>\n

In fact, elected officials are profoundly constrained by the political and economic systems that structure American democracy. Graeber argues that, \u201cat this point, bribery has become the very basis of our system of government.\u201d While giving money to politicians as a means of controlling their votes was once illegal, \u201cNow soliciting bribes has been relabeled \u2018fundraising\u2019 and bribery itself, \u2018lobbying,\u2019\u201d he writes. \u201cBanks rarely need to ask specific favors if politicians, dependent on the flow of bank money to finance their campaigns, are already allowing bank lobbyists to shape or even write the legislation that is supposed to \u2018regulate\u2019 their banks.\u201d<\/p>\n