The occupations movement is highly structured, and this structure is a focal point for political debates. Decisions are made by the general assembly (GA) through a process of democratic deliberation; it also serves as the basis for the delegation responsibilities and tasks, which are required both to keep people participating and to organize political activity.
We expect history to provide us with explanations – to place the immediacy of experience within a wider story whose terms will be progressively elaborated and illuminated. Political action, which aims at intervening into history and altering its movement, has an entirely different kind of truth – a subjective truth produced in the act of participating.
A general strike has been declared by the Oakland General Assembly. The original version of this song was the number one hit during the 1946 Oakland General Strike.
It could very well be that the durability and radicalization of this movement will rely on its potential as a mediating element between the the various segments of the class, their particular interests, and their traditional forms of struggle. Achieving this means going beyond a spontaneous reflection of changes in our working lives. It has to start by understanding the system underlying them.
Spanning an entire generation, a linguistic divide, and a geographical shift, the epistolary encounter between Anton Pannekoek and Cornelius Castoriadis in many ways marks the internal transformation of the ultra-left. But the ultra-left, far from a historical relic, is making headlines again.
Everyone on the left has pointed out that the riots in London are rooted in capital’s assault on the working class, couched in the ideological language of austerity – and that this was the kindling sparked by the racist police brutality that culminated in the murder of Mark Duggan. But our task – like Marx’s task, when he defended the violent upheaval of the Silesian weavers – isn’t to give a moral evaluation of the riots, like schoolmasters diligently stacking the pros against the cons, but, rather, to grasp their specific character.
Viewpoint Magazine