Book reviews, etc.
Some of these items take the form of reviews of books. Some might not. Hence the "etc."
The reviews of books should include sufficient bibliographic information for you to request the book from your public library or (if you have such financial resources) to buy it from an independent bookstore or directly from the publisher.
Contents
- Ideology and incompetence: how labor lost the South in the 1930s and 1940s
- Understanding the Bankers' Club: first task in replacing it
- More possibilities than exploiters want us to imagine: The Dawn of Everything
- The Package King: a rank-and-file history of UPS
- The two most important fiction and nonfiction books of 2020
- Bitcoin: Who wants it? Why? Will they get what they want?
- Taxonomies of contradiction and collapse: two authors on capitalism's prospects
- Three frameworks for strategy
- How Organizations Develop Activists: civic associations and leadership in the 21st century
- The Contradictions of "Real Socialism": the conductor and the conducted
- A New New Deal: how regional activism will reshape the American labor movement
- Gene Sharp on nonviolent action
- Doing Democracy: the MAP model for organizing social movements
- Solidarity Divided: the crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice
- Briefly noted titles
Ideology and incompetence: how labor lost the South in the 1930s and 1940s
The Southern Key: class, race, and radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s; by Michael Goldfield; 2020; Oxford University Press; ISBN 9780190079321; ‹https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-southern-key-9780190079321›.
After finishing The Southern Key, this reader sees two general reasons why we didn't have large successful organizing campaigns in the southern United States in the 1930s and 1940s: ideology and incompetence, specifically the ideology and incompetence of staff and officers of the national union structures who controlled the larger efforts at organizing here.
Their harmful ideology included four forms of prejudice: against Southerners, against Blacks, against women, and against communists and other anti-capitalist radicals. They appear to have believed Southerners, Blacks, and women (groups with substantial overlap) incapable of organizing effectively and unworthy of investment. When workers in southern industries did organize (often with the help of Communist organizers), national union officials misled, underfunded, or abandoned those efforts, thereby "proving" the impossibility of organizing the South.
While telling the history of those big stories, the book mentions a few additional points I think worth emphasis:
- Goldfield earns high points by acknowledging on page 2 that "The South" does not have an obvious and clear definition. More writers should explain what they mean by the term.
- Pages 75 and 80-81 illustrate how using violence against a union's external opponents led to using violence internally.
- If you happen to think it acceptable to use violence against communists, notice (pages 176-177) how violence first used against communist dissenters continued after the defeat of the communists.
- Pages 82-83 discuss the alleged need for unions to discipline their members to maintain national agreements with companies. If this need exists (Goldfield seems to assume it does), couldn't we achieve it by internal discussion and democracy? Collectively agreed self-discipline seems much more desirable than the centrally imposed discipline assumed here.
- Page 84 describes the main questions leaders of the miners union faced. Most union leaders need to think about such questions.
- Pages 196-199 gives multiple examples of "unorganizable" workers organizing. Labelling any workers as "unorganizable" just means the labeler doesn't know how.
Two things about the book annoyed me, both likely the fault of the publisher, Oxford University Press, from whom we should expect better:
- The book has occasional typos and many errors and omissions in its references, especially when they appear in footnotes. Problems in references create unnecessary difficulties for readers who want to learn more. Some errors glare so blatantly one wonders if the publisher completely omitted proofreading.
- The cover photo appears irrelevant to the book. Benjamin Davis, one of the two central figures in the photo, grew up in Georgia and as a lawyer once defended a labor organizer. Otherwise, his career --mostly in New York-- shows no connection to the topic of this book. Robert G. Thompson, the other central figure, has a Wikipedia entry with zero mention of labor organizing and no connection to the South beyond burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
Goldfield's examples throughout The Southern Key repeatedly illustrate the two fundamental questions workers need to answer:
- Do the bosses need workers to work now?
- Can we prevent the bosses from getting what they need by halting work?
Many details go into answering these questions. We should doubt quick, glib answers. We should especially doubt answers that claim certain workers do not have the ability to unite in collective action.
Answering these two fundamental questions can benefit from careful study and analysis. Michael Goldfield's The Southern Key offers an example of such historical analysis. We can learn much from studying it.
In his first chapter ("Rigor in Historical Analysis") Goldfield explains his views on how we should study history. This important chapter deserves careful attention.
In that chapter, Goldfield makes excellent points, of which I mention three:
- We need to think carefully about the "unit of analysis" in our study. In the globalized economy we have had since well before this book's focus, no unit smaller than the whole world contains all relevant factors.
- We should not trust oral histories --especially those collected well after the events they describe-- nearly as much as written records from during the events.
- We need to carefully understand the consequences of what Goldfield calls "trade union legality" (pages 21-24). If we began every union meeting by reading these few pages out loud, it could clear much confusion.
After this excellent first chapter, however, Goldfield largely ignores his own points. In later case studies, he rarely mentions influences from outside the United States (other than the Comintern), relies at least occasionally on oral history unquestioningly, and rarely mentions trade union legality. Perhaps he wrote the bulk of the book over many years, then wrote chapter 1 without revising the remainder of the book with the benefit of that chapter's insights?
Even using Goldfield's tips about how to study history, such study of history does not answer questions about the present. It can offer examples that help us think about our current situation. It does not prove anything about the present.
Organized collective action --and only organized collective action-- answers the two fundamental questions about worker power in the present.
To put that another way, we never know how much power we have until we actually use it. And that only shows us the result of that action in that circumstance. Having taken that action, we now have a new circumstance. In that new circumstance we still do not know how much power we have until we use it.
Yes, we need to study, analyze, and learn from history. But, about our current organizing efforts, we have bad news and good news. The bad news: We won't know if it works until we try. The good news: We won't know if it works until we try.
-- Russell Herman, 12 August 2024
Understanding the Bankers' Club: first task in replacing it
Busting the Bankers' Club: Finance for the rest of us; by Gerald Epstein; 2024; University of California Press; ISBN 9780520385641; ‹https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520409842/busting-the-bankers-club›.
If you want to understand the financial system in the United States today, you could do a lot worse than by starting with this book.
Gerald Epstein, a professor of economics at University of Massachusetts Amherst, describes what he calls the Bankers' Club. This Club consists of the major banks, their organizations, governmental financial institutions, and the agencies charged with regulating finance.
He shows how they worked together in recent decades to transform banking from "boring" to "roaring." In the process, they made the industry obscenely lucrative for those at its top and harmful for the rest of us.
Most people in the united States old enough to seek a job and a credit card probably already vaguely understand the system as rigged against them. Epstein gracefully and readably explains who did the recent version of that rigging and how it works. Most people will find it more appallingly stupid and harmful than they had imagined.
As Epstein shows, it took decades of steady work to create this system to pump money from the many to the few. The Bankers' Club also has to work steadily to prevent democracy. If this country ever has an outbreak of democracy it could seriously interfere with matters the Bankers' Club wants us to leave to them.
Epstein describes himself as a heterodox economist and a founder of a "bit player" organization for financial restructuring. In his final chapters, he sketches several ways to reform the system to get better results for everybody but the Bankers' Club. He describes multiple "Club Buster" projects and the organizations pushing them.
Heterodox though Epstein sees himself, on his next-to-last page he writes "The strategy for change I have described is one of incremental change, change operating in fits and starts from multiple places with the hope that these will ripple out and lead to the tipping point of an accelerating pace of financial and social restructuring. But it is an incremental change with a bite: it is designed to reduce the resources available to the Bankers' Club along the way."
That incremental strategy doesn't suit me, but I wish more power (and good luck) to those willing to pursue it.
Epstein may underestimate the methods the Bankers' Club will use to defend their dominance. They used relatively mild methods in recent decades because they had relatively mild opposition. If they thought their positions in real danger, I suspect they would resort to more intensive methods, possibly including lethal methods. Epstein appears to have not considered this possibility. Of course, much good work can happen using his strategy before we will need to go beyond his incremental recommendations.
-- Russell Herman, 16 June 2024
More possibilities than exploiters want us to imagine: The Dawn of Everything
The Dawn of Everything: a new history of humanity; David Graeber and David Wengrow; 2021; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; ISBN 9780374157357; ‹https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374157357/the-dawn-of-everything›.
Do you have --or know people who have-- unfavorable assumptions about human nature? Of course you do. We live saturated by such anti-human messages. Perhaps, dear human, you'd like an antidote to such poison? Read The Dawn of Everything.
Anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow use the 526 pages of their brilliant book's main text (plus 84 pages of notes, 63 pages of bibliography, 18-page index, etc.) to show "HOW THE CONVENTIONAL NARRATIVE OF HUMAN HISTORY IS NOT ONLY WRONG, BUT QUITE NEEDLESSLY DULL" (as their subheading on page 21 puts it).
At first I found their wordiness annoying, but then (after a couple hundred pages) began to understand how this book works. They don't offer a linear narrative. They certainly don't offer conciseness. Their looping, spiraling arguments sprawl over so many pages with extended examples and counter-examples and dismissals of counter-examples that I often despaired of following the structure.
They offer layers of evidence. They offer layers of questions. Very interesting evidence. Very intriguing questions.
I don't know the data on pre-history humanity and can't evaluate their layers of evidence. Have Graeber and Wengrow cherry-picked their evidence? If so, they managed to find a shipload of cherries. Have they, as at least one reviewer claims, misinterpreted or misrepresented evidence? To this non-expert reader, Wengrow's reply to those charges seems at least as plausible as the charges themselves. Even if we reject half this book's examples, its main arguments mostly seem realistic.
A few of the main arguments:
- Ancient human societies had far, far more variety than generally assumed today.
- Many ancient humans explicitly discussed their social arrangements and deliberately guided their societies in the directions they preferred.
- Human societies did not develop in necessary stages, each leading automatically to the next.
- Large, complex, urban societies have not always had centralized, hierarchical authorities.
- The Enlightenment may have resulted in response to critiques of European civilization by native North American philosophers.
While The Dawn of Everything doesn't say "everything you believe is wrong", it gets close. And it looks generally plausible.
That offers a welcome and refreshing perspective. If our past included more variety in its societies than we imagine today and some far freer societies than we have today, then our future might also. If people in the past deliberately discussed and designed their societies to achieve their preferences, then we might also.
The Dawn of Everything also offers a fun read, frequently causing this reader to grin, laugh out loud, or cheer on the authors.
In an draft review circulated informally, Thomas C. Patterson (Distinguished Professor Emeritus; Department of Anthropology; University of California, Riverside) disagrees with several points in The Dawn of Everything and then concludes "I found the book both thought-provoking and annoying. Nevertheless, it is well worth reading, and it is without question the best book written on world history in the last twenty years." That assessment seems about right.
-- Russell Herman, 23 November 2022
The Package King: a rank-and-file history of UPS
The Package King: a rank-and-file history of UPS; Joe Allen; 2020; Haymarket Books; ISBN 9781642591644 (paperback); ‹https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1441-the-package-king/›.
With the Teamsters' contract with UPS expiring 1 August 2023, anybody interested in strengthening labor unions in the United States needs to prepare to support that contract campaign. Given UPS's history, we should expect it will require serious pressure to get the company's managers to agree to a reasonable contract.
This short history by Joe Allen, a former Teamster who worked for years at UPS, will help readers understand much of the long context for next year's struggle.
That context includes at least three important factors:
- the company's particular history that created its peculiar quasi-military culture
- the company's initial resistance to unionization, its later co-optation of Teamster leaders, and the long campaign of members to clean up their union
- the development of globalized logistics as a prime influence on modern goods businesses (and UPS's role in that surging development)
If you only see the big brown truck and the worker dressed in brown who hustles a cardboard box to your doorstep, you probably don't realize the scale of UPS. It employs 534,000 workers in over 200 countries and territories. Its 582 jets (about half owned and half leased or chartered) fly roughly 2000 flight segments per day. It uses 120,000 ground vehicles. It carries about 25 million packages and documents per day. In the third quarter of 2022, it had $24.2 billion of revenue and $3.1 billion of operating profit (over a billion dollars in profit per month!). Its profit rose 7.5% compared to the same quarter of 2021. (Data in this paragraph collected 28 October 2022 from ‹https://about.ups.com/us/en/home.html›.)
How did UPS acquire that enormous presence and those enormous profits?
- Paying its workers far less than the value they produce.
- Avoiding paying for much of its environmental impact.
- Relying on subsidies from taxpayers (direct subsidies and indirect subsidies such as our publicly funded highways, air traffic control, GPS system, schools, etc.)
- Paying lobbyists and making electoral campaign contributions to keep the laws and regulations rigged in its favor.
Should we require UPS to treat workers and our environment decently? I think so. If you agree, read Joe Allen's The Package King to help you get ready to support those workers in their coming contract renegotiation campaign.
-- Russell Herman, 30 October 2022
back to top↑The two most important fiction and nonfiction books of 2020
A Small Farm Future: making the case for a society built around local economies, self-provisioning, agricultural diversity, and a shared earth; Chris Smaje; 2020; Chelsea Green Publishing; ISBN 9781603589024 (paperback); ‹https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/a-small-farm-future/›.
The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson, 2020, Orbit, ISBN 9780316300131 (hardcover), ‹https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/kim-stanley-robinson/the-ministry-for-the-future/9780316300131/›.
First, I should admit to a bit of hype in the title of this review. I can only read three languages, only one well, and have only read books from 2020 in English. I've read only a tiny fraction of the English fraction of 2020's books.
In addition, it seems completely unreasonable to evaluate the importance of 2020's books so soon after publication.
More realistically, I might've titled this review "The two fiction and nonfiction books published in 2020 that I hope will have the most effect of the few I've read so far." But would that bucket of word-slop have enticed you to read this review?
These two books sketch quite different possibilities for our future. Probably incompatibly different. Both offer visions some details of which I think unworkable or undesirable. I do not recommend either as a blueprint to follow.
But these excellent books make three key points very clearly:
- If the human species has a decent future, it will differ dramatically from our present.
- We'd better make those changes soon.
- We have many more possibilities than the ones usually discussed, including delightful possibilities.
Please don't judge these books by their miserable covers, both of which appear cobbled together from clip art. Smaje's book got stuck with a dull, text-heavy cover suggesting nostalgia for the 1800s, an entirely misleading impression for a book that belongs firmly to today and the coming decades. The cover of Robinson's book, while not as blatantly misleading, depicts a scene we don't see in the book and hints at an empty moodiness that doesn't match the book's hopeful tone.
A small warning to help you avoid an error when you talk about Robinson's book: It has the title "The Ministry for the Future" not "of the Future". Many who should know better get that wrong, for example on page 37 of the 26 July and 2 August 2021 double issue of The Nation.
Robinson starts the story with one of his "Frank" characters -- semi-loner men tending toward brusqueness who act unilaterally and sometimes exploitatively, complicated fellows we can't fully like but sympathize with and wish healing for. Similar characters include Frank January in 1984's "The Lucky Strike", Frank Chalmers in the Mars trilogy (1993, 1994, 1996), Frank Vanderwal in the Science in the Capital trilogy (2004, 2005, 2007), and now Frank May. Robinson's work may even include other Franks. I haven't read everything he's written. One wonders why Robinson so often features these characters and so often gives them this name.
As in his other books, Robinson wrestles with big issues but writes primarily as a storyteller, not as an analyst or theoretician. He creates characters we care about with lives and concerns beyond the big issues. The issues, however, form the context for their stories. For example, he introduces us to refugees as people. Catastrophes, after all, happen to people, not to statistics.
While some of Robinson's characters work on big issues, joy and suffering continue. Love --and simple human regard for each other-- continue. People find their ways as best they can in their too-short lives.
Smaje's nonfiction book offers careful analysis. For example, pages 53-73 explain key points from David Ricardo and Karl Marx and then apply them to a current topic, more readably than either Ricardo or Marx wrote.
As in his interesting blog ‹https://smallfarmfuture.org.uk/›, Smaje advocates for a specific vision for our future. Robinson, in contrast, illustrates many possible tactics with the tone of "let's try everything and hope something works."
Robinson questions capitalism, as a reader might expect from his book's dedication "For Fredric Jameson". Questions, but apparently doesn't reject. To the extent The Ministry for the Future advocates any specific solution, it calls for technocratic regulation and reform instead of revolution.
Both books fail to question (and therefore actively preserve) exchange and property, keeping the main sources of our problems. The possibilities they identify, therefore, can only function (in spite of these authors' eloquent hopes) as temporary ameliorations along capital's destructive course. We need temporary ameliorations, of course. We also need to go further than these two imaginative authors envision.
In this little review I criticize these two authors a bit for their limited imagination, but I don't want to over-emphasize that. They also get valuable things right. More importantly, they raise important questions in vivid and clarifying ways.
Read these two books from 2020. Argue with these authors in your mind. Persuade your friends to read these books. Talk with your friends about these books. You'll think more clearly about our world and our possibilities as a result.
-- Russell Herman, 23 May 2022
back to top↑Bitcoin: Who wants it? Why? Will they get what they want?
The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism, David Golumbia, undated but 2016, University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 978-1-5179-0180-6 (paperback), ‹http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-politics-of-bitcoin›.
[Note: This review assumes a basic familiarity with bitcoin. Readers wishing an introduction should benefit from Wikipedia's article at ‹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin› (confirmed 3 November 2017). In addition, IEEE Spectrum (published monthly by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) has had excellent introductory-level coverage of bitcoin, Zcash, and blockchain methods. See their "Special Report: Blockchain World" in IEEE Spectrum, October 2017, vol. 54, no. 10 (NA), pages 24-61.]
The University of Minnesota Press published David Golumbia's little 90-page paperback as part of its "Forerunners: Ideas First" series, which it describes as "gray literature" "between fresh ideas and finished books." It has that feel to it -- some new thinking with a little more work in it than a first draft, but far from polished.
Given that disclaimer by the publisher, I'll ignore the book's occasional typo and rough editing. One glitch, however, seriously annoys: the book doesn't have a publication date anywhere in it. I got my copy in late 2016 and it contains references to publications that appeared in the first quarter of 2016, so I suspect it appeared in the second or third quarter of 2016. The publisher's website (‹http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-politics-of-bitcoin›, confirmed 3 November 2017) dates it 2016, but someone picking up this book should not need to guess or do research to determine its date.
The date matters because the author examines a changing phenomenon. Bitcoin does not have the same social function or social status in late 2017 as it did when it launched in 2009, when it gained widespread public attention in 2013, or when this book appeared in 2016. Nor should we assume its current function or status will continue without change.
That omission of acknowledging this book's historical context also puzzles because Golumbia takes a historical approach to his examination of bitcoin but omits the first piece of data readers need to do the same for his book. I assume this error resulted from the publisher's omission of careful editing for this "gray" series.
Who wants bitcoin? Why?
In this little book Golumbia sketches the parallels between arguments for bitcoin (and, by extension, other cryptocurrencies) and the arguments of some of the more extreme advocates for capital-friendly policies.
His examples range from anti-inflation phobias to those who see central banks as vast diabolical conspiracies. Golumbia treats these advocates as operating somewhere on the spectrum between mildly delusional and dangerously deranged. But even those who see an occasional accuracy in such theories might wish to join Golumbia in stepping back from the particulars to notice that these advocates serve the desires (and sometimes the needs) of the holders of capital.
These views preach a highly individualistic philosophy which believes the freer the market the better and which portrays government intervention in markets as ranging from incompetent to tyrannical. In reality, of course, in all modern nations, markets rely upon state enforcement of property and of contracts. Propaganda, however, can disregard such inconvenient facts.
So these cryptolibertarians oppose regulation and support cryptography-based currencies such as bitcoin because they hope this technology will let them escape regulation. They believe less regulation means greater market efficiency and that in a more efficient market they can get richer quicker. Some of them even claim everybody will get richer quicker.
To what extent might cryptocapitalists achieve their goals?
Golumbia's account shows that many of the arguments for bitcoin resemble some of these more extreme capitalist, libertarian fantasies. But social innovations do not always have the results their advocates advertise. If they did, the telegraph would have brought peace through improved communication, nuclear power would have given us clean electricity too cheap to meter, and marijuana use would have ushered in an age of blissful anarchy. (One imagines true believers in the last two examples leaping to their keyboards to proclaim, "It could still do that, if only the regulators let it or everyone got stoned, depending.")
The beliefs of advocates matter but they do not matter as much as the actual social effects of an innovation. We have to look a little deeper than the cloud of rhetoric surrounding it.
What actual social effect has bitcoin had? So far, not much. A few people got wealthier. Some lost money. Some people bought and sold illegal drugs. Probably some dodged a bit of tax. Those of us who write about social phenomena had an interesting new topic to consider.
But bitcoin has existed less than a decade. What might it (or some other blockchain exchange method) do in the future? It depends.
Primarily, of course, it depends on the continuation of an economy based on exchange and property. Because we have not yet built a worldwide movement with the ability and intention to create an exchange-free economy, we should expect exchange and property to persist in various forms (such as finance monopoly capitalism and the barbarisms it spawns) for the near future.
If (a big if, but not obviously impossible) an effectively anonymous method develops to hold wealth and to transfer it untraceably, that could let people with wealth escape many forms of taxation and many forms of regulation on how they use wealth.
If it also costs relatively little to hold or to transfer wealth (bitcoin already meets these criteria) and if many people participate in using that method, then we should expect the usual results of an unregulated market: exchange values will fluctuate (sometimes wildly) and wealth will migrate from the many to the few (sometimes "legitimately" and sometimes through methods a well-regulated market would prohibit as fraud).
The new cryptocurrency Zcash (‹https://z.cash/›, confirmed 3 November 2017) launched on 28 October 2016 to create such a fully anonymous blockchain exchange method. Will it succeed? At this early point in its history, we do not know. Early reviews make it look plausible.
However, the world probably only has a few dozen people with the mathematical expertise, software knowledge, and practical cryptographic experience needed to seriously evaluate such implementations. In these matters, you have to get all the tricky little details right for it to work reliably. Zcash (with the backing of significant investors and crypto experts on staff) has a better chance than most attempts. Technical publications treat it as a serious contender. (For an example readable by the non-technical, see ‹http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/a-blockchain-currency-that-beats-bitcoin-on-privacy›, confirmed 3 November 2017.)
As of this writing (29 October 2017), you can use the official version of Zcash only on 64-bit Debian Linux systems. Third-party vendors will presumably offer more consumer-friendly versions. Alleged versions already exist for MacOS and Windows systems. If reliable consumer-grade software for Zcash becomes widely available and if ordinary users can distinguish it from malware, then watch to see whether usage grows and at what rate.
How much of a future do blockchain methods have?
Cryptolibertarian capitalists clearly want an anonymous way to hold and transfer wealth. They have demonstrated the willingness and ability to invest serious funds in developing such a tool. If Zcash fails, we should expect them to learn from that effort and try again.
Major financial institutions have started blockchain projects of various sorts. Because anti-money-laundrying laws require them to identify their customers, they design their systems to explicitly avoid anonymity for their users. These experimental systems will not please anonymity-seeking cryptolibertarians but may add a new revenue stream for banks, stock exchanges, insurance companies, and their ilk. If successful, they will help legitimize blockchain methods in general.
What about money-laundry-friendly blockchain methods such as Zcash? Should governments that do not wish the wealthy to hide their wealth or their transactions prohibit anonymous cryptocurrencies?
Some of the more enthusiastic advocates for cryptocurrencies describe them as impossible to prohibit. They deride such attempts as "outlawing mathematics." They have a point under current computing methods, which cannot factor large numbers fast enough to break the cryptographic keys in a practical way.
Quantum computing, however, theoretically could break all current blockchain systems. While no entity has publicly demonstrated a practical quantum computer, a few labs have announced very rudimentary elements of one. Development actively continues, including a multi-billion-dollar effort funded by the Chinese government.
In the next several years we may see a race between blockchain methods and quantum computing. If --or when-- quantum computing becomes practical, it should win.
However, quantum methods themselves offer a possibility for secure communication through quantum entanglement. Could libertarians devise an anonymous cryptocurrency based on quantum methods? Might quantum computing destroy the public key encryption on which blockchains currently rely only to replace that foundation with an even more secure one?
Those of us who wish to understand the economy of exchange (whether to profit from it or to replace it) should watch these developments.
-- Russell Herman, 9 December 2017
back to top↑Taxonomies of contradiction and collapse: two authors on capitalism's prospects
Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, David Harvey, 2014, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-936026-0 (hardback), ‹https://global.oup.com/academic/product/seventeen-contradictions-and-the-end-of-capitalism-9780199360260›.
Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects, Dmitry Orlov, 2011, New Society Publishers, ISBN 978-0-86571-685-8 (paperback), ‹http://www.newsociety.com/Books/R/Reinventing-Collapse›.
The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivors' Toolkit, Dmitry Orlov, 2013, New Society Publishers, ISBN 978-0-86571-736-7 (paperback), ‹http://www.newsociety.com/Books/F/The-Five-Stages-of-Collapse›.
These three fine books by two quite different authors address the future of capitalism. Probably to the surprise of nobody reading this review, they predict it will come to no good.
The authors approach their topic from remarkably different backgrounds, use different methods of analysis and argument, address different audiences, and wish for different outcomes. Yet their books work well together, complementing gaps in the other's argument.
Dmitry Orlov lived in the Soviet Union until his emigrating family brought him to the United States as a teenager. During and since the collapse of the Soviet system, he visited the land of his origin repeatedly. He blogs weekly at ‹http://www.cluborlov.com›. He appears to write for a popular audience that includes people with a survivalist "prepper" inclination.
New Society Publishers, which offers these two books by Orlov, has a leftish/progressive history but Orlov has no obvious allegiance on the left-right spectrum. He takes more of a plague-on-both-your-houses attitude.
Orlov's background in technical fields shows in his method of argument. He especially likes to lay out a step-by-step progression that leads to a conclusion with a sense of inevitability. His explanation of the results of compounding interest (pages 21-24 in The Five Stages of Collapse) illustrates this inclination. That example also features the wry humor that enlivens his arguments. That irreverent cheerfulness can also distract the reader from thinking carefully about Orlov's assumptions, the relevance of his evidence, and the generality of his anecdotes.
David Harvey has written more than a dozen Marxist books since the early 1980s. He serves as Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. This book appears under the imprint of Oxford University Press, one of the more prestigious academic publishers. In addition to his prolific book production, Harvey offers an excellent series of video lectures on Marx's Capital (and other topics) at ‹http://davidharvey.org/›.
While Orlov attempts to find a position outside the left-right spectrum, Harvey stands proudly and cheerfully on the left. He writes in a style most suited for his peers on that side of the political range among Western faculty members. However, as his video lectures vividly demonstrate, he wishes to communicate to a wider circle while maintaining the intellectual rigor that academic work encourages. Harvey, like Orlov, enlivens his writing with a playful sense of humor -- though rather more droll, less frequent, and less forced.
In Reinventing Collapse, Orlov asserts that the economy of the United States will collapse. It will collapse in a messier way than the Soviet Union did because the United States lacks the customs and infrastructure that helped the people of the Soviet Union survive the collapse of their economy. We in the United States have a much bigger task in preparing to survive the coming relatively sudden loss of the economy that supports us.
In The Five Stages of Collapse, Orlov offers "a helpful taxonomy of collapses" by dividing them into stages according to "the breaching of a specific level of trust, or faith, in the status quo." He calls stage 1 "financial collapse" in which "[t]he future is no longer assumed to resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out and access to capital is lost." In stage 2 ("commercial collapse"), "[m]oney is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm." Stage 3 ("political collapse") happens when "the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance." In stage 4 ("social collapse") things start getting serious as "local social institutions ... run out of resources or fail through internal conflict." The process ends with stage 5 ("cultural collapse") when "[f]aith in the goodness of humanity is lost. ... Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources." (pages 14-15)
Orlov then offers a chapter on each stage in which he explains the causes, describes the effects on daily life, offers tips for how to function during that stage, and presents a short case study of a past society in that stage.
In Seventeen Contradictions, Harvey catalogs and carefully describes seventeen internal contradictions affecting capital's development. They range from contradiction 1 between use value and exchange value to contradiction 17 between the needs and desires of human beings and the inherent requirements of an economy based on capital.
Harvey offers a taxonomy in which he labels the first seven contradictions as "foundational", meaning "capital simply could not function without them." (15) He categorizes contradictions 8 through 14 as "moving" because, unlike the constancy of the foundational contradictions, they continually change the forms in which they appear. He labels the final three contradictions "dangerous" to "the ability of the economic engine of capitalism to continue to function but also [to] the reproduction of human life under even minimally reasonable conditions." (221)
Understanding each of these contradictions can help us understand --by examining the shifting balances between the two sides of each contradiction and the shifting prominence within society among the seventeen contradictions-- potentials for freeing ourselves from capitalism.
Harvey and Orlov describe an economic system that, worse than merely threatening some ultimate failure, directly harms most of those who live within it. Orlov focuses on near-future risks. Harvey focuses more on theoretical unworkableness and on current harm.
Orlov recommends individualistic preparation for survival and escape. He envisions small extended-family groupings that mostly provide their own material and social needs.
Harvey concentrates on a careful logical analysis of the theoretical implications of capital. His recommendations remain similarly logical and abstract.
Both Orlov and Harvey lack imagination for the possibilities beyond capitalism. Even after spending most of their books describing convincingly why the current system cannot continue indefinitely, they both assume the foundation of the current economic system will continue.
Orlov assumes the post-collapse economy will rely on property rights and will, at least partially, grow back from rudimentary, local forms of exchange such as barter and tribute.
Harvey, to the extent that he comments at all about a post-capital economy, seems to assume some form of (probably state-based) production for exchange. He envisions jobs that, while more humane in unspecified ways, still apparently consist of wage labor.
Such lack of imagination in mostly clear thinkers and excellent writers disappoints at least this reader.
If we knock back the financial superstructure of capital, make jobs better paid and healthier, focus production on actual human needs instead of the most profitable kinds of trash, and require production and distribution to use ecologically sustainable methods, we would accomplish a major improvement in human lives. Temporarily. The inherent logic of property and exchange, however, will drive them to expand and to seek to conquer more and more of our lives and of the physical world. Within a short period of time, the new economy would begin to resemble the old economy.
No, we must dare to imagine and to insist upon a more thorough transformation. We must put a final end to property and to exchange. Only then will we have a chance to develop a human economy that serves us all.
We must base our economy not on property and exchange but on work and shared use. In that economy nothing will have an exchange value, because we will not trade anything. Those of us who have the ability and inclination will work and produce. We will make the fruits of our labor freely available to any who wish to use them. We will use whatever we need and find in the storehouses. We will discuss and come to agreements on what to produce. For work that nobody wants to do but we agree that we need, we will take turns. We will constantly figure out the details as we encounter them.
Easier said than done, of course. But saying we intend that change seems a useful early step toward the doing.
That Orlov and Harvey didn't call for that change probably shouldn't count against them. Neither declared their book would outline a desirable economy. These books have rather smaller goals. Orlov seeks to help individuals, especially residents of the United States, think about how economies collapse and about how to prepare for their economy's collapse. Harvey seeks to catalog and explain the contradictions inherent in capital. Judged by their own goals, they succeed quite well.
Judged against the larger goal of creating the world we all deserve, these books make modestly useful contributions. In response to which, we can only thank the authors and seek to make our own modestly useful contributions.
-- Russell Herman, 25 December 2016
back to top↑Three frameworks for strategy
Organizing for social change: Midwest Academy manual for activists, 4th edition. Kim Bobo, Jackie Kendall, and Steve Max. 2010. The Forum Press. ISBN 978-09842752-1-2. ‹http://www.organizingforsocialchange.com/index.html›.
Doing democracy: the MAP model for organizing social movements. Bill Moyer, JoAnn McAllister, Mary Lou Finley, and Steven Soifer. 2001. New Society Publishers. ISBN 0-086571-418-5. ‹http://www.newsociety.com/Books/D/Doing-Democracy›.
Toward a living revolution. George Lakey. 2012. Peace News Press. ISBN 978-0-946409-16-7. ‹http://peacenews.info/node/6887/toward-living-revolution-five-stage-framework-creating-radical-social-change›. In the United States, most easily ordered from Training for Change at ‹http://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/towards-living-revolution-five-stage-framework-creating-radical-social-change›.
Strategies can take many different forms, depending on the goals people seek to win using them and the circumstances in which those people use them.
The size of the changes we want to win affects the kind of strategy we will need to win them. Smaller goals will usually need different kinds of strategies than will bigger goals.
We can imagine a line that represents the different sizes of goals, ranging from the smallest goal on one end and the largest on the other. Getting your city to repair broken streetlights in the poor section of town might go near the smaller end of the line. Replacing capitalism with a more humane economic system might go near the larger end of the line.
At least three strategic frameworks exist to help us think about how to develop our strategy.
In the United States, one of the most widely known strategic frameworks comes from the Midwest Academy ‹http://www.midwestacademy.com›. You can find a good explanation of their thinking in the book Organizing for social change by Kim Bobo, Jackie Kendall, and Steve Max.
A second strategic framework, called the "Movement Action Plan" comes from Bill Moyer, a long-time adviser to the civil rights and anti-nuclear-power campaigns in the United States. The book Doing Democracy by Moyer and some of his colleagues explains this framework. [Please see my separate review of Doing Democracy below.]
A third strategic framework comes from George Lakey, a long-time trainer, founder of Training for Change ‹http://www.trainingforchange.org›, and activist in many sectors of movement work in the United States and elsewhere. His book Toward a living revolution explains this framework.
These three strategic frameworks cover different (but partially overlapping) portions of the range of different sizes of goals.
Let's compare these three strategic frameworks by the type of changes they seek to win and the geographic scales and time scales on which they operate. We'll also list an example or two for each. We'll take our examples from the environmental movement in the United States, but examples exist in many other kinds of movements and throughout the world.
First, what kind of change do you want to make?
Midwest Academy assumes you can identify what they call the "target", a person or institution that can give you what you want. This framework helps you design strategies to persuade or pressure them to do it. This framework generally does not challenge their right to make the decision; it presses them to make the decision you want.
For example, the Midwest Academy framework might help you plan a strategy to get an electric utility company (the "target") to clean up a coal ash disposal pond that threatens a nearby town.
Bill Moyer's Movement Action Plan (MAP) offers a strategic framework for rather larger goals. MAP helps you design strategies to win relatively large reforms in a society. These reforms often result in shifting the balance of power for elements of the society. They generally do not challenge the fundamental structure of the society.
For example, MAP applies very well to the movement in the 1960s and 1970s that stopped the construction of nuclear power plants in the United States for decades.
George Lakey's book Toward a living revolution offers a strategic framework for the largest goals of social movements. Goals on this scale often earn the label "revolution." They create systemic shifts in power that alter basic social structures.
In the United States most environmental groups have not yet attempted to win goals on this scale. Environmentalists might want to use this framework if they decide to replace capitalism with an economic system that does not require constant growth and does not require externalizing costs onto the environment and onto workers.
On geographic scales, the Midwest Academy framework usually operates relatively locally: a city, county, or workplace, rarely larger.
MAP generally operates on large geographic scales, usually country-wide though sometimes on a smaller region.
Toward a living revolution assumes society-wide geographic scales, usually a country or larger.
Likewise, the time spans of the strategies based on these three frameworks vary similarly. Midwest Academy campaigns usually take weeks to years. MAP strategies usually take several years, though sometimes less. Strategies based on the framework in Toward a living revolution will take at least several years and likely decades or more.
Notice something else about these three strategic frameworks. They do not have sharp, clear edges. Instead they overlap and blend into each other at their edges. Furthermore, strategies developed within the larger-scale frameworks will often include sub-strategies developed within the smaller-scale frameworks.
So even if you think your goals mostly fit within one of the three frameworks, a smart strategist will want to have a basic familiarity with all three strategic frameworks.
-- Russell Herman, 19 December 2016
back to top↑How Organizations Develop Activists
How Organizations Develop Activists: civic associations and leadership in the 21st century, Hahrie Han, 2014, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-933677-7 (paperback), ‹https://global.oup.com/academic/product/how-organizations-develop-activists-9780199336777› .
When I mentioned the title of How Organizations Develop Activists to a colleague, she asked with surprise in her voice, "Do organizations develop activists?"
Some do. Many don't. In this book, Hahrie Han, associate professor of political science at Wellesley College, presents the results of her research into the practices that result in those different outcomes.
In her clever research design, Han examined pairs of local units of two nationwide activist organizations in the United States. She paired "high-engagement" chapters (chapters "particularly strong at mobilizing members") with "low-engagement" chapters in pairings "selected to minimize demographic, political, and civic differences between the two communities." She studied three such pairs in each of the two organizations, using surveys, interviews, and observation. The organizations also gave her access to internal data on their members' participation.
In return for access to people and data, Han promised to obscure the identities of the national organizations, of their chapters, and of individuals. That anonymity frequently left this reader wondering if Han had considered all relevant factors. The anonymity basically leaves us to trust without verifying her research design. It also makes her research difficult to replicate. (In addition, the labor-intensive design alone would make it difficult to replicate; Han deserves credit for an impressive amount of work.)
In spite of these concerns, Han's findings generally seem plausible to this long-time organizer and observer of organizations.
Han categorizes participants in the organizations into four steps on an "activist ladder" (pages 33-37). The first level includes those people who join the organization.
Committing discrete amounts of time moves someone to the second level. "This might involve showing up for meetings, participating in a phone bank, signing an online petition, tweeting information through social media, or participating in another activity that does not require the volunteer to take on any responsibility." (35) Han calls people at this second level and above "activists."
To get to the third level in Han's terminology, activists "commit whatever time it takes to achieve an outcome for which they are responsible. This might involve getting 50 people to show up to an event, getting 100 signatures on a petition, or even shepherding a piece of legislation through the legislature." (35) Activists at this level and above she calls "leaders."
The fourth, top level includes leaders "who take responsibility not only for achieving outcomes but also for developing others as activists and leaders." (35)
How do organizations move people step by step up these levels and keep them engaged in the organization's work? For a full answer, read the book. You can glean a quick overview, however, from Han's table on page 9 and a couple of quotes:
The key distinction is that the high-engagement chapters combine some form of transformational organizing with transactional mobilizing. Organizers invest in developing the capacities of people to engage with others in activism and become leaders. Mobilizers focus on maximizing the number of people involved without developing their capacity for civic action. The high-engagement chapters did both. Low-engagement chapters either acted as lone wolves or focused solely on mobilizing. People often confuse mobilizing with organizing, but ... they are quite different. When mobilizing, civic associations do not try to cultivate the civic skills, motivations, or capacities of the people they are mobilizing. Instead, they focus on maximizing numbers by activating people who already have some latent interest. Organizers, in contrast, try to transform the capacity of their members to be activists and leaders. The chapters with the highest levels of engagement in the study did both. (page 8, emphasis in original)
Because organizers were concerned about achieving transformational outcomes, not just transactional outcomes, they were more likely to (a) give volunteers work that brought them into contact with others, (b) provide some strategic autonomy in how the work was done, and (c) structure work into campaign trajectories so that volunteers knew how their piece fit into the whole. (page 99)
Too many of our organizations merely try to inform, exhort, and mobilize. If they would restrain a bit the urge to exhort and instead invest in the long-term work of organizing, they --and our movement as a whole-- would gain strength. To the extent this book helps prompt that change it makes an urgently valuable contribution.
Disappointing for such a well-designed book from a publisher with Oxford's reputation for good work, this first edition contains a few errors the editors and proofreaders missed:
- Page 35, line 18, change "leader" to "ladder".
- Page 62, line 7 from the bottom, insert "important" after "Particularly".
- Page 88, line 11, change "is engage" to "is to engage".
- Page 121, line 11, change "do have voice" to "do to have a voice".
- Page 123, line 9, change "can they lay" to "can then lay".
- Page 155, line 6 from bottom, change "belies" to "reveals".
Given the importance of this book's topic and the usefulness of the author's analysis, I hope many leaders of our movement's organizations will learn from it.
-- Russell Herman, 19 November 2016
back to top↑The Contradictions of "Real Socialism"
The Contradictions of "Real Socialism": the conductor and the conducted, Michael A. Lebowitz, 2012, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 978-1-58367-256-3 (paperback), ‹http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb2563/› .
The leaders of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, 1922-1991) used the terms "real socialism" and "actually existing socialism" to "distinguish their real experience from merely theoretical socialist ideas." (page 7) Lebowitz asks how that system actually functioned, how it reproduced itself, and why it "yield[ed] to capitalism without resistance from the working classes who were presumably its beneficiaries".(p. 7)
Interesting questions. Especially to those of us who want to construct a more humane system than the capitalism that defeated the USSR.
Lebowitz offers interesting answers. First, he discusses (in chapter 1, especially pages 33-36) the method he thinks we should use to examine such questions. He describes this method as Marx's dialectical approach. I don't claim sufficient expertise in Marxism to evaluate how well his method matches Marx's. But it at least relies upon facts and repeatedly raises illuminating questions. I count those as two good things in an analytical method.
He begins his analysis (on page 36) by focussing on "an obvious surface phenomenon -- chronic shortage." What effects resulted from constant shortages of consumer goods and inputs for producers? How did individuals and institutions cope with shortages? What results did those coping mechanisms have?
Writing in a highly fluid (though sometimes a bit repetitive) style and with an intense focus on particulars from which he abstracts to generalities, Lebowitz repeatedly iterates through the steps of his analytical cycle: Notice a particular fact. Examine its implications. Generalize from them. Encounter a contradiction. Take that as a particular and repeat the process.
SPOILER ALERT: If you want to experience the suspense of following his examinations, skip the rest of this mini-review.
With fascinating examples and clever arguments full of many valuable points beyond the scope of this mini-review, Lebowitz concludes that the Soviet system created internal dynamics that resulted in two fatal flaws. Those dynamics concealed necessary information from the central planners. They also created a working class accustomed to passivity and alienated from the system that supposedly served it.
What aspect of the system caused these undesirable results? Lebowitz blames what he calls "vanguardism", the mistake of creating a party to act on behalf of the working class instead of invigorating workers to act on their own joint initiatives and in their own shared interests.
Lebowitz does not drop this conclusion on us from the sky. He leads us to it step by step through his careful Marxist analysis. Many others, anarchists in particular, have come to a similar conclusion by other routes.
At the end of the book, Lebowitz remains solidly Marxist. Mildly statist also, at least for a transition period. He eloquently, vividly, and thoroughly nails the coffin lid on vanguardism, however, for which Marxists and anarchists both should thank him.
He ends the book with a call for a "society of associated conductors" instead of one conductor (the vanguard party) and many conducteds:
Vanguard Marxism comes in different varieties. There are those in power for whom it serves as theoretical justification of their position. There are also those far from power who accept the theory but whose main criticism of Real Socialism has been that it was the wrong vanguard in power. The latter group may be critical of the lack of workplace democracy and the evils of an ill-defined "bureaucracy," but as long as they embrace the theory of a conductor without whom the music of the future will never be realized they do not offer a real alternative. As long as their politics do not make the "key link" central to both theory and practice, that is, as long as they do not understand the importance of the simultaneous changing of circumstances and human activity or self-change, it is all more of the same.
In practice, it is essential to build those institutions through which people are able to develop their capacities and make themselves fit to create a new world. But there is a theoretical condition as well. A philosophy of praxis, a philosophy of freedom, a political economy that expresses the logic of the working class -- these are the characteristics of a Marxism that can be a weapon for the associated conductors. (page 188)
How to do that remains for us to discover, presumably by trying whatever looks best to us, just as did those who fell into the error of vanguardism and didn't get out of it in time. A careful understanding of this book, however, should help prevent repeating that mistake.
-- Russell Herman, 26 March 2014
back to top↑A New New Deal
A New New Deal: how regional activism will reshape the American labor movement, Amy B. Dean and David B. Reynolds, 2009, Cornell University Press, ISBN 978-0-8014-4838-6, ‹http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100697040› .
Contrary to the book's misleading main title (which suggests that it focuses on federal policy), the book urges labor unions in the United States to convene and lead broad coalitions to build local power in regions centered on cities.
Using case studies of several such regional powerbuilding efforts, the authors advocate for a model that stands on three legs: "deep coalitions, policy work, and aggressive political action." (page 10)
These broad, deep coalitions seek to link all oppressed constituencies "to establish long-standing connections rooted in a common effort to build governing capacity over time." (p.11) These coalitions require willingness to support each other's goals and even sometimes to "put the concerns of other coalition partners first in the interest of the coalition as a while." (p.11)
The policy work gets focused through "think-and-act tanks" that do research, develop policy goals, and monitor government agencies. "These organizations develop and propagate a broad vision of what's wrong and what to do about it." (p.11) They do so "in constant interaction with the grassroots labor and community organizations these policies are intended to serve --and whose action is necessary to implement them." (p.12) They also foster the coalitions.
"[P]olitical power building involves far more than just endorsing candidates and getting out the vote. It involves educating candidates about the labor movement and the needs and goals of working people." (p.13) It also means recruiting and training champions to support the people's agenda. It means getting these champions appointed to governmental positions and elected to offices. Then it means supporting them in implementing the agreed-upon people's agenda.
Though several localities across the country have implemented approximations of this regional powerbuilding strategy, it requires a significant shift from the focus that many unions have on solely serving their current members. That shift, however, offers the chance to build a broad-based movement that can gain sufficient power to serve all their members and the whole local working class better than any organization could serve their members in isolation.
The authors focus exclusively on the United States. Their analysis appears to ignore the global economy. Given that they seem to write primarily for current leaders of U.S. unions, they may have chosen that focus wisely. Their analysis and rhetoric will generally seem acceptable to many mainstream union leaders in this country.
Acceptability, however, does not guarantee correctness. This book's analysis needs the broader (and somewhat deeper) insights available from, for example, Solidarity Divided. Solidarity Divided, on the other hand, needs the very practical advice offered by A New New Deal on how to build serious local power. At least one local powerbuilding project in the United States reports that they have based their work on a study of both books.
Union and allied activists will benefit from reading and discussing this book. We will also gain strength from implementing many of its recommendations.
If you need to participate in a discussion of this book before you have read it, this cheatsheet offers a ten-page ultra-condensation of the book.
-- Russell Herman, 30 July 2011
back to top↑Gene Sharp on nonviolent action
Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th century practice and 21st century potential, Gene Sharp, 2005, 598 pages, ISBN 978-0-87558-162-0.
Power and Struggle, Part One (pages 1-105) of The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Gene Sharp, 1973, ISBN 978-0-87558-070-8.
The Methods of Nonviolent Action, Part Two (pages 109-445) of The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Gene Sharp, 1973, ISBN 978-0-87558-071-5.
The Dynamics of Nonviolent Action, Part Three (pages 449-902) of The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Gene Sharp, 1973, ISBN 0-87558-072-6.
All four books published by Extending Horizons Books ‹www.extendinghorizons.com›, an imprint of Porter Sargent Publishers, Inc.
Some people describe those of us who advocate nonviolent action as naive dreamers unconnected to the gritty real world. Gene Sharp's books with their pragmatic focus based on actual real-world examples show some of us don't deserve that naive label.
Some advocates of nonviolence, however, dislike Sharp's pragmatism. Some of those motivated by religious beliefs fail to understand that other motives can sustain nonviolent discipline. Gandhi and King, though they both had long-term allies who did not share their religious motives, sometimes wrote as if they thought only religion could reliably motivate nonviolence. Those who think that underestimate their fellow humans, as many of Sharp's historical examples demonstrate.
A quote from the preface to Waging Nonviolent Struggle (page 5) illustrates Sharp's real-world focus:
My understanding of the requirements for effective anti-dictatorship struggles arose not only from anti-Nazi resistance movements, but also from meeting with Burmese opposition groups on the Thai-Burmese border areas and in Thailand in the 1990s. I met with Panamanian democrats protesting against Noriega in 1987. I met with students and opposition leaders in Beijing in parts of May and June 1989, and was in Tiananmen Square as the troops first entered. I also met with ministers of the independence-minded governments of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania as they were struggling to secede from the Soviet Union in 1991. Brutal political reality can focus the mind on the difficulties of applying nonviolent struggle against extreme dictatorships.
One thing that is clear from these experiences is that nonviolent struggle has operated in situations of much violence and often in struggles where at least some of the nonviolent resisters had great faith in the power and necessity of violence, although they still chose and effectively used nonviolent struggle.
It is also clear that nonviolent struggle is an important part of political reality. It has often been belittled or ignored by persons, movements, or governments that "know" that the "real" power derives from violence. However, nonviolent struggle is another very powerful form of force.
Waging Nonviolent Struggle, Sharp's newer compendium, appeared in 2005. It revisits some examples from the 1973 volumes. It also adds major new sections on strategic planning for nonviolent struggle.
In what order should a beginner read them? First, get all four books, flip through them to see what awaits you, and skim any bits that particularly catch your interest. Read Power and Struggle (part one of the 1973 trilogy), then Waging Nonviolent Struggle, then parts two and three of the trilogy (skimming some of the numerous examples from history and topics well covered by Waging Nonviolent Struggle).
Why read part one of the 1973 trilogy first? Because in its first half (just under 50 pages), it comprehensively explains the source of political power -- not just the source of the power of nonviolent action, but the source of all political power.
Political power comes from cooperation. Rulers can seek to gain willing cooperation or to compel unwilling cooperation, but if they don't get sufficient cooperation of some form they don't rule. People can choose whether to cooperate or not. They can withdraw their cooperation from oppressors and cooperate instead with formations that suit them better. With appropriate organizing, they can sustain those choices in spite of severe attempts to repress them. They can also often win.
The quick-reading 100 pages of Part One of the 1973 trilogy states that fundamental principle of nonviolent action clearly and directly. The hundreds of pages in the other volumes give us careful details on how to implement that principle, illustrated by numerous examples from history.
The more of us who learn and use these techniques, the more we can cooperate to create our own examples and make our own history.
-- Russell Herman, 17 May 2011
back to top↑Doing Democracy
Doing Democracy: the MAP model for organizing social movements, Bill Moyer, JoAnn McAlllister, Mary Lou Finley, and Steven Soifer, 2001, New Society Publishers, ISBN 9780865714182, ‹http://www.newsociety.com/Books/D/Doing-Democracy› .
A basic manual for those of us working to guide society. Get it, read it, use it, tell other organizers about it.
This book presents the Movement Action Plan (MAP), a model for how people-power movements succeed in creating social change.
It outlines the four roles (preferred ways of working for social change) of activists. It sketches how activists serve in each role effectively and ineffectively (sometimes even counterproductively). It explains the tensions among people who prefer different roles. It demonstrates why successful movements welcome all four roles when done effectively. It points out that some organizations and individuals specialize in specific roles but the movement as a whole needs all four.
Even if this book only explained this dynamic around the four roles of activists, it would serve us well. If all of us understood this dynamic, our coalitions and movements would function much better.
But the strategic insights keep coming.
According to MAP, movements must win public opinion three times:
- First, to recognize that a problem exists that deserves social attention.
- Second, to oppose current conditions and policies supported by society's powerholders.
- Third, to want (and no longer fear) the solutions advocated by the movement.
Movements win the public to these three views at different times as they develop through the eight stages of movement success. The tasks the movement must focus on vary from stage to stage (as do the tactics the powerholders will tend to use in opposing our movements). Accordingly, different activist roles have different degrees of prominence in the different stages.
This book offers a model. Its model simplifies matters by omitting many real-world complexities. As do all useful models. That simplification makes models useful because it helps us think about the overall structure of complex processes. As long as we use models to help us think about the real world and not attempt to follow them unthinkingly, they can serve us well.
Understanding the MAP model of social change can help organizers understand where we've gotten to in the process, why we have the particular opportunities and problems we have at this stage, and what we need to do to move forward.
Doing Democracy explains the MAP model in the first half of the book. The second half illustrates the model by applying it to five movements in the United States: civil rights, anti-nuclear energy, gay and lesbian rights, breast cancer, and anti-globalization. Organizers leading all sectors of our broad movement will find this book helpful.
-- Russell Herman, 15 May 2011
I also discuss Doing Democracy in a more recent review above of Three frameworks for strategy.
-- Russell Herman, 19 December 2016
back to top↑Solidarity Divided
Solidarity Divided: the crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice, Bill Fletcher Jr. and Fernando Gapasin, 2008, University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-25525-8, ‹http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520261563› .
The authors briefly sketch the history of trade unions in the United States and then use a detailed examination of the Change to Win (CTW) split from the AFL-CIO in 2005 to diagnose the current difficulties of organized labor in this country and offer their prescriptions of what to do about them.
The authors' diagnosis: U.S. unions took a wrong course when they adopted Gomperism (a form of business unionism that emphasizes service to members within an acceptance of capitalism and support for the international policies of the U.S. government).
Their prescription: U.S. unions must convert to social justice unionism. Unions must see themselves as part of an international social justice movement that serves the interests of the worldwide working class. They should organize multi-constituency blocs to take power in cities rather than just organize workplaces or industries. Central Labor Councils offer a prime vehicle for building social justice unionism.
This book deserves widespread discussion. Fortunately, recent experience shows that many union activists and non-union social justice activists find its topics quite interesting. Given a convenient opportunity, they gladly engage in lively discussions with each other over this book.
In late 2010 and early 2011, I led two six-session discussion groups on this book. If you would like to lead discussion of this book, this set of questions (requires Adobe Acrobat. For free download of Adobe Acrobat, visit Adobe.) includes many of the ones I used to prompt discussion in our groups.
If you need to participate in a discussion of this book before you have read it,
this cheatsheet offers a nine-page ultra-condensation of the book.
-- Russell Herman, 4 April 2011
back to top↑Briefly noted
Items may appear here in advance of later getting a regular review, because they don't deserve a regular review but I appreciate the publisher sending me a free copy, or for other reasons.
Radical Seattle: the general strike of 1919, Cal Winslow, 2020, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 978-158367-852-7 (paperback), ‹https://monthlyreview.org/product/radical-seattle/›.
If I had paid for this book, I would've felt cheated. Of its 280 pages, only perhaps 25 cover the general strike. Wikipedia covers the strike in more detail. Instead, most of this book discusses the history of union and other organizing in Washington and Oregon in the decades before 1919. That rambling discussion has a few interesting stories but no obvious structure, neither chronological nor thematic. It has typos and an incompetent index. For example, page 174 names 13 men sentenced to prison; six of them appear in the index and none of those index entries refer to this page. This book needed an editor, a proofreader, an indexer, a different title, and a focus. Monthly Review Press usually does better than this.
-- 27 May 2022
Planning from Below: a guide for decentralized participatory planning, Marta Harnecker and José Bartolomé, 2019, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 978-1-58367-755-1 (paperback), ‹https://monthlyreview.org/product/planning-from-below/›.
Disappointing. Marta Harnecker has done good work and I looked forward to reading her thoughts on this topic. But this book falls far below Monthly Review Press’s usual good standards. Perhaps they rushed to get it published before Harnecker’s death? Perhaps somebody sent the wrong file to the printer?
The text has a ridiculous littering of typos, especially in first part of the book. It even has a full paragraph in Spanish left over from the translation (page 66). It obviously lacked proofreading.
In spite of this book's many problems, a patient reader can follow the process used for Venezuela's participatory planning. The book details the tedious process.
One hopes participants didn't find it as tedious as this reader did. To read for the umpteenth time that some small working group of participants needs to go step by step through the same miserable process that just got described for each of the dozen other teams like it made this reader grumble and set the book aside for a few weeks. Eventually I only forced myself to read about 80% of it.
Not only did this book not get any proofreading, it apparently got no editing. A decent editor would have shortened this mushpile by at least a third.
Though I complain about the book, the planning process it describes does have a few positive aspects. For example, pages 161-166 offer an idea for roughly quantifying relative need to allocate resources to areas of greatest need.
-- 27 May 2022
back to top↑