Response to a vulgar idealist

response to: http://dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=676
comment at: http://jacobinmag.com/blog/2012/02/the-window-at-starbucks/

This article peaks with "we don’t need to excise people from Occupy, we just need to grow it." I'm thinking YEAH. And we get "[anarchists are] a convenient scapegoat for more fundamental failings." I'm thinking HELL YEAH!

But then it dives right in the toilet. Back to "more traditional forms of left-wing organization"?! Ditch consensus for majority decision making?!

The "glossy allure" is not around spontaneity, it's around SUCCESS. Success is something, I admit, that the contemporary left is not very familiar with - so it has a spooky edge to it. We ALL believe too much in spontaneity, that's the same thing as saying we don't know exactly why any of it worked. Anybody who, at this point, DOESN'T have some spontaneist illusions is not actually trying to meet the challenge of the present time, is not approaching the tasks before us with appropriate humility, is hiding behind the "more traditional forms."

The dialectic between consensus and autonomy is what has given the occupy movement the mobility to encompass a broad base of experimental actions, and still maintain a real coherence and tendency towards unity. It is through maintaining this tension that we will begin to develop leadership capacity on the left - the capacity we need so badly if we are to succeed, to win, to gain some measure of political power.

Yes, we need to articulate strategies that will "make Occupy bigger and more effective" but this will not come by way of stripping away the principles which are actually working. Yes, Black Bloc adherents who refuse to be reined in are only one small part of the overall challenge, but the challenge is to be faithful to the movement, not to win it away from the anarchists.

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more of the current dialogue
David Graeber: http://nplusonemag.com/concerning-the-violent-peace-police
George Lakey: http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/02/how-not-to-block-the-black-bloc/ 
in Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/08/a-bustle-in-hedges-row/