A response specifically to "Letter to an 'anarchist' friend", but also to others who either don't understand the use of violent or condem it. ... An attempt to open ration discussions on this subject.

I applaude your rational tone and seemingly earnest desire to discuss these issues. The questions you raise are good ones, but are full of misunderstandings. Case in point:

Your second to last paragraph, where you seem to be saying that if everyone sat down the police would not gas and beat. This is, unfortunately, very naive as numerous non-violent direct actions have shown.

When I was at a16 in DC last year (and, yes, participating in the Black Boc), the first thing we saw in the morning was an intersection where police had run over peaceful protesters with their motorcycles. And all day long the Black Bloc engaged in defensive activities to keep police from attacking peaceful protesters. These included picking up the tear gas canisters launched at people in lockdown and throwing them back at the police, chasing off police who were beating on people, etc.

My point: non-violent protest brings a violent response, just the same as if the protesters had been violent to begin with. The reason being: the ruling class will not let ANYONE stand in their way. They G8 leaders are calling for "peaceful protest" and for peaceful protesters to betray their less peaceful comrades. This is an overt attempt to divide us, and should not be tolerated. And what do they mean by "peaceful protest"? Marching with signs and chanting and generally being unobstusive. Keep in mind that they regarded the blockades in Seattle as inherently "violent". They regard anything that might actually threaten them as "violent. (Besides the fact that the G8 are "condeming all kinds of violence" while being the same people who not only help to perpetuate capitalism, an inherently violent system, but overtly engage in acts of terrorism and violence against anyone who defies their will.)

Now, it is good, I think, that you raise the question of tactics. And I agree that many Black Bloc participants need to rethink their tactics in regards to people who do not want to engage in aggresive confrontation. But that is the essence of the notion of "diversity of tactics". You decry the Black Bloc for endangering people after the fence came down in Quebec, but from what I understand from Quebec participants, Black Bloc and non-Black Bloc, is that people followed the Black Bloc into these situations because the felt that the Black Bloc was most likley to breach the fence. They knew that the Black Bloc was part of the Red March (which was open to violent confrontation), and chose to go with them.

From what I understand about Genoa, however, is that many of the people who desired to be confrontational and the umbrella group had a falling out a long time ago over tactics because the controntationals were attacking people not willing to be violent, and the umbrella group was attacking people for willing to be violent. So, if this is true, then they are BOTH at fault for betraying the notions of solidarity and autonomy central to this movement. And, as a result of this, from what I understand, no diversity of tactics arrangements were made, that is: no attempts were made, as in Prague and Quebec, to say "this is where you go if you are willing to be controntational, and this is where you go if you are willing to do CD and this is where you go if you can only march and carry signs and such". This way of organizing protests is important because it creates an atmosephere of solidarity while allowing for tactical diversity and autonomy.

On the question of violence itself, while its easy to decry revolutionaries for engaging in violent activity as reproducing what they hate, it is too simplistic. There is much to think about:

1) Capitalism is an inherently violent system for the vast majority of people on the planet. Including those of us who live in advanced capitalist regions... we are still forced to work or starve, we are still forced to live in a psychologically amd emotionally empty and draining consummer culture, we are still often the subjects of police violence, etc. Thus, it can be argued and ANY violence directed at the capitalist system is inherently SELF-DEFENSIVE.

2) Thus, the difference between people (the working class) acting violently in their own defense and people (the ruling class) acting violently to maintain a violent system is obviously very great. The violence of those acting against capitalism is part of an effort to create a space in which we can re-assert our humanity against this system which tries to make everyone into a cog in its machinery. And while I agree that it can be, and should be, debated what is tactically necessary and when, it is erroneous to try to equate the violence of the working class with the violence of the ruling class because the fact is this: regardless of whether or not we are violent, they will violently repress any efforts we make that actually have an impact. And if things were to carry on into an insurrectionary situation, you could be rest assured that any police and military people who did not join the insurrection would be well used in violently repressing it, regardless of how non-violent it is. This would mean that people would have to defend themselves even more rigorously if we, and the movement for qualitative change, would survive. It seems to me that this logic holds true in less dramtic situations, and thus the real issue is merely tactics.

3) In regards to the anarchists in Italy: the anarchist movement in Italy has received a large brunt of state-violence in the last ten years. They have been scapegoated for bombings, when there is no evidence to support this. The closest thing to "evidence" is the notes from groups claiming to be anarchists. However, fascist groups in Italy have a well-known history of commiting acts of terror and then trying to blame left-wing groups in order to turn people against them. From what I understand, many anarchists in Italy are confident that this is what has been going on. However, the Italian police (who are known to be majority fascist sympathizers) have continually and brutally criminallized the anarchists. This has resulted in the deaths of a number of anarchists over this time. So, I imagine that when many of these groups saw an opportunity to strike back during these protests they did (are doing) so. HOWEVER, AND THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: this does not diminish the commitment of anarchists to qualitative change. You can be rest assured that most of the Black Bloc participants could argue this point intellegently with you, and have an analysis of the situations we face.

Conclusions:

1) Police will be violent toward any actions that seriously challange the authority and power of the ruling class.

2) Thus, the responsibility for violence rests on the shoulders of the ruling class, not those sections of the working class who choose to be violent.

3) This notion is re-inforced by the fact that capitalism is inherently violent toward the working class and the planet, thus working class violence is always (self-)defensive.

4) However, this does not put the use of violence above criticism from a tactical standpoint.

Quick notes: I published another article on this website at: http://italy.indymedia.org/front.php?article_id=3684&group=webcast I also published a few responses at: http://italy.indymedia.org/front.php?article_id=3766&group=webcast (scroll down) These each take up important aspects of this debate which did not address here, such as the media representation of protests, police infiltration, etc.

Also: I throw around class terminology a lot, whithout definitions. So I encourage readers to have a look at the text at http://www.geocities.com/mechanicsfordisrepair , which is the main text of the group to which i belong. It contains a definition of class which I feel is appropriate for understanding capitalism. The text is also contains our ideas on what we can do to be rid of capitalism.

www.geocities.com/mechanicsfordisrepair

yeah your right about that the police will probably gas and hit peacefull sitdown protestors too but the main idea is to get the opinion on our side.
almost all newspapers, tv, internet etc. show the riots and the masked demonstators breaking windows etc. when orinary people see this they think that all protestors are violent and that there only objective is to smash things. insted of showing them that we have thought it over, we have the knowleage and that this is wrong.

violent demonstrators get mediaspace, but the wrong attention. ordinary people gets frigtened of all demonstators. and demand that the police take more actions to stop the violence.

peacefull demonstrators get less mediaspace, but the right attention and other people (old, young, whatever) gets curius and tries to find more information about the whole cause.

and put a link to this post to the front page?

Public revolt bought an end to laissez faire within a decade
in the mid 1800s. Violent revolution is a normal spontaneous response by the public when their means of survival and property are transferred by the state to the aristocracy.

"non-violent protest brings a violent reaction, just the same as if the protesters had been violent to begin with".(Cap'n Weatherwax on indymedia).
The difference is: with non-violent protest the risk is lesser you to get violence as a reaction. History has many examples of non-violent action who got changes in the policy (MLKing, Gandhi, Mandela,...) With violence you get certainly violence against you. You don't gain people for your cause, on the contrary, you loose a lot of them (fellowers, sympathisants,...). Perhaps you gain some fellowers, but who want more violence, even against yourself...

Violence is perhaps the last means, not the first.
Non-violence gives more moral right than violence.

"Violence is perhaps the last means, not the first.
Non-violence gives more moral right than violence."

when does it become enough? how much longer can we stand by as the planet is ravaged, the people pushed into tired cramped and alienated lives of empty cycles of work-consumption-death?
we have precious little time and its clear that violence is the only solution, and i really hate calling it violence in the first place as who is being killed in this struggle? protestors, native peoples, all of us, very slowly...
and remember that mlk, gandhi, all of these "non-violent" movements were only successful because they were off-set by other much more militant alternatives, making it much more desirable for the governments to deal with them than face violent revolutions...

-d

I've already commented on these two aspects in other posts, which I gave the URLs for. But I'm thinking it wouldn't hurt to reiterate.

On media:

I think the problem with the idea that "violence gets us bad media" is the fact that it is very unlikely that without violence there would be any media. That is: if the media can ignore protests, they do. It is not in the best interests of corporations to show that a lot of people don't like the way things are. There have been non-violent direct actions for years and years, but few get media attention because no violence = easy to ignore.

Another aspect of this is that if the media does pay any attention, they will always paint protesters as naive and simple, if not completely idiotic. Any corporate press is bad press, so we might as well do whatever it takes to try to reach the goals we set. If it requires violence to stop a meeting, then that is what should be done. It does us no good to be relegated to obscurity, and if we're getting bad press anyway, we might as well make the bad press report that we are successful.

Now, I don not mean this to excuse unnecessary violence, but to just point out the simple facts of the matter.

On public opinion:

It is important to remember that the vast majority of people in the world are not pacifists, and condone violence if it is necessary. So, if the violence is condemed by public opinion, it is likley because people do not see the violence as necessary. And thus, protesters who feel that it is necessary have the duty to argue their point and show why it is necessary.

On the morality of violence, and past pacifistic movements:

I have yet to see a convincing arguement that shows that non-violence is somehow more moral than self-defensive violence. This is because, to paraphrase Noam Chomsky, if you are truly interested in seeing violence decrease then you have to allow for the fact that this sometimes requires violence. It is simply not historically true that violence only means more violence, as an example: if a womyn kills the person who repeatedly rapes her, it is very unlikely she will be raped by the person again. Thus the cycle of violence against her is ended. In much the same way: if the working class kills capitalism, and thus ends the cycle of rape and violence against us and the planet, there will likely be less violence.

As for past non-violence movements: I highly recommend Ward Churchill's book _Pacifism as Pathology_ (available from AK Press: http://www.akpress.org) which not only shows how dogmatic pacifism continually aids in blocking qualitative change, but explains how many "non-violent" movements used violence to keep their participants "non-violent" (the marshall's in Gandhi's movement are a perfect example).

This, however, even leaves out three very important points:

1) Non-violent action still relies on violence from the state to show how "morally superior" non-violent demonstraters are.

2) Dogmatic pacifism (just like dogmatic anti-pacifism) has the effect of dividing movements and alienating those people who feel it is sometimes necessary to use either forms, or who lean toward one or the other forms.

3) Non-violent movements have only been successful at creating reforms (reforms that, like all reforms, are instituted on paper and rarely, if ever, inforced), and have never created qualitative change. In fact, no qualitative change in history has occured without violence... every revolution that created capitalist society out of feudal society was violent. Every revolution which has challenged capitalist society (and lost, just as many revolutions which challanged feudal society lost many times before they finally one) has been violent. This is not because the people engaging in these revolutions were "immoral", but because the ruling class of whichever system they were under would not let themselves be overthrown without a fight.


As far as past non-violent movements: ask a black person living in one of the numorous ghettos in the US if the civil rights movements did anything to help them... You will likley hear a "No, it didn't." The reason behind this is because capitalism relies on racism to divide the working class. So, as long as there is capitalism there will be racism. India is another example: yes, Gandhi's movement helped to drive the English out of India, but yet the majority of Indians are still enslaved to the capitalist system and are just as exploited as they ever were... only now they are dominated by an Indian bourgeoisie instead of an English bourgeoisie. Hell, Gandhi helped to set up an extremely violent bourgeoisie which does not bulk at using violence to restrain the working class under their thumbs.

That anyone would still be defending violence at this point is a depressing reminder of how far we have to go!

The writer unwittingly accepts the paradigm which underlies the political and social structures we are trying to change. Using the violence of your opponent to justify your own violence simply reinforces the idea that violence is a legitimate way of exercising political control.

The distinction the writer makes between "working class" violence and "ruling class" violence is academic. The question is not whether one is more justified than the other. They *both* feed the cycle of escalating violence. We cannot expect the police to end that cycle, since they are responsible for maintaining the status quo, and the status quo is one in which violence permeates our social, political and economic relationships (as the writer correctly observes). What we *can* do is change the "climate" in which they operate. Our tactics should be ones which the police are incapable of dealing with. Our goal should be to make the police literally useless.

Violence is something the police know how to deal with. It is the nail to their hammer. It is the reason they use (e.g. in Prague) agents provocateurs to help get the action going. If the police are inciting the same behavior the black-bloc advocates, doesn't that tell you something? You are playing right into their hands!

One thing is clear. Violence is *worse* than ineffective. It is counter-productive. It actually moves us backward, away from the goals its proponents espouse. Our best efforts at this point should be focused not on the G8 or the WTO, but on our own tactics and our mutual understanding of what we are attempting to do.

So I favor *sharpening* the division between the small number advocating violence and the rest of us. Not by blaming the black-bloc, but by inviting friendly confrontation with them, dialogue and debate. Somewhere there is common ground. But we won't find it by sweeping our differences under the rug, or looking the other way, or name calling, or denying responsibility, or rationalizing our emotional reactivity. Let's not be afraid to take this issue on!

I think it is inevitable that as non-violent activists increasingly take responsibility for their own actions we will be forced to acknowledge our indirect complicity in the actions of the black-bloc. Out of that realization, I hope, will come a deeper understanding of what is, and is not, effective, and a *genuine* solidarity among people who are serious about change.

Thanks for your comments Liam, and I agree that discussion and debate must proceed.

However, I think you are unfortunatly very wrong about the differences between types of violence. By your logic the self-defensive violence of a person being raped is the same as the offensive violence of the rapist. And this break-down in your logic is what enables you to defend a "cycles of violence" theory which has very little groud to stand on given the daily occurances of violence which ends violence (the raped killing her rapist is a good example -- or is this ineffective?).

Your tacit assumption seems to be that the psychological effects of all types of violence are uniform (which is based on the notion that all forms of violence are uniform). I know form experience that this is not so. When I was younger I participated in fucking with and hurting this kid. This is something that bothers me to this day because it was incredibly mean and unnecessary. However, at another time I participated in actions which stopped nazis attacking a group of queer youth (the group had requested our help). And I'm fine with this because I feel confident that my actions were necessary and correct, tho the unfortunate result of situations I had no control over.

The difference here is understanding the situations we are in, and how these situations effect our psyche. Due to the former situation I feel like hell because I know that there was no reason behind it, and due to the latter situation I feel fine because I know that there was reason and need for what I participated in. In this latter situation, we could have said no, and thus been complicit in the brutal attack of nazis on queer kids. THAT would have made me feel like hell.

How we are effected by violence is, thus, situational. Just as situations often dictate to us what is necessesary. Just as situations change the nature of violence.

So, I return to the more extreme example of an insurrectionary situation: what do you do if, in a truly insurrectionary situation in which the media representation no longer matters. police are killing your comrades in the streets because, out of frustration with your creativeness rendering their violence "ineffective", they step of the violence to resolutely and definatively end your creativeness?

See, the problem with your logic, when it bases against reality, is that they will simply kill us before letting us qualitatively change anything. The state (and remember that the state, and state-like bodies, are nothing but the collective will and voice of the ruling class -- which is why the state sometimes engages in disciplining mavrick members of the ruling class), all states, have shown the willingness and ability to physically crush anything that threaten the control of the ruling class. Because of this, at some point or another, everyone will have to face the problem I outlined above: do I fight back? or do I let myself, my comrades and our movement be destroyed?

And, personally, I wish this wasn't so. But this is what capitalism is. Either we engage in violence when / if necessary, or we become complicit in the continuing cycles of violence.

You have your facts wrong. Mandela and the ANC did use violent tactics.