Date: Thu,  5 Jun 2003 19:12:17 +1000
From: "dr.woooo" <dr.woooo-AT-nomasters.org>
Subject: re: zerzan etc.


" June 1, 2003 Gwangju (South Korea) 

RAAN: To what extent do you see a need for an open alliance between anti-
statist forces, and what forms have such alliances taken in the past? What do 
you feel has been the main cause for division amongst anti-statists, and what 
are the necessary steps that you feel need to be taken to obtain a unifying 
open alliance of these anti-statists? 

George Katsiaficas: In my opinion, one of the main problems dividing the 
radical movement has been and continues to be an obsessive compulsion to define 
ideology first rather than unity on the basis of action and program. By this I 
mean an over-theoretical orientation—“Zerzanists” vs. “Bookchinites” as a 
contemporary example in the anti-statist movement. Consider for a moment, the 
radical movement of the 1960s, which had not widely developed an anti-statist 
position but which was nevertheless quite radical and active, pulling in 
millions of people into a militant movement that opposed the government and 
momentarily posed the idea of a revolution. I remember a story about one of the 
final Students for a Democratic Society conventions in 1968 with thousands of 
people present. The PL (Maoist/workerist) faction insisted Albania was 
a “socialist” country and should be supported. The RYM (Revolutionary Youth 
Movement) disagreed. Hundreds of people were chanting, “Ho Ho Ho Chi-Minh, NLF 
is going to win!” against the other side chanting “Mao, Mao Mao Tse-tung, 
Revolution by the young.” During a brief pause, someone in the back 
yelled, “What’s the capital of Albania??” Silence followed. No one in the room 
even knew the name of the city. The eloquence of this silence speaks volumes to 
the overideologization of the movement and the waste of thousands of activists’ 
energies. Actually it’s worse than a waste—it’s the counterrevolution inside 
the movement, the prevalence of dead labor, weighing like a “nightmare on the 
brains of the living.”  "

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