Harry Targ
Code Pink image
In this age of tweets, sound bites, and short-hand references to broad and complicated swaths of history, what political scientist Murray Edelman called “symbolic” politics, becomes “real” politics. Three symbols represent politics today; “drones,” “banks,” and “multitudes.”
Drones refer metaphorically to state-directed murder, often using the latest technology to target and assassinate those who have been defined by officials as the enemy or as threats to society, or just plain criminals. Based on recommendations by key decision-makers, civilian, military, and police, the U.S. has increasingly relied on new high-tech instruments of murder. Drones, smart bombs, and chemicals are used to kill, maim, and disable people abroad and at home with little or no threat to the safety of the personnel pushing the buttons, dropping the bombs, or spraying the victims. These newer forms of murder continue to be paralleled by a variety of police beatings and shootings and executions sanctified by governments attributing crime to the poor and people of color. And, of course, drones serve metaphorically to represent states, particularly the United States, supporting wars everywhere. Therefore, the 21st century nation-state, to paraphrase sociologist Max Weber’s original definition, is the organization that holds the monopoly of the “legitimate” implementation of murder at home and globally.
Banks are real but as symbols refer to a capitalist economic system which organizes workers to generate wealth which is increasingly appropriated by the few. The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century saw huge manufacturing corporations mobilizing working classes and stealing the wealth that they produced. When rates of profit began to decline the corporate elites collaborated with the heads of banks, institutions which at one time served as the accountants and vaults for accumulated profits. Great mergers of manufacturing and banking capital in the early twentieth century and more so since the 1970s contributed to a new kind of capitalist economy based on finance. Most transactions now are speculative: buying and selling stocks and bonds, the creation of hedge funds, and real estate and insurance investments. Banks and investment houses are global. (Now we see the emergence of a sector of capital that generates profit from new computerized technologies.) They produce enormous profit without creating useful products for people to use or consume. And, the banking metaphor represents a vision of an economic system that has become grotesquely unequal.
The third metaphor, the multitudes (borrowed from abstract formulations by Italian theorist Antonio Negri) refers to the rising up of masses of people-- the traditional working class, the unemployed, youth without hope, youth with vision, women long oppressed, people of all races, and people who clean streets or live on them, serve coffee at Starbucks, and even write software programs for big corporations. The multitudes, Negri suggests, represent the underside of a new global order, an economic empire that traverses the earth bursting out of its national and sovereign boundaries.
Drones and banks represent both the coercive and the manipulative power of capitalism. Americans see examples of each on television or computer screens every day; killings, police violence, masses of homeless, and, in addition, the advertisement of an array of enticing products to purchase while rates of poverty and inequality of income and wealth rise.
What is also becoming a regular feature of our electronic experience is resistance, anger, and collective mobilization. This is occurring across the globe--Arab spring; student protest in Santiago, Chile; angry Israeli citizens; workers in Athens, Greece; students and public workers in Madison, Wisconsin, Columbus, Ohio, and Indianapolis, Indiana, the rise of Black Lives Matter, and more recently protest of US support of Israeli genocidal policies and brutal attacks on immigrants. And since the assumption of office of the new president of the United States large protests have occurred in all fifty states including those very recently against the firing of masses of public employees.
It is unclear what will come of all of this except that the contradictions between drones and banks versus the multitudes is becoming more clear and the transformation of society that is so desperately needed just might occur as a result.
Social Movement History
Social movement activism has spread like wildfire
across the entire globe over the last two decades. One group of scholars
studied “protest incidents” in over 80 countries from 2006-2013. They found 840
protests in these countries with at least half motivated by demands for
economic changes and democratization. A centerpiece of movements from Greece to
Chile, to Spain, to Canada to the United States has been outrage against
neoliberal policies (sometimes referred to as “austerity” policies).
Fundamentally these policies involved shifting wealth
from the vast majority to the tiny minority. In the United States, the Occupy
Movement introduced an accurate metaphor for this transformation: the one
percent versus the 99 percent. Moral Mondays movements and more recently New
Poor Peoples campaigns in over a dozen states in the South and Midwest emerged
as one large-scale protest against the imposition of austerity and the
weakening of democratic institutions.
Since October 2023 protests against Israel’s genocidal
violence against the Palestinian people, mobilizations against NATO and the war
in Ukraine, and protest against US sanctions against over 30 countries around
the world have added a global character to recent mobilizations of multitudes.
And some of this activism has helped to stimulate organizing efforts of much of
the world’s population in institutions of the Global South. In addition,
mobilizations in the Global South have inspired protests in the United States.
David Harvey, a political theorist, has posited a
“co-revolutionary theory” about social movements. He argues that because there
are so many problems in so many different locations in society political
activism can and must start anywhere. If one is at a university or elsewhere in
the education system struggles over “mental constructs’ matter. If persons are
engaged in or near the electoral arena targeting politicians must be done. Work
in the corporate sector, the media, government institutions are all sites for
the application of political pressure and organizing. What needs to be
remembered however is that all the separate struggles are interconnected and
that activists need to understand how each struggle relates to every other
struggle. Also, victory in one place and time does not mean that the goals of
struggle have been achieved. In the end, Harvey argues that the interconnected
crises relating to class, race, gender, homophobia, war and peace, and the
environment are intimately connected to the capitalist system.
Further, activists debate the utility of political
engagement around elections and legislation compared to mass movement activity.
Some progressives have proposed as a solution to this dilemma, developing an
“inside/outside” strategy. The inside/outside strategy argues for pursuing
electoral work, electing candidates who might act on the people’s behalf, and
lobbying to secure legislative victories, even if such efforts cannot solve the
panoply of economic, environmental, war, racial and other problems that are
faced. Electoral and legislative work, however, needs to be supplemented by
“street heat;” building a mass movement that can be mobilized to publicly
demonstrate its outrage and its demands for change. The outside strategy might
include creating a large, disciplined organization with resources that can
respond to and lead the mass movement of people for change. It is through the
outside strategy that politicians can be forced to carry out the will of the
people.
Rev. William Barber ten years ago through his “fusion
politics” approach incorporated all of the above thinking. Fusion politics, he
said, emphasizes the need for progressive groups to work together in
coalitions, in partnerships, in common organizational fronts to bring the
energy of all groups together. Ruling classes or power elites do not respond to
change unless masses of organizations and people come together to make
demands.
The 99 percent do not have the material resources- the
money, ownership of media outlets, influence over education and police power-to
bring about change. All they have potentially are their numbers. And the fusion
politics model is about mobilizing masses of people, developing effective and
democratic organizations, and applying people power all across the political
and economic map.
Global Resistance in the 21st Century
Resistance generates more attempts at economic
hegemony, political subversion, the application of military power, and patterns
of “humanitarian interventionism” and diplomatic techniques, called “soft power,”
to defuse it. But as recent events suggest resistance of various kinds is
spreading throughout global society.
The impetus for adding resistance to any understanding
of imperialism has many sources including Howard Zinn’s seminal history of
popular movements in the United States, “The People’s History of the United
States.” Zinn argued convincingly that in each period of American history
ruling classes were challenged, shaped, weakened, and in a few cases defeated
because of movements of indigenous people, workers, women, people of color,
middle class progressives and others who stood up to challenge the status quo.
More recently, Vijay Prashad, author of “The Darker
Nations,” compiled a narrative of post-World War II international relations
that privileged the resistance from the Global South. World history was as much
shaped by anti-colonial movements, the construction of the non-aligned
movement, conferences and programs supporting liberation struggles and women’s
rights, as it was by big power contestation. The Prashad book was subtitled “A
People’s History of the Third World.”
The 21st century has witnessed a variety of forms
of resistance to global hegemony and the perpetuation of neo-liberal
globalization across the face of the globe. First, various forms of systemic
resistance have emerged. These often emphasize the reconfiguration of
nation-states and their relationships that have long been ignored. The two
largest economies in the world, China and India, have experienced economic
growth rates well more than the industrial capitalist countries. China has
developed a global export and investment program in Latin America and Africa
that exceeds that of the United States and Europe.
In addition, the rising economic powers have begun a
process of global institution building to rework the international economic
institutions and rules of decision-making on the world stage. On March 26-27,
2013, the BRICS met in Durban, South Africa. While critical of BRICS
shortcomings Patrick Bond, Senior Professor of Development Studies and Director
of the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society, in a collection of
readings on the subject introduces BRICS with an emphasis on its potential:
In Durban, five heads of state meet to
assure the rest of Africa that their countries’ corporations are better
investors in infrastructure, mining, oil and agriculture than the traditional
European and US multinationals. The Brazil-Russia-India-China-SA summit also
includes 16 heads of state from Africa, including notorious tyrants. A new
‘BRICS bank’ will probably be launched. There will be more talk about monetary
alternatives to the US dollar.
On the Latin American continent, most residents of the
region mourned the death of Hugo Chavez, the leader of the Bolivarian
Revolution. Under Chavez’s leadership, inspiration, and support from oil
revenues, Venezuela launched the latest round of state resistance to the
colossus of the north, the United States.
The Bolivarian Revolution also stimulated political change based on various
degrees of grassroots democratization, the construction of workers’
cooperatives, and a shift from neo-liberal economic policy to economic
populism. With a growing web of participants, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil,
Uruguay, and Nicaragua, and, of course, Cuba, the tragic loss of Chavez did not
mean the end to the Bolivarian Revolution.
But the story of 21st century resistance is not
just about countries, alliances, new economic institutions that mimic the old.
Grassroots social movements have been spreading like wildfire across the face of the globe. The story can
begin in many places and at various times: the new social movements of the
1980s; the Zapatistas of the 1990s; the anti-globalization/anti-IMF campaigns
going back to the 1960s and continuing off and on until the new century; or
repeated mass mobilizations against a Free Trade Agreement for the Americas.
Since 2011, the world has been inspired by Arab
Spring, workers’ mobilizations all across the industrial heartland of the
United States, student strikes in Quebec, the state of California, and in
Santiago, Chile. Beginning in 2001 mass organizations from around the world
began to assemble in Porto Alegre, Brazil billing their meeting of some 10,000
strong, the World Social Forum. They did not wish to create a common political
program. They sought to launch a global social movement where ideas are shared,
issues and demands from the base of societies could be raised, and in general
the neo-liberal global agenda reinforced at the World Economic Forum in
Switzerland could be challenged.
The Need to Find New Ways to Resist Oligarchy and Reaction in 2025
Gandhi once wrote, “Even the most powerful cannot rule
without the cooperation of the ruled.” A Trump tyranny will not be able to
continue without the support and acquiescence of those whose lives and future
it is destroying. It will only be able to pursue its destructive course if they
enable or acquiesce in it. A movement can overcome the most powerful regime if
it can withdraw that cooperation.
https://pdacnm.org/2025/02/08/defending-society-against-maga-tyranny/
So as we begin the latest phase of educating,
agitating, and organizing the multitudes we might reflect on the patterns of
resistance that have been used in the past and may still be useful today.
Jeremy Brecher, has recently published a lengthy discussion of forms of “social
self-defense” which give direction of how progressives, the multitudes, might
resist the onslaught of President Trump/Musks’s new policies and parallel
policies imposed on people at the state and local levels.
In addition, peace traditions as well as the labor left have engaged in patterns of resistance at various points in history. Gene Sharp’s 198 forms of non-violent resistance provide a useful checklist which may have applicability to today’s struggles.
https://commonslibrary.org/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/
Moving Ahead in 2025 the Following
Questions Remain
1.How do we organize locally and statewide,
particularly in “red states”
2.How do we develop in our literature and public
agenda the view that what we are struggling against a forty-year program of
austerity, redistributing the wealth and power from the many to the few. And
how can we effectively show that our local struggles parallel those in other
states and countries.
3.How can we effectively link our theoretical
understanding of history, much like Rev. Barber’s provocative discussion of the
three reconstructions, to the concrete campaigns we are engaged in
4.How can we take the general worldview and discuss:
-the threat to voting rights
-racist police practices
-the transformation of a 150-year
tradition of public education into for-profit charter schools
-the deregulation of environmental
controls at the very same time that fires, floods, draughts are increasing
-the rationing of health care and
the rising cost of medication
-the use of state enticements to
bring investors who create low wage jobs that worsen income inequality
-the use of government to destroy
the right of workers to form unions of their choosing and to honor the
work of those unions to defend worker rights
-the support for war and violence
everywhere and the danger of nuclear war
These are the substantive issues that we face, now
with a brutal new billionaire racist oligarchy.
-the proportion of work devoted to inside and
outside strategies
-the relative weight and autonomy to be given to
national, state and community organizations
-the connections between socialist, labor,
environmentalist, peace, anti-racist, feminist, educational and other
organizations
- the relationship between the varying
decision-making bodies, local organizations and issue committees
- finally thinking tactically such as relating
to Gene Sharp’s 198 forms of non-violent activity.
https://www.brandeis.edu/peace-conflict/pdfs/198-methods-non-violent-action.pdf
Conclusion
The world is in turmoil. Protests across the globe
have some common origins, causes, and solutions. While communities have their
own problems, they are not too different from those elsewhere. The ongoing work
must involve addressing the particular while being cognizant of the general,
building coalitions of shared responsibility and respect, organizing people
power from the centers of power to the streets, and reconstructing institutions
that serve, not oppress the people.
