Format

• We’re reading 2-3 chapters a week (some are very short). I’m going to be shooting for 50-60 pages a week, give or take. I’m going to be getting page counts from the libgen ebook, so that’s why readings will be done by chapter.
• Hopefully we’ll be done in 7 or 8 weeks
• Feel free to get whatever copy you wish, I’ll also post onto Perusall for your convenience and highlighting.
• I’ll plan to post on Wednesday each week with the readings we’re discussing and our future schedule as I work it out. I’ll also @ mention anyone who posts in this thread in future weeks.

Resources

• Libgen link to an ebook here
• Here’s Bevins’ appearance on Trueanon, which is part of why I wanted to do this book club
• Perusall – if you want to flag passages for discussion, I’ll do my best to check this before I post my weekly post. If people would prefer, I can also make weekly assignments here, but I’ve opened up the book for access in an assignment or whatever.

Finally, please feel free to drop in at any point. We’re well along, but the old discussions remain open and I’d still love to have anyone who wishes to join.

@MF_COOM@hexbear.net @chicory@hexbear.net @Maoo@hexbear.net @Vampire@hexbear.net

Previous Posts

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Chapter 20

• Feels like we’re finally drawing some conclusions. Firstly - the jestermaxxing of the early 10’s has not been vindicated.
• “Things are worse now” of course is quite a vibe, and I think accurate.
• 301 – we are still living under the stupid south park meme - ??? - remains the key fill in (and at least MLM has thoughts for how to fill that in)
• Planning for the after, I think, is a key missed opportunity (and indeed, we see how the “after” is filled by reactionaries if we do not claim it).
• I do like that, if nothing else, Bevins indicts teleological thinking. There’s no necessity to the changing world becoming “better.”
• However, I do feel like “lighting it on fire” is not necessarily the right comparison. Revolution and change does not necessarily have to destroy all that came before it (I feel like a clean break with the past is almost ontologically impossible, humans are historical beings).
  • But unless you work for it, the new car/new world won’t happen, I think, is the takeaway we should have.
• I feel this vindicates the Trueanon “you gotta be unemotional about this” vibe.
  • Maybe ends are more important than means.
• 7/10 backsliding is rough. Bevins’s list of W’s: South Korea. Euromaidan is a push
• Chile feels like a definite borderline, and there’s still potential, but Al Jazeera suggests there’s not going to be much movement until 2025.
  • Anyone have further info on this?
• If Chile actually adopts a left constituion, this would probably be the biggest W, but we are sort of in the middle of the arc right now.
• The postmortem on the Arab Spring is especially brutal.
• And now we arrive at the money question: why doesn’t protest work?
  • Here, I do think also the past decade is a big refutation of the narrative produced about the mid-century model (Civil Rights in the US, India, etc.). We’re told in school about nonviolence, but to what degree is this even viable anymore, I think, is a live and real question.
• “There is no such thing as a political vacuum” - this is a very important maxim, and I think I can agree with it. We should rush into these open spaces and make the case for our left position, rather than the farce of anti-politics.
• “A protest is very poorly equipped to take advantage of a revolutionary situation, and that particular kind of protest is especially bad at it.”
• A contrast with mid-century – protests were always subordinated to a larger strategy of independence/revolution/reform. Here, there’s a sense that there isn’t that larger “endgame.”
• Bevins throwing a bone to reformists here. I wonder if we’d have a different perspective here in the imperial core if there were some sort of proletarian party that at least ostensibly supported the working class (a PT, for instance).
  • I will say, Brazil feels the most tragic, because in some ways, the MPL was doing the very “pushing left” that we understand unions, etc. doing to FDR. Yet, instead of a New Deal or better situation for the working class in Brazil (and the PT was in power!), we got the situation we did.
• Turns out you have to create some sort of organizational/representative structure (perhaps also why Chile is a tentative win)
• This kid in Ukraine gets it too “Any revolution with no organized labor party will just give more power to economic elites, who are already very well organized”
• Bevins with some savage juxtaposition.
• “Not one person told me that they had become more horizontalist, or more anarchist, or more in favor of spontaneity and structurelessness.” Oof.
  • I will say, for my anarchist comrades, I do think not all of this is necessarily a result of horizontalism as such, rather, it might also have to do with strategies for coopting revolutionary movements developed in response to horizontalist movements. As such, I do think new safeguards need to be developed. There’s nothing wrong with struggle sessions and votes, after all.
• I like that Bevins also acknowledges that these things don’t just magically happen together.
• de facto leadership, is, of course, the real fact. There’s people with more energy, more commitment, etc. who can rise up in any group, even if it’s technically horizontal.
• I do think there’s something valuable about prefiguration, but it has to be merged with discipline/structure (here I’m thinking of CHAZ/CHOP’s failure).
• Bevins with a really great insight: why do all these protests look the same? Why is there a “package”?
  • It’s anti-Soviet bias and revisionism!
  • Also, great materialist analysis: social media DOES make Anarchist organizing “easier” in some ways!
• Oh such a great taking up of Graeber (who we all appreciate as a comrade, RIP) here. “If you are actually successful, someone is going to declare war on you.” I think that Graeber might even agree here to a degree, and perhaps this is also something missing from the 10’s
• The work of translating strategies is I think something that we should always remember is work and always requires adaptation/development (here, I also think about the angst about machine translation of things like anime, etc. as if there’s anything close to scientific translation).
• The corrosive input of pop culture, another big OOF.
• Rage Against the Machine mentioned. Ironically though, I think it’s actually nice (sowing seeds, in a way).
• The north-> south flow though, I think, needs to be reckoned with. How can we look to the south as generative/creative?
  • Realness: “In New York or Paris… you just get a media or academic career afterward. Out here in the real world, if a revolution fails, all your friends go to jail or end up dead.”
• Bevins doing some work to credit other thinkers in the field here.
• Some real interesting arguments about a de-radicalized generation. I have felt this about GenX in particular, broken by Reagan and Thatcher, but there’s also a kind of failing of Millenials as well, since we drank the KoolAid of neoliberalism. I’d like to think we’re doing better now, but who knows.
• This material on individualism is important, I think. Is there a way to push us back to the “mass” of the 20th century? How do we produce a more effective collective?
• Ironically, I feel like the “horizontalism of role” that Bevins describes is so clutch - “the ‘leaders,’ the people who make strategic decisions or stand in front of cameras, must not be seen as superior to the people delivering food, or risking their lives in battle, or caring for the sick and wounded”
• The Leninist analysis of mass uprising is relevant, I think, as well.
• As is the recognition that there’s foreign meddling as a crucial X-factor in all of these. If they had proceeded ‘organically’, would they have led to change? Perhaps, but we don’t live in a world where that is possible.
  • America bad propaganda, I think, is useful if only so that people will recognize that they can’t pretend they live in a world without a state willing to do anything to prevent an alternative system from forming.
• The role of the crackdown is also a common theme, glad Bevins brings this up.
  • Having “good victims” unfortunately matters.
• Here we get to something we’ve been tracking - the role of media. Having the media “prop up” the right people is, sadly, important (Tim-Houthi Chalamet went viral, others didn’t).
• Basically, exposing the violence of repression (the Monty Python bit is actually exactly right) is also important, so having cameras is good (though practice good OPSEC people! Wear masks, turn off GPS, etc.)
• ORGANIZING MATTERS. If you’re a UnionMan, then the Union can help explain why we’re striking. Growing these key organs, I think, is something that needs to be worked on.
• Big Takeaway: 323 “After looking at events like this across the world, I have come to the conclusion that horizontally structured, digitally coordinated, leaderless mass protest is fundamentally illegible. You cannot gaze upon it or ask it questions and come up with a coherent interpretation based on evidence.”
  • So, to what degree are the current protests for Palestine falling in the same trap? I know that at least the anti-war movement still has some vanguard forces, but I do think there’s a real potential opportunity as contradictions heighten this year, and how do we as leftists ensure they aren’t taken advantage of?
• “Movements that cannot speak for themselves will be spoken for.” - fortunately, this is not yet a total voic re: Palestinian liberation/peace. There are organized voices in the movement
• I like Bevins’s critique of the assumption that these groups want “westernization”, etc.
  • And conflating democracy with the west.
• I do think Bevins’s rhetorical choice of “explosion” to describe these protest movements interesting. I am not studied in philosophical stuff around “the event”, but I feel like to some degree this is something Bevins is circling around (any more philosophy-focused comrades want to take this up?)
• The media critique seems valid, but I wonder if there’s a left version that says “we should actively work towards making a meaning that benefits our purposes,” rather than concern ourselves with a liberal media version of “what happened” in a forensic sense?
  • After all, if Bevins’s book shows anything, it’s that the forensic “reality” of these protests didn’t matter for their negative consequences.
• “We are drawn so powerfully to the production of whatever will go viral on social media” 326. Is this something to resist or co-op? I think it’s an open question.
• “Things could have gone differently” – I appreciate Bevins recongnizing the contingency of these “hinge points” (a lot of them, I think, were).
• “You should not pick your strategy based on which post gets the most upvotes on a forum.”
  • Words to live by. I hope that if we’re ever doing real praxis, we’re not running polls on hexbear. I think if we take anything from this book as comrades, it’s that if we enter the cool zone we have to get a hiearchy going. I’m not going to lead, but I’ll be on the side of the struggle session pushing for a representative structure, because we need that shit.

Chapter 21

• Folks, we’re here! It’s the end!
• “We have planted the seed for something bigger.” (328) This is a classic cope for failure (see, Bernie 2020 and 2016), but I do think there’s something there as well.
• “Between obvious truth and teleological self-deception” - what a wonderful way to put this. So, how do we make it into the obvious truth, I think, is the question?
• I don’t know if “failure is an option” with climate stuff though…
• Finding a good comrade, that’s a nice outcome (and indeed, is futurity incarnate if you have a child)
• I do think there’s a good argument against “Do somethingism” - we need to be strategic, unemotional, and choose our battles.
  • Not every action is equally valuable, I think, is another good takeaway
• "Organizations are effective, and representation is important. Collective action has a proven record of success and works best when it is truly collective."330 - who knew!
• UNIONIZATION
• “Strikes and boycotts work much better than people walking back and forth across a city” god damn, spit it Bevins.
• I do like this caveat “But none of that means you have to dismiss unplanned mass action or decline the participation of all kinds of regular people who may not have the time or inclination to join a political party, union, or formal organization” – yes, we can totally use these moments.
  • Part of why we all need to “be normal” in public, so that in these moments, we can work towards our ends, collectively, and drawing on an even greater power of the “mass”
• “The crucial distinction is to not use the explosion in order to form the organization”
• This is why we have to be building orgs. Do the work now, so that when the hinge point happens, we’re ready
• Surprising Derrida citation, but I like the phamrakon idea. However, this is a “weak defense” (it’s a tool, you can use it for good or evil) of revolution. I’m fine with it, but I wonder if there’s a strong defense out there (I’m thinking of the “weak defense” of rhetoric as like makeup – used by good girls and bad girls alike, and then the strong defense - rhetoric determines the very values of good and bad and thus is before good use/bad use since it is constructive)
• “Networked leninism” - is that what we’re doing?
• ORGANIZE ORGANIZE ORGANIZE.
• “A focus on ends” - I really like this return to the GOAL of all this. This doesn’t excuse means, but it really means that it’s better to win than to play fair.
• And yeah, there’s really a question of people who just want to scrap. I want to say I admire them, but also, should we really build a movement around this?
• The FEELING, I think, is a key temptation. I’m not saying we have to be revolutionary ascetics, but avoiding the “high” is important. Or, to use Bevins’s framework, having a structure that insulates leadership from the “high” is probably important.
• TWO REALLY BIG FOOTNOTES at the end - let’s all keep our opsec, because organization has a different set of challenges.
• Althusser could be a cool reading group sometime, though I wouldn’t want to lead it.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully these reading notes help out anyone reading the book in the future. Please don’t hesitate to respond to these threads in the future, and I hope we’ve picked out some of the important questions/insights from Bevins’s work.

Looking forward to following along with future book clubs here!