orderfromcha0s

Recently a good friend of mine had her usual cutting-through-the-bullshit moment when writing this. I'd also like to thank another comrade for posting this excellent article on anarchism and community activism, which was an inspiration.

Kate got a great deal of flak, but I wanted to post partly in agreement to show my solidarity and support, but partly because it brought up for me a lot of the stuff about lefty activism that I have wanted to say for some time, but that I have assumed is just personal disillusionment. A thanks to Kate for helping crystallise the idea (as she did for me and the Occupy movement) and giving me the intestinal fortitude to express some of how I feel about the whole thing. I agree with her, but go as far as to argue for a rejection of national organising committees completely.

I had a conversation in a pub recently with someone I know. He said: "Here's what I think is going to happen to your politics. You're going to get a job, have a life and stop going to meetings. You'll still think you're with them, but you'll gradually be drifting away, then one day you'll switch on the news and you'll find yourself supporting the police on a demo, or the company on a strike, and then it will be over". I want to thank the nameless friend for expressing this to me, as it left me with a great deal to think about. "Politics", to him, is something we grow out of. We get old and turn Tory. I can't blame him for thinking this. We (the student left, such that it is) go to demos, we organise, we occupy, we have earnest discussions over how things can get better and we do all this together, only to leave at the end, disillusioned and burnt out, or in the fucking Labour party. At least, that's how I look at things when I'm in a trough, burnt out from endless fucking meetings, and a roundly defeated anti-cuts movement.

As usual, I'm going to claim that we can deconstruct the problem and solve it. Of course we can't. Not really. If the solutions to the world's economic system, or even student activism, were simple, they would have been worked out years ago. I am not so arrogant as to think that we (those born around 1990 and at university) are the only ones to have come up with this stuff. I'm going to have a damn good going through it, though, and hope that it helps.I am sure that I and the groups I am involved with are as guilty as anyone else in the problems I outline, and if this is a diatribe, it is a self-referential one as much as it is disparaging of the left in general.

My friend was right on one point: The left needs to grow up. That doesn't, however, mean shifting right. Infighting on the left is such a hackneyed, obvious problem that to point it out feels facile and stupid. It happens because we are losing. We lost at the Industrial Revolution, and but for a few minor victories since to give us hope along the way, it has been less than positive since then. Even now my fingers are trembling with temptation to pin this all on authoritarian socialists, still knowing that this feeling (or succumbing to it) is precisely the problem. Infectious are the ideas of changing the world, and more infectious still is the notion that we can be the ones remembered for it, and on top of it, the second-easiest direction to kick after down is across at our comrades. I think this might be what it's all about. Why does the hypothetical second Socialist Party begin? Is it an ideological difference? More likely there was a personal beef when potential leader X saw that he wouldn't be elected chairman, and realised he (and it's always a he) wanted to be chairman more than he wanted to be in the first Socialist Party. It happens on the libertarian left too, though these squabbles in any sphere of activism I try to stay out of.

Kate pointed out rather brilliantly (if, now I think about it, rather obviously) that we don't have to share our entire political model for the post-revolutionary society with the people we're fighting tuition fees with. This was well-appreciated in the early stages of the anti-cuts movement, but since the movement has thus far failed to prevent the cuts, I sense a shelving of the movement from top-priority "we must work together, we can do this" to yet another example of a cause that the "student left" supports long-term, and thus another set of groups with meetings for people to fight in. This has since happened, with meetings taken up with long-winded name-changing decisions (SCAFC --> SSAC. Two fucking hours.) based on whether one tiny group (AWL) involved with another group with a similar name (NCAFC) had some people in it who may or may not support bastards (Israel). I'm not having a go at anyone in particular here (no really, the conflict I reference is ancient history and rather funny in hindsight), I'm simply arguing for a change. 

The anti-cuts movement is stale and stagnant, as evidenced by the fact that the old arguments between different kinds of socialist have taken hold. It is time to jump ship and leave the old men (both actual and in spirit) to their squabbling. I'm sure I remember  that when the coalition started the cuts, the leftist student societies came together on issues, fought them as a group THAT DIDN'T HAVE A NAME OR AN ANNUAL MEETING, and then went back to their groups again. This may seem separatist, but I have many different groups I associate with in my life, and I can see all of them at various times doing various things we like without having a universal over-arching group that comes together every year and squabbles in order for me to know and like them all individually. I don't see why we can't do similar things with activism. I think the real root of the problem here is that there are some in the movement who what to be remembered for being part of this. They want to leave their mark, and be seen to be fighting, more than they are interested in actually fighting the cuts. Unless there is a shadowy cabal of people with a disturbing sexual fetish for bureaucracy, I cannot imagine another reason why there are so many "universal" leftist student movements, with so many meetings, meeting in futile squabbles as the services that are our social wage burn around them. The only way to fight this is to remove the mechanisms for self-promotion and power.

My solution is to leave any over-arching groups out of this. Work without the national group. Work locally with your comrades on issues you can win. If you want to occupy somewhere, call a meeting for it. Put out your message to all your groups, and make it clear that you are meeting specifically and only to ascertain everybody's willingness to do it, and the tactics thereof. Fuck, do a feasibility study. See what the local people who aren't students think of the issue you're interested in. Can you use their help? Can you help them in any way? Can you build bridges to close the gap between academia and the working people? Go under the radar of the national groups, the old men, the parties. Like all authority figures, and budding authority figures, they need us. We don't need them. It doesn't matter how fucking red the star is on the leader's lapel, or how well you used to know him, he's the leader, and if he gives you orders: ignore the bastard. Show them their irrelevance in calling and executing action without them and with your local communities. If you're really working with local people, you're going to be working with folk who don't consider themselves "left-wing" at all, they're just interested in protecting their local environment, their local services, their education, their post office. Every time a new national student organisation calls a meeting to fight the cuts, we get further away from the people around us who might fight alongside us.

How can the left grow up? There are many ways for this to happen, all of them slow, most of them painful for those of us with reputations staked on our arrest count/votes in the EUSA elections. The point is that, as Lao Tzu said, the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. The student left can start to grow out of adolescence by looking out rather than in, by applying some of the knowledge and analytical skills we learn at university to our work in the community, as well as recognising what we do as "work in the community". We can detach ourselves from our egos by removing the masculine structures that reward arseyness with power, but also by shutting up about our own politics occasionally, toning down the in-jokes about Stalin and taking each other seriously as people with a passion for doing the right thing, which, at heart, I really believe we all are.

[I wrote a version of this to give as a talk/workshop discussion topic at the Edinburgh University Feminist Society Dayschool, it had mixed responses, generally divided along liberal/radical lines. Debate (such as it was) centred on the issue of whether feminism should be accessible to men or not, and if men could and should be part of feminist groups] 

Note on language and the use of "non-men" as a category: It was picked up on that in my talk I refer to an opposition dynamic in the patriarchy not between "men" and "women" but between "men" and "non-men". In setting this (somewhat false) dichotomy up, I do not wish to suggest that the category of "women" is blurred and un-definable, or that that of "men" is clear and distinct. There are more than two genders, and more than two sexes, but patriarchy oppresses all that it does not class to be "men" by its own definition. There are many issues here about masculinity and sexuality in men, but this was not the subject of this presentation. In order to understand, acknowledge and fight privilege and oppression, we must examine the false dichotomy that patriarchy uses to privilege some of us, and in an effort to acknowledge the difficulties non-cisgendered comrades go through everyday, I label the gender and sex identities as "men" (the privileged class) and "non-men" (the oppressed class). Obviously the labels we ascribe to genders would be, in an ideal world, completely arbitrary. This can be achieved by acknowledging and tackling privilege.


Men and privilege in the feminist movement

Feminism, historically, is about the female perspective. More recently, that has been extended to include other non-men. Having, or understanding a non-male lived experience is central to any meaningful feminist discourse and action, with a view to feminism's other goal, that is, the liberation for groups oppressed by our patriarchal society. Some men have, since feminism's inception, been interested in both of those aims, and many would like to see them realised. We cannot create any form of decent society without the input of men, women and everyone else, and to look forward into an equal society surely fills one with optimism and great hope for the future. But we don't live in that time now. Non-men are sidelined in all walks of life, sometimes in small ways, in objectifying popular culture and media, sometimes in huge and horrendous ways, in the institutionalised blaming of victims for rape and sexual assault. 

Surely in a world such as this, in which women, for example, are ignored, laughed at and chastised for giving their opinion, it is feminist groups and meetings that can provide that breathing space, so that women can feel free to express themselves as women. It would be great if we could create spaces like that with all genders there, but the fact is that having men in a feminist group changes the character and feel of the room. Would women who have survived rape, domestic abuse and other manifestations of patriarchy feel able and confident to talk about their experiences in the presence of men? And if they don't, if feminism has to choose between having men in the room with them and making a comfortable space for abuse survivors to express themselves and feel a solidarity with their comrades, then I'd like to think that it's a no-brainer. Everywhere in society I, a white man, get an easy time of it, and I should be prepared to take a step out of the room if it would make the one space there is for non-men more comfortable for expression in the absence of patriarchy and men.

Feminism needs to address the question of male involvement, in order to make sure that the movement can serve non-men who are nervous about a male presence, as well as making clear to inexperienced men interested in helping to end patriarchy what their position is as a male ally, and what is acceptable and what is unacceptable behaviour. It's hard to know when all of our male privilege is so ingrained. Sometimes I need to be told to shut the hell up.

Personally, I do not identify as a feminist, and furthermore I do not believe men can or should identify as feminists. I listen to the non-male perspective on life as much as I can, and I certainly believe in the liberation of those oppressed by patriarchy, just as I believe in liberation for those oppressed by capitalism, and neo-colonialism, and racism. Fundamental to this belief, however, is that if patriarchy is to be smashed it should be a non-man swinging the hammer. While I listen to the non-male perspective, I do not have a non-male perspective. I can never experience patriarchy in the ways my non-male comrades do. I never have to fear for myself crossing the Meadows at three in the morning. I never have to feel judged or degraded at work simply because of my gender. Although I sympathise, and, crucially, attempt to empathise with comrades struggling with the additional oppression of patriarchy (you know, on top of all the others), I can never truly have that experience. Because of my personal experience as a white English-sounding middle-class man, I feel that to identify as a feminist would devalue feminism as a dialectic of liberation and a celebration of the non-male viewpoint. I am not ashamed of who I am: I can scarcely change it, and nobody in a decent activist circle plays the "who's more oppressed" game any more, but it is important for me to acknowledge and deal with my own privilege in society.

As a man, I need to come to the realisation, and it's a really simple one, that feminism is not for me. It is not about me. Everything else in patriarchal white-dominated English-speaking society is about me more than it is my non-male, non-white and non-Anglophone comrades. This is about non-men. I can get involved in feminism, if I am invited by them to do so, but it is as an ally, a secondary, a listener who for once waits to ask a non-man if it is okay to get involved, as they have to do all the time. Feminist groups should be the one place where everything is not designed to fit me at the expense of non-men. This is where I worry when I hear feminists talking about how they can appeal to men. Everything is designed to appeal to the male gaze. For god's sake don't make feminism one of them.

What role do I think men can have in the feminist movement? I think, chiefly, men's role is to listen. Men have a responsibility to understand that if we are interested in joining feminism we do so as members of a privileged class, unaware of the precise dimensions of our hegemony. We must take a back seat, and we might just learn something by doing so. Lao Tzu wrote in the Dao de Jing that "those who speak don't know; those who know don't speak". I think that this phrase can be applied to identify men in feminist groups who do actually understand what it means to acknowledge privilege, even if we may never understand all aspects of it. Sometimes, acknowledging privilege means shutting up, even if your point seems like the coolest thing ever right just then, it can wait until a few non-men have had their say first. 

Men's other important role is to talk to our fellow men about feminism, and about gendered oppression and patriarchy. The White Ribbon campaign works well to encourage men to get involved in stopping patriarchal oppression, as is the Men Can Stop Rape campaign. As men, we can use our privileged position to broach the subject with our friends, and often I have found that if it is brought up, men often talk about how they resent the roles patriarchy enforces on men and women. Patriarchy harms non-men more, but it does harm men too. Fathers4Justice, for example, would do well to realise that inequality in child custody is less about feminists controlling men, and more about patriarchal definitions of gender that have the mother as the default caregiver, when that may not be the most appropriate solution.

It would be great if men talked about smashing patriarchy all the time, but in reality a lot of conversations would be a victory for women's liberation if we simply called up our more laddish friends on their all-too-prevalent rape jokes, or on making insulting and objectifying comments about women. Men's groups, formal or informal, may have a role here, promoting a positive masculinity that separates itself from domination and abusiveness, just as feminism has worked well to dissociate femininity from submissiveness and being dominated.

I think my own personal biggest realisation about feminism is that it is not just "something else to learn", it is not an academic or intellectual standpoint, and it is not, as appealing as this is to me, an intellectual structure into which everything either fits or doesn't fit. Feminism is an experience, a dialogue of liberation in which the voices, for once, are the non-men who have suffered under male rule. Men can take part in this experience and this dialogue, but that role is necessarily a secondary one. We don't have the voices that need liberating: women and other non-men do. Men should not feature prominently in feminist groups, not because we don't have anything of value to say, but because all of patriarchal society exists to give us a space to say what it is we have to say, even on feminism and gender. I certainly think a man holding any sort of position of leadership or power in a feminist group is at best ridiculous and a PR disaster and at its worst is off-putting and a contradiction of the very aims of feminism. It is most certainly not the role of feminism to pander to the needs of possibly-sympathetic men, at the expense of non-male comrades who may need the support that sometimes only feminist groups can provide.

Men do need to be involved, otherwise gender, just as it has in an academic context, becomes a "women's issue" or a "women's subject". Men's involvement, however, needs to be on the terms of women and non-men. Men can act to support and make space for feminism and non-male viewpoints in their lives outside of the group, in their own political contexts and among their friends. It may seem that I am overly cautious or hesitant about men's involvement. To  be honest I see nothing wrong with a feminist group that would want to allow men there on an invitation-only basis. A simple "and men are welcome too" on the posters would suffice. If that would make feminism accessible to the comrades that really need it, those non-men who would feel uncomfortable talking about their experiences in the presence of men, then I consider my absence well worth it. It is not feminism that keeps me out, it is privilege. If I want to take part more fully, the best solution is to dismantle the patriarchal system that traps me in this gilded cage, so I, along with the rest of humanity, can finally be truly free.

[PS - I'd like to thank everyone attending the Glasgow University Feminists' discussion on men and the movement for giving me many of these ideas, in particular Beti and Sophie, who have taught me most of this at one time or another.]

• "That “Austerity will reduce debt.” Wrong. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, having fallen between 2007 and 2010, household debt will increase by £531 billion in the next 4 years – which means that, in the unlikely event that Osborne meets his target of eliminating the £142 billion budget deficit by 2015, this will be at the cost of transferring nearly 4 times this amount of debt from the government’s books to the credit cards and overdrafts of UK households.
• “We can’t afford to increase borrowing” Wrong again. The national debt is now 60% of Gross Domestic Product. In 1945 it was 237%. Then, as now and always, it was financed by borrowing. All money is created by borrowing. Creating money as debt is just a way of mobilising business activity and investing in future wealth creation. Problems only arise when the money is used not to stimulate economic growth but to speculate, to fuel asset inflation and to pay bankers’ bonuses – and when more money has to be created to enable the repayment of interest, thus creating an endless debt spiral. The only solution is to nationalise the money supply and lend at low or zero interest rates – as in North Dakota , which is one of only two US states not drowning in debt.
• That “Labour spent all the money.” More nonsense. Even if you add 3% per year for the capital costs of Public Finance Initiatives, public spending still averaged only 40% of GDP per annum in the years 1998-2008 and 41% in the years 1998-2010, compared with 40% in the years 1980-97. According to the Treasury Red Book, government spending increased no faster than income between 2002 and 2008.
• “The national debt should have been reduced during the boom years.” Fact: Labour did reduce the national debt – from 42% of GDP in 1997 to 36% in 2008. The claim that it should have been paid off before the financial crisis is absurd – firstly because Labour had been elected to increase spending on neglected public services and secondly because the two countries which have required an IMF bailout, Iceland and Ireland , were both in surplus in 2007, as was Spain . Balanced budgets did nothing to prevent the crisis in these 3 countries nor would they have done in Britain .
• “Labour is the party of high taxes.” No it isn’t and that’s what’s been the problem. The average annual tax take was the same under Blair and Brown as under Thatcher and Major (36% of GDP) and less than the 2010 EU average (40%).
• “High taxes discourage enterprise.” Not true. In 2009 there were 8 European countries with a higher GDP per hour than the UK . These were Austria , Germany , Belgium , Holland , France , Norway , Sweden and Ireland . With the single exception of Ireland , the total tax burden as a % of GDP was higher in all these countries than in the UK .
• “Regulation smothers entrepreneurship.” No it doesn’t. UK employees have less protection than almost anywhere else in the EU, whereas those countries with the strongest employment laws – Holland , Norway and Austria , for example – have lower unemployment and a higher GDP per capita. By contrast, in the US , the archetypal hire and fire economy, unemployment is running at nearly 10%.
• “The economy is being crippled by massive welfare bills.” But in 1997 welfare spending as a % of GDP was 8%. In 2010 it was 7%. And unemployment benefits in the UK are amongst the lowest in Europe , having fallen from 17% of average earnings in 1976 to 10% in 2011. As for welfare sapping the will to work, unemployment was at its lowest in the 1950s, when unemployment benefits were at their highest in relation to pay. 
• “High taxes discourage enterprise.” Not true. In 2009 there were 8 European countries with a higher GDP per hour than the UK . These were Austria , Germany , Belgium , Holland , France , Norway , Sweden and Ireland . With the single exception of Ireland , the total tax burden as a % of GDP was higher in all these countries than in the UK . “Regulation smothers entrepreneurship.” No it doesn’t. UK employees have less protection than almost anywhere else in the EU, whereas those countries with the strongest employment laws – Holland , Norway and Austria , for example – have lower unemployment and a higher GDP per capita. By contrast, in the US , the archetypal hire and fire economy, unemployment is running at nearly 10%.
• “The economy is being crippled by massive welfare bills.” But in 1997 welfare spending as a % of GDP was 8%. In 2010 it was 7%. And unemployment benefits in the UK are amongst the lowest in Europe , having fallen from 17% of average earnings in 1976 to 10% in 2011. As for welfare sapping the will to work, unemployment was at its lowest in the 1950s, when unemployment benefits were at their highest in relation to pay.
• “Labour left a legacy of massive welfare fraud.” Wrong again. Benefit fraud has been declining for years and accounts for less than 0.5% of the welfare budget (£1.1 billion). Compare this to the £16 billion of benefits which, go unclaimed every year, and the astronomical sums lost through tax avoidance and evasion.
• “The best way to reduce the budget deficit is to cut spending.” Another lie. In April 2010 the budget deficit was £163 billion. By April 2011, it had fallen to £142 billion. Why? Because, from September 2009 to September 2010, increased spending led to a fall in unemployment and a £35 billion increase in tax revenues as the economy grew by 2.8%. According to the OBR, the budget deficit will be £130 billion by April 2012 – which means that it will have fallen by less during this financial year (£12 billion) than in 2010-11 (£21 billion), and at the cost of a slump in GDP growth to around 0.6%, representing a loss in output of about £30 billion."

I consider myself a libertarian first, and a socialist second.

This may be somewhat controversial a point, particularly for my more statist friends, but explains the disconnect I sometimes feel with more party-oriented socialists and communists. While the concept of "liberty" is bandied about by the right as much as the left, and is highly subjective, I consider the primary object of a good society as the guarantee of maximum agency to all its members, with no-one qualifying for more or less of it. Where socialism comes into it for me is a question of method. In our society, our agency is determined by our material wealth, and liberty is afforded to some excessively, that is, the liberty to act in a way that disempowers or oppresses others, it is barely granted at all to others, namely, those oppressed by the choices of others. I don't believe this is fair, as I can't find a logical reason for one person being worthy of greater agency than another. The reason they have it is because of power and privilege. When the rich speak of liberty, they speak of their own. As they now experience excessive power, they view any attempt to equalise that power in terms of granting the poor and oppressed their agency, they interpret it in their own terms as a deprivation of liberty, when in fact it is a granting of liberty to those previously deprived of it. They are simply denying their privilege. This is observed in all power relationships, be they male/female, straight/gay, religious/secular, white/black or rich/poor.

The reason I examine my politics through the lens of "liberty" is because it is the common denominator for almost all humans when it comes to their political interests. I wish to take apart the question of why I fight for causes with socialists, as a libertarian, and a proponent of largely decentralised political power. I do not consider the perfect society one in which I am free to cause harm to others, or deprive them of the agency I would like afforded to myself, because humans live in communities, and we must self-regulate to a small degree in order to create harmony in these communities. Party socialists would, to a large degree, agree with this, but I do not think they view a primary objective of society to be liberation, and as such it seems that distribution of wealth, land  and production is regarded somehow as the endgame. It is worth examining why we believe what we believe. Socialism is not a good in itself, and without the goal of maximum liberty for individuals as members of a community it is directionless and open to abuse, both in vision and method. 

Abuse of the emphasis of community over the individual as a producing/consuming single unit is clear to anyone with eyes. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Kim Il Sung are all direct examples, but right-wing fascism and nationalism could also be said to be a falsely-communitarian system in which a rich elite dominate "for the greater good" of the nation. Authoritarianism can never be a recourse in the struggle. The means are as important as the ends, I passionately believe, and resorting to the false unity of a party line necessarily promotes the idea that we can entrust our freedom to a few individuals, and in doing so granting them our liberty as their own. What we have then is exactly the same system of power-elites and commoners that we have today. Many on the more statist left joke about how brilliant Mao was, but they have never been to China. I don't think they actually and genuinely support his murderous policies and their horrendous consequences, but when all you say are "jokes" in support of dictatorship, and your real views are never aired, the notion of "ironic" support and true support become blurred. It is particularly offensive, of course, when said by a privileged person who has lived in a (by capitalist standards) "liberal democracy" for their entire life.

Socialists and communists today need to consider the goal of their actions. Some soul-searching is needed among state socialists, as well as among many anarchists, as to why they believe what they believe. On the left we are so entrenched in our politics, and our opposition to "the Tories", "the rich" or "the 1%" that it is tempting to think our "-isms" are goods in themselves. In my perfect society, no-one would be an anarchist, as we would all be anarchists. No-one would know the meanings of the terms "libertarian socialist", because that would just be the way society would be. I don't necessarily think utopia will ever be realised, which is why I believe so strongly in the importance of the means as well as the ends. In our struggles we must seek to promote the value of liberty, equality and respect for all beings, and we cannot afford to compromise on the values that separate us from those who are happy to watch the status quo destroy a huge part of human society.

I am an anarchist, a libertarian socialist and a humanist, among other things. I am lots of "-ists". What I must remember is that those "-ists" are terms that are used to describe me. They do not deserve the respect we afford beings, because they are not beings. We cannot compromise people for them, as we cannot compromise people for our own means. When we realise that, we will not need the false unity of a party, or the false borders of a state, and we will be genuinely free.

Students at the time of the last UCU strike seemed somewhat confused as to what picket lines were, and what supporting a strike means. Here is my short attempt (it's nearly 3am here in Appleton tower) to explain it.

On the N30 strikes, you should not cross the picket lines. Whoever you are, and whether you work in the building or not, to turn around, or better yet, to join the picket, are signs of solidarity. As students, many of us are as at the mercy of the government's whims as workers are. Students have had a long tradition of standing with the working class in their fight for better conditions. I hope that fight will carry on until the things workers have built belong to the people who have made them.

All freedoms and concessions to workers were won by hard struggle on the workers' part, not by the benevolence of politicians, and crossing picket lines is a statement that undermines that fight. We cannot expect politicians to fight for us, in an era where the Labour leader will say "these strikes are wrong" at the drop of a hat, and if we want control of our workplaces, universities, schools and hospitals we must not wait for Labour to break promises for the thousandth time. Individualism, spearheaded in part by the Thatcherism of the 1980s, and continued by the "we're all middle-class now" rhetoric of Blair, has led to an erosion of class consciousness, that is, the notion that those who have to prostitute themselves to the labour market in order to survive have something in common with one another. Our communities have died, and so the ones with the biggest sticks, bought with the money stolen from the hard graft of the working people, have come to rule. The workers' first recourse is the withdrawal of that labour.

What this means is that those who break picket lines to go into work are directly taking the bosses' side in the dispute. You cannot "stay out of it". By crossing, you pick a side. If the workers are to win their rights over what they produce, be that goods or knowledge, it is the collective action that is useful against the violent machinery of the capitalist state, while they hold all the cards of force and money. Class war is not something started by the workers, it is waged every day by the bosses and politicians, when they drive down wages, reduce holidays and cut funding to the social wage that is not only the workers' right, but that is bought and paid for in money and time. It is time to fight our corner. Workers will be striking on the 30th and I will be standing with them. 

I am frustrated at the moralizing over "disruption" that is bandied about in the press and by extension in the mouths of those who read it uncritically. Try living as a worker, or a benefits claimant, just for a month or so. All those things you would like to do, maybe spend time with your children, go down to the pub with your mates, or even work in a job that interests and stimulates you, you will find somehow mysteriously "disrupted" by the fact that you have very little money and very little time. For one day I ask you to stand with your fellow humans as they simply ask for reform in a system that exploits them, dehumanises them and robs them of their creations. For one day I ask that you think about how fortunate many of us students are to have the opportunities being at university grants us. For one day I ask that we act as a community. For one day I ask that we listen, rather than talk.

Perhaps a little "disruption" is worth it.

Not a proper post, but a quote I find has enduring strength.

"Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses"  (Juvenal, Satire 10.77–81)

The X Factor and Olympics come to mind.

Bill Hicks, as always, puts it in a brilliant modern light:

There has been a great deal of consternation and abuse over a blog post a friend of mine wrote about a week and a half ago regarding her experiences at Occupy Edinburgh. You can find the post itself, along with the at times disturbing comment thread just here:

http://beyoungshutup.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/de-occupy-edinburgh/

The post was recently featured in a Scotsman article, which you can find here:

http://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/edinburgh-east-fife/not_so_happy_campers_hit_out_at_occupy_edinburgh_protest_organisers_1_1975565

The article in the Scotsman is simplistic, and features problematic and disparaging language, in particular the use of "allegedly" to describe the rape at Occupy Glasgow, but this simply reflects wider problems in society rather than being malicious. On the whole it is important that the article, along with Kate's blog post, were published.

Prior to Kate's post, I was on one of the visits I have paid to the camp, which at the earlier times were altogether pleasurable, including my experience of camping the first night. However, this was a bit later on, and the camp has started to stagnate and go sour. On the first few days, occupiers were falling over themselves to introduce the camp to passers by, to ask "do you know why we're camping here?", and to explain the worthy cause they camp for, that is, to raise awareness of the grossly unfair situation society is in, that it is rigged in favour of what it calls the "1%", that is, the wealthy elite. This was not happening later on. The camp had visually become more insular, not talking to passers-by, simply engaging in the necessities of maintaining a campsite in November in Edinburgh. One particularly significant point is that those on the "security team", that is, those with the power to kick out anyone not welcome in the space, have not changed, and in subsequent visits I have paid have still not changed.

Prominent individuals in General Assemblies is one thing, but having an unelected security team, essentially a power elite, is quite another. Those who speak loudest in meetings and tend to be the most eloquent can be problems, but not to the extent that they have physical power. What was particularly disturbing was when one member of the "security team", at least I assume so, he had on one of the reflective vests that marks them out, acted in an unprovoked and extremely threatening way towards me, most definitely violating the safe spaces policy at the camp, which it is difficult to do. This man was an alcoholic, and I understand that he was suffering from an illness, but to make him a powerful figure is irresponsible and dangerous. Aside from the fact that he was clearly incapable of engaging in any sort of meaningful dialogue with anyone who would come to him with a problem, he was a physical bodily danger to those in the camp and should not have been there.

Excuses for this conduct, and the positioning of this individual in power, include the fact that he has done a lot for the camp in terms of clearing up or simply existing there, or that he is able to engage with the other "wasters" (in one camper's words) that wander into the camp. These are reasons to include him, but not to give him power. I left shortly after I commented to another security team member about this man's conduct, and so can't comment on the immediate repercussions. The reason I mention this particular incident is that it should be looked at and learned from, as it should not have happened in the first place. If I had been a vulnerable individual with certain experiences in my past, which thankfully I am not, it could have been deeply affecting and upsetting. Such incidents marginalise those who have most cause to fight the elite, and contribute to a failure of the camp to represent and defend the interests of the real "99%", as they put it.

The camp, as it stands, seems completely unable to take any sort of criticism, reasoning that it is "unity" that is important and that dissenters are practising "divide and conquer" tactics. This is shown in Kate's experience as she details on her blog, as with others who struggled to get across the point that improvements could be made. I was criticising the camp in front of an occupier, who dismissed my grievances with the idea that "the feminists" were giving me ideas. It seems that the occupiers themselves are far too attached to the camp. Evidence for this comes in the form that it does not really function as outreach any more, preferring simply to exist as a demonstration, and that any criticism of the camp is irritably countered with the retort that I have obviously not been there long enough to see the "real" camp. I get the same reaction from some religious people when I criticise the bad parts of religion. It is not seen as important to talk to the public, or if it is seen as important it is a goal failing to be reached. It is understandable that those who have camped there since the beginning are attached to it, but in my opinion, they are attaching themselves to the wrong thing.

It is time for those at Occupy Edinburgh to step back and remind themselves why they camped there in the first place. The camp itself is naught but a tool for getting across a message, as well the secondary aim of being an open space which people can come to. Both of those aims are being failed. Outreach and welcoming, as far as my and many others' experiences have shown, is a complete disaster, contributing to a failure of openness. Accessibility seems to have been an initial aim of the occupy camps, so this failing is a serious one. Denying the experience of those who have felt left out and marginalised by the camp exacerbates this problem, and the campers will experience the unpleasant situation of watching the group dwindle to an increasingly resentful few being left behind by other, more open organisations that are prepared to rethink strategy.

The attachment felt for the occupation by those there is understandable, and admirable, though misplaced. The attachment is much better felt for the cause for which they fight, not the right to occupy St Andrew's Square, but the strength to fight our rigged society. The passion that they feel for their camp is powerful, and that power could be so successfully channelled into defending the social wage and workers' conditions, and fighting the replications of societal problems within activist movements themselves. We see clearly in the history of political socialism the folly of attachment to The Party, the feigned agreement and corruption that stifle any sort of progression. We see activists who are conservative about changing the way they approach activism, defending experience only when they see it as valid, and dismissing what they regard to be illegitimate concerns, just as the wealthy elites of our world dismiss our concerns.

It is, as Kate put it, time to De-Occupy Edinburgh. Improvement is possible, but I struggle to see the purpose served by a camp that continues to occupy the square. If it is a marketing tool for the wealth redistribution movement, then it is failing as it fails to maintain itself as a safe and growing space with fresh ideas. If it is to function as an example of how society should be, then it is in completely the wrong place. An occupier I spoke to responded to my criticism of the security team not changing with the fact that it is only the security team that are physically able to defend the camp against violent, armed intruders. In an environment such as this, in which a truly egalitarian camp would be dangerous for its inhabitants, I question the need for a non-egalitarian one in its place. Surely everyone's interests would be better served by going to our non-egalitarian (but warm) homes and organising for strikes, demonstrations, demand-centred occupations and public education, in order to create more egalitarian structures that work in our homes, workplaces and communities.

• Skill in knowing the disposition and power of enemies,
• Skill in knowing the ways to advance and withdraw,
• Skill in knowing how empty or full countries are,
• Skill in knowing nature's timing and human affairs, and
• Skill in knowing the features of terrain.

• Desire for the extraordinary and unexpected in strategy,
• Desire for thoroughness in security,
• Desire for calm among the masses,
• Desire for unity of hearts and minds."