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Street Roots • August 4-10, 2017
Street Roots • August 4-10, 2017
understanding and self-worth, then why are so
many people refusing the imposition of work in
small ways — stealing office supplies, taking
longer breaks, feigning illness, slacking off,
finding quicker ways to accomplish work tasks as
to make the work easier or more enjoyable? I
think this is an important question to answer.
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News
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"People are not waiting for revolutionary consciousness«
They're not waiting for the Left. People understand their
situations and people are organized, iust in order to survive in
this terrible society that we live in. And we should honor them.'
S.Q.: How does this relate to the title, “Guerrillas
o f Desire”?
K.V.M.: Human beings desire all sorts of
things, from human touch and companionship, to
contributing to society and being productive with
friends and neighbors to seeing themselves as
part of something larger than themselves and
their immediate family. I see these desires as a
striving for more than the contemporary society
can provide. Because we live in a class-based
capitalist society, how many people are forced to
work at crummy jobs that shouldn’t exist rather
than contribute their passions and real talents to
the world? How many people are too busy
working at crummy jobs to contribute to the
larger political, social, civil, and cultural society? I
believe - no, I am convinced - that the desires
that emerge from human beings speak to a world
beyond this one.
Portland author K evin Nan M eter
looks at the revolutionary heart
behind everyday resistance
BY STEPHEN QUIRKE
STAFF W R ITE R
BO is currently catching criticism for rolling
out a new show called “Confederate” - an
alternative history where slavery never
ended because the Confederacy won the Civil War.
Widespread criticism may very well end the show
before it begins; last December A&E was forced to
cancel a show called “Generation KKK” - a series
that promised in-depth profiles of Kian families -
after it was revealed that the crew had made cash
payments to Klansmen.
To put the creative work at HBO into perspective,
it helps to remember that there are ways in which
the Confederates already won the Civil War -
starting with the permitted rise of the KKK and the
terrorism that instituted Jim Crow. According to
historian James Loewen, the history that’s been
taught to Americans in school is largely the one
promoted by the United Daughters of the
Confederacy - one that goes out of its way to hide
widespread resistance to slavery and undermines
continued efforts at liberation.
Another possible reason Americans don’t think
about this resistance is that we typically don’t talk
about social change unless we see it happening on a
grand-scale. Rebellion and revolution catch
everyone’s attention - the small acts that made
them possible typically do n o t
It’s only in recent years that these small acts have
begun to get their due. In 1985, James C. Scott
coined the phrase “everyday resistance” in his book
“Weapons of the Weak - Everyday Acts of Peasant
Resistance.” One method of resistance uncovered
by Scott was the simple act of running away - a
tactic used repeatedly by slaves in the Americas.
Now, local activist and scholar Kevin Van Meter
has made an original contribution to this study in
thoughts on everyday resistance and why he’s
“Guerrillas of Desire: Notes on Everyday Resistance
convinced that progressive organizers should pay
and Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible,”
published by AK Press and the Institute for Anarchist
more attention to i t
Studies.
Stephen Quirke: Your book describes capitalism as
Part history and part theory, “Guerrillas of Desire”
a structure that imposes work and shows the various
brings together moments as diverse as the Zapatista
ways work can be refused in different contexts. Why is it
uprising in Mexico, to wildcat factory strikes in
Michigan, to peasant rebellions in Europe to the
important to think about capitalism and resistance to it
feminist revolt against housework. All of these
in this specific way?
struggles, says Van Meter, are joined by their efforts
Kevin Van Meter: In “Guerrillas of Desire” I
to resist imposed work, and in doing so, they fight to
argue that the central operating mechanism in a
create more time for all the things the world actually
needs - including the ability to thoughtfully care for
capitalist society is the imposition of work, both in its
waged form, as we usually think of i t but also in its
each other.
On August 10, Van Meter will be speaking at 7:30
unwaged form as unwaged housework — that is,
reproducing workers ability to work — and social
p.m. at Powell’s Books, 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
reproduction — meaning, the work of reproducing the
We sat down with Van Meter to discuss his
H
Author Kevin Van
Meter will be
speaking about his
book, “Guerrillas of
Desire,” at 7:30
p.m. Aug. 10, at
Powell’s
Bookstore, 3723
SE Hawtherne
Blvd.
S.Q.: Why do you encourage readers to think
about small and discrete acts, as opposed to self-
conscious rebellion?
K.V.M.: I ask readers to think about small and
discreet acts rather than larger social movements
or rebellions since these are common, everyday -
and taking place all the time. Actually, everyday
acts of resistance outnumber self-conscious
rebellious acts a thousand or possibly a million
fold. Self-conscious rebellious acts and uprisings
are exceedingly rare, especially in a society so
rife with domination and control. The question I
always ask is not why are people rebelling, but
why are people not rebelling more. And when we
start to look at everyday life, we begin to see how
all sorts of people, in all kinds of jobs, in all areas
of life are rebelling and trying to create a world of
their own making.
S.Q.: You argue that “a generalized revolt against
work already exists.”How is this occurring?
larger society. We will spend more time working in
our lives than doing any other activity besides
sleeping, and if you combine the time working and the
time recovering from working, there is nothing else
that we will spend more time doing between birth and
death.
As it turns out, what most people do all day is
pretty terrible, or unnecessary, or not fulfilling, or not
conducive to creating a just and equitable society.
When looking at the last 500 years of capitalism — of
chattel slavery, those employed in the agricultural
sector, and those working in fields, factories,
workshops as well as bedrooms, kitchens, classrooms,
and now offices and the larger service economy — I’ve
found a ceaseless, unending refusal of work. If we live
in a society that honors work, that sees work and our
working lives as definite factors in our self
K.V.M.: We live in a society where everyone
must work. If you don’t work to obtain a wage
you starve, and you aren’t granted clothing or
shelter. And, of course, we know from research
conducted that many unhoused people are in fact
working but just don’t make enough money to
afford rent. So in a society that forces most of its
members to work at jobs that aren’t fulfilling,
that aren’t democratic, that don’t speak to their
needs and talents and abilities and their
possibility to grow, or when they are fulfilling we
don’t have much control over them and the work
process, we shouldn’t be surprised that there are
those of us who refuse this “regime of work.”
And looking at both the historical record and
contemporary society, we find that it is the norm
— more common than not — that there is a
generalized revolt against the imposition of work
at a particular job and to the idea that in order to
live, to survive, we must work at jobs that are
neither fulfilling for the individual nor beneficial
for the larger society.
S.Q.: You suggest that organizers on the Left
need to practice “reading the struggles” and
circulating them. What does that look like in
practice?
K.V.M.: While I believe that Left organizers
can contribute to the creation of a better world, I
think that we fool ourselves into thinking we are
the catalyst or main progenitor of this new world.
When we inquire into the actually existing needs
and desires of working and poor peoples and
discover the struggles taking place around
survival and creating a life worth living, then we
are grounded in how people are rather than what
we want them to be. We need to listen to and
record these struggles. Then by circulating them
through stories, cultural products, political essays
and presentations, we can begin to amplify and
intervene in a new society, a new social order
that is more just and fair then the one we now
inhabit, as it emerges.
S.Q.: You really focus on the idea o f selfliberation
in your book. In the section on American slavery
you emphasize that slaves in America were always
in the process o f liberating themselves, and this led
to other people supporting them in various ways.
K.V.M.: Yes - and the historical research on
this not only undermined the dominant narrative
about Africans in the United States, historically
and present, but it also undermined the narrative
that there needed to be some party or leadership
or union structure. Slaves, peasants and workers
historically have really liberated, themselves. The
great failure of the contemporary union
movement is the assumption that you’re waiting
for union leadership or a union organizer for
people to resist on the job. People are not
waiting for revolutionary consciousness. They’re
not waiting for the Left. People understand their
situations and people are organized, just in order
to survive in this terrible society that we live in.
And we should honor them. And, arguably, that is
the largest wellspring of any other form of
resistance.
Nat Turner talks about this in his confessions
- that what led him to rebellion was running
away, and stealing, breaking tools, all these other
acts. And he didn’t need any scholar or union
bureaucrat to tell him to do that. He developed
those leadership skills out of those processes of
self-reflection, self-activity, and self-liberation.
S.Q.: You also write that the slave revolts led to
the struggle for the 8-hour work-day. Can you
explain this in more detail? Did waged workers
learn about slave resistance and think “we can do
that too?”
K.V.M.: I think we can certainly point to that
in a couple of places. But I also don’t want to
separate these into separate categories of
workers. We want to see people as more
dynamic. There’s a circulation of struggle that’s
constantly taking place. And we don’t want to
separate the slave as a figure and the worker as
the figure, because very often it’s the same
figure. Their strongest form of resistance was
running away. But that figure could then be
re-enslaved. That figure could then become a
semi-waged worker. We want to see the
complexify of the dynamics and not focus on just
these categorical identities.
S.Q.: You argue that the ru n u p to the American
civil war was in many ways a revolutionary
situation. What are the implications o f this? Why
don’t we talk about the war this way?
K.V.M.: First and foremost, I think it is
important to emphasize again that the slaves
freed themselves. The mass exodus of slaves
from the plantations into marooned communities,
and north via the underground railroad forced
the federal government to respond with the
fugitive slave act. Innumerable thefts and the
illicit economy, in which both blacks and whites
participated, forced local governments and
vigilantes to raid grog shops and publicly punish
pilferers and their accomplices. The palpable fear
felt by the white slaveholding class, not just
economically but for their very lives, was the
direct result of slave rebellions - nearly 250
actual or attempted rebellions took place during
American slavery. And this fear pushed the South
toward war. As with ever major economic and
political crisis in the US since, compromise was
reached - chattel slaves were provided limited
freedom as wage slaves under Jim Crow, blacks
were “granted”'civil rights. Both were
compromises to prevent the emergence of a
strong black community and a directly democratic
society based in racial equality. In this way, I and
other scholars would argue that the black
freedom struggle that began under slavery was
then, and is now, revolutionary. And we don’t talk
about the Civil War in this way because our
telling of the story in the present has actual, real
political implications today.
S.Q.: You talk about organizing “all the way
down. ” Is this a way o f saying that people are
already resisting, and we need to fin d out how that’s
happening, and identify with it - do that kind o f
imaginative work?
K.V.M.: That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. I
want to redefine the role of the organizer as
someone who’s circulating struggles, who’s not
the central figure. Because what’s most
important is the existing struggles that are taking
place. The underlying assumption of left radical
organizing is that people are uneducated,
unagitated, unorganized. I think I’ve shown over
the last 500 years of struggle against capitalism
that that assumption is empirically wrong.
S.Q.: Do you think the abandonment o f
reconstruction hurt the workers movement?
K.V.M.: If you can take a good sector out of
the working class and immiserate them, then it
decreases the overall class’ ability to fight back.
That’s been the struggle against white racism for
so long - until everyone is free none of us is free.
That is materially and actually correct.
The argument I want to make is that capital
and the state respond to our overt and everyday
forms of struggle. They’re responding to us;
we’re the primary figure. They need to capture
our work. They need to make sure that we’re
constantly reproducing these gender and racial
hierarchies. And as long as the system functions
it will continue to impose these things upon us.