Speak Truth to Power???
What strategies will work to win reforms in the current system?
Is Free Speech enough?
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. Without struggle, there is no progress. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them. “ Frederick Douglass
“Speak Truth to Power” has been a mantra among progressives for decades if not centuries. It seems like common sense especially to liberals, social democratic reformists and religious activists. It is a pessimistic response to the reality of power relations under capitalism. The ruling class including the capitalists and top politicians have the power. They decide workplace and social conditions and passage or failure of legislation. It seems logical to many to try to convince them to make the right decisions. This attitude results in tactics like lobbying, cajoling, and petitioning the rulers to do the right thing and/or electing supposedly more reasonable politicians. It often also flows from moralism — taking a stand to avoid personal complicity in evil without being concerned with results. This moralism can sometimes include small scale ritualistic civil disobedience which seeks to shame the rulers but doesn’t have the disruptive power to win concessions.
Do these reformist and moralistic strategies work? A petition especially from affluent homeowners to the city to put in a new stop sign may well be effective. However, a petition to end a war, a polite request for a major social benefit, or a proposal for a major legal restriction on oppression will not win by appealing to the good will of the rulers. Every major reform in U.S. history has come not from polite requests but threats to the system. As Frederick Douglass put it:
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. Without struggle, there is no progress. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them. “
The capitalists and their government primarily seek profit and the maintenance of power to ensure that profit. Their interests fundamentally conflict with the interests of the vast majority. They will grant reforms that hurt immediate profit when necessary to maintain their power. This means that a threat to their power and/or profit is needed to win anything that will cost them profit or control. One such threat is the loss of legitimacy on a mass scale. This can happen when mass movements become radical enough to challenge ruling class ideological dominance.
The liberal/reformist strategy to winning reforms accepts the system and works within its parameters. It involves whispering in the ears of rulers or electing “nicer” rulers. This strategy accepts the current balance of forces, the existing concentration of power. The revolutionary strategy instead aims at challenging the balance of forces and concentration of power. Revolutionaries ultimately seek to organize the working class to take all the power and wealth from the rulers. In the short run, to win reforms, revolutionaries try to force concessions by threatening the power of the capitalists and their political representatives with mass action.
“If the movement is large enough, strong enough and threatening enough, the capitalists and their politicians reassess what is in their economic and political interests. They feel compelled to give up some of their wealth to maintain their grip on wealth and power overall”
This is clearest in the class struggle at work. To force the boss to grant better wages and working conditions, workers must organize and strike or threaten to strike. At the end of a successful strike, capitalist relations remain. The bosses still own the workplace. Workers are still exploited. However, workers will have changed the balance of class forces. The capitalists will have had to cut into their profit to grant concessions to the workers. In order to keep their profit-making machine going at all, they will have had to accept profit reduction. They do what they would not have freely chosen on their own.
The same dynamic takes place with political reforms. If the movement is large enough, strong enough and threatening enough, the capitalists and their politicians reassess what is in their economic and political interests. They feel compelled to give up some of their wealth to maintain their grip on wealth and power overall. As one politician in the 1930’s put it, “We must give them reform, or they will give us revolution!” In the face of militant struggle, they give up what they would not have even considered previously.
This strategy for winning reforms is well accepted among revolutionaries. Importantly it impacts how we view free speech and political freedom generally.
Free Speech
“Though political freedom is essential, it can be used to placate movements. This placation prevents movements from being threatening and therefore effective.”
Marxists have always defended political freedom. Repression gets in the way of effective organizing. If people are too repressed to organize unions or social movements, they can never develop the counter power necessary to win reforms, much less revolution. Government and corporate restrictions on freedom of assembly, speech, and press are all designed by the ruling class to prevent workers and oppressed people from developing their power. Unions and social movements need to fight for these rights as part of their struggle for reforms.
However, free speech, press and assembly are not ends in themselves. Marxists are not satisfied with a stable order where people can express themselves, but can never enforce their interests. Though political freedom is essential, it can be used to placate movements. This placation prevents movements from being threatening and therefore effective. Too often, the authorities try to win support for the prevailing order by claiming to support free speech. They use the existence of political freedom as an argument for supporting the current system. They claim to support formal political freedom while opposing effective mass disruptive action. They are often explicit about this strategy. They appeal to the general public to oppose disruptive movements in the name of supporting non-disruptive free speech. They try to turn the right to free speech against potentially effective militant movements.
Here is an example of this strategy by the Washington State Patrol, calling for public support to identify activists who blocked the freeway in support of Palestine:
“While free speech is a sacred right in our democratic system, protests that have illegally moved onto and caused the closing of our freeways and streets have led to deadly outcomes in our state and others and WSP is committed to deterring future incidents. WSP seeks the assistance of the public in the identification of the individuals in the attached photo gallery. “..this is not about the rights of free speech or assembly. There can be no doubt that the Washington State Patrol respects and protects those rights. This is about holding people accountable for unlawful and dangerous acts that put the traveling public, our first responders, and yes, the protestors themselves, in danger. Stepping foot on a freeway to highlight your own individual cause is a self-centered act that is dangerous, foolhardy, disruptive, and most assuredly illegal. We have asked for public assistance in identifying suspected law breakers during otherwise legal protests.”
“Though political freedom is essential, it can be used to placate movements. This placation prevents movements from being threatening and therefore effective.”
To counter this ruling class strategy, activists need to defend disruption directly. Activists need to say that it is justifiable to prevent business as usual in order to win reforms that benefit the vast majority. The Marxist understanding of the state is relevant here: The state is run by and for the capitalist class. Since rational argument will not convince the rulers to grant major reforms, activists have every right to disrupt the capitalist order.
“ When people are occupied, resistance is justified!” This chant from the movement for Palestinian Liberation applies much more broadly. In fact every country in the world has a ruling class that uses the state apparatus, police, military and courts to dominate society. Though it is not as obvious as in Palestine, no current state is fundamentally democratic. Even in bourgeois democracies, the ruling class occupies the people using its armed forces and courts. Resistance to and disruption of this domination deserves support !
Movement participants should obviously defend the right to free speech. However, it is counter-productive to pretend that every action is merely protected free speech and defend actions only on free speech grounds. Accepting the ruling class division of good speech vs. bad disruption plays into the hands of the rulers.
The strategy of cooptation by the ruling class is dominant in bourgeois democracies, especially the U.S. The rulers use it to win support for the system and undermine effective opposition. Marxists need to strongly oppose this cooptation of political freedom even while always fighting to expand political freedom. Political freedom is necessary but not sufficient for winning reforms. Our goal in demonstrating is not self-expression but winning material changes.
“Those who promote the reformist/liberal strategy of cajoling and appeals to the ruling class are reinforcing the rulers’ attempt to coopt and undermine us.”
How Did we win Free Speech?
The cooption of political freedom as a ruling class tool developed over decades and centuries of struggle. Complete suppression of political speech gave way to incorporation of it as a result of disruptive mass movements. The authorities finally decided that they could better maintain stability by incorporation rather than complete suppression. Of course, depending on the issue and the threat, the authorities will repress even some non-disruptive free speech, as political suppression of Palestine demonstrations in Europe show. However, the rulers will still claim to be operating within the parameters of free speech and try to explain exceptions. The irony is that the rulers try to use the incorporation of free speech which was previously granted due to disruptive movements against militant movements today.
Carrying out this compromise, the authorities in a bourgeois democracy try hard to draw the line between ineffective free speech which they claim to support and disruptive action which they call illegitimate. The ruling class tries to reinforce the reformist/liberal strategy of speaking truth to power. They say “You have every right to appeal to us, but you don’t have the right to make us do anything. You should be happy with that and grateful we allow free speech”. Those who promote the reformist/liberal strategy of cajoling and appeals to the ruling class are reinforcing the rulers’ attempt to coopt and undermine us.
Revolutionaries take to opposite view — rejecting bourgeois legitimacy which constrains struggles into ineffectiveness. There is a battle within the oppositional movements over which strategy to follow.
Unfortunately, some on the left oppose the cooptation of free speech so much that they reject the importance of democratic rights. They believe the exercise of those rights without immediate mass disruption is worthless. In reality political expression is an important way to build a movement that can become disruptive in the future. It is important to defend the right free speech, assembly and press even when a mass militant movement is not on the immediate agenda.
“Since the U.S. is an oligarchy, militant mass action is needed not just for revolution, but also to win major reforms short of revolution.”
Obviously in any movement, there are different strategies and most movements are mixed politically. Tactics that flow out of reformist or revolutionary strategies will contend with each other and dominate at various times. Which strategy is more prevalent will determine how successful movements will be.
Bourgeois democracy claims to be based on popular rule when it is actually a cover for capitalist domination. A major part of the mythology of bourgeois democracy is the pretense that the exercise of democratic rights on their own allow for popular influence over policy. A recent study by Princeton University concluded that the U.S. is not a democracy. It is actually an oligarchy where the preferences of the rich are carried out by the government.
Since the U.S. is an oligarchy, militant mass action is needed not just for revolution, but also to win major reforms short of revolution.
Activists should obviously reject the mantra “Speak Truth to Power”, but also reject the attitudes and strategies that go with it, even when the mantra is not expressed. Our mantra should be “Speak Truth to the powerless, so that they can take power!”
Defend free speech, but also defend militant disruption of the status quo! Don’t let “free speech” be used against militant mass movements!
