political mobilization¶

Liberal democracy has done an excellent job of instilling in the working class a belief that "political mobilization" is an exercise of integration into the existing political structure. For the vast majority of the population, it is unfathomable for any other system to prevail. For any given political aim, no matter how petty or grandiose, liberal democracy answers "There is an office -- elected or appointed by the elected -- that will achieve your dreams." When laws stand in the way of liberation, the oppressed are told to dream of rewriting the law. The working class is taught that struggle for anything other than reform through this orthodoxy is impractical, illegal, heinous, utopian, treasonous, toxic. Your options are to win pockets of "legitimate" power, to entreat those who hold it already, or to be deemed irrelevant. Those who attempt to rally for victory through these channels, to achieve "radical reforms" or "political revolution" are painted as champions of progress or dangerous radicals, in turn. Both characterizations are aimed at smothering the true nature of political mobilization. Rallying cries of "power to the people" are used to carry these warriors of righteousness to victory... by seating them directly within the engine of injustice itself. In the shadow of these "victories," no revolutionary mobilization grows. All energy directed toward this project is consumed. It is lost to friction, or to maintaining the "mobilization" to replicate this "victory." An endless pursuit of small gains at best, or more commonly, mitigating losses. This "movement" is thereby degenerative, not productive. This preoccupation with "victory" in the realm of bourgeois legitimacy does not address the core concern of accumulation. Whether capital, chemical energy, political mobilization, or any other driving force, the use of that force must both reproduce itself and generate a surplus. Any expenditure of energy that fails to regain a surplus of energy is doomed to degenerate. In the case of "mobilization" within the framework of liberal democracy, a constant supply of new idealists is required to expend their own energy for the cause. In other words, this is not empowerment, but deprivation. Energy spent on fruitless efforts, handed the occasional small reward to provide the illusion of progress. But such treats are nothing more than empty calories, incapable of nourishing a real political movement. They do not expand the consciousness, will, and tactical might of the mass of workers. They do not clarify the state of the battlefield on which we fight. They do not create systems of power, class unity, or political education. The rare "successes" do not reproduce themselves. Nor could they ever do so.

The only useful exercise of "the power of the people" is to expand that power -- not subjugate it to the vagaries of the capitalist political system. Victory is not handed to us by our oppressors.

We are only as free as we make ourselves.