“The Paris Commune failed, Russia was isolated and collapsed in the end under its own contradictions and many more examples in between. Does this mean hope is lost? No, however, Marx in Brumaire, talks about revolutions which ‘constantly interrupt themselves in their own course, return to the apparently accomplished, in order to begin anew’. He recognised that revolutions ‘deride with cruel thoroughness the half-measures, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts.’ We should take quite seriously that we are in the midst of many first attempts, and believe we can learn and build on them – that is what it means to situate ourselves in this critical tradition.” (Harry Holmes, ‘Marxism in Struggle’)
On Saturday, we marched alongside the Latinx community in West Seattle in an anti-ICE, pro-immigrant protest organized by PSL and FSRO that included a wide range of Seattle’s far left: FSP, SRS, and the comrades I marched with, the RCA. It fascinated me to see this diversity of Marx-ish tendencies coalescing on an issue that’s dear to my heart, having come here “the right way” (under Trump, might I add) and securing my imperial imprimatur as citizen. I’d like to see these groups engage our similarities and (oftentimes vast) differences a little more in the future; I think the time’s ripe for coalition work.
Before I left, I mentioned how I’ve been thinking about the hammer and sickle symbolically, or, at the risk of sounding like a petty bourgeoise academician, mythopoetically: more than just the union of agricultural and industrial workers, a symbol that apparently was originally proposed to include a sword as well, to the protests of Lenin who rejected that militarism. I’m thinking about it as a key to a “method” (a favored word among my new friends): the sickle as reaping, receiving, learning from the wealth of all that’s come before, and the hammer as forging, creating, innovating in the here and now.
You can think of the union of opposites, if you’re so inclined. A pedagogical and political dialectic, but also, an archetypical synthesis: the feminine and masculine, the traditional and futurist, the now and not-yet.
The comrades I’m around these days are in a period of recruitment and consolidation; the emphasis is on gathering, gleaning, nurturing, and growing. This will strike a lot of us as deaf to the needs of the moment, but it’s a refreshing break from the constant cultural nag to do something (anything) always and all the time. If that social imperative is crazymaking, then cadre building is palliative care.
But we can’t live by the sickle alone. We need both fidelity and foment. Or, as one document introducing me to this organization puts it: audacity, audacity, audacity! A protagonism that knows when to listen and when to speak up. That’s the synthesis I see in this powerful image that’s enchanted me for so long.
There’s something so strange but powerful in seeing a newspaper used as a protest sign. If you’d asked me out of context if it was a good idea, I’d have had flashbacks of Monty Python yelling “splitters” or something and found it too on the nose, but seeing it in person had a completely different effect. It’s almost a refusal to sloganeer. And it really does spark conversations.
I love this shot. I’d been joking about how more protest signs need something on the back because they’re pretty boring to photograph from behind while you’re in a march, so I pointed my camera over my shoulder and captured this. I love the different expressions; you can see the keffiyeh I was wearing in the frame too.
I love these portraits too. I saw this comrade reading and when they noticed me lifting my camera to my eye, they looked up to smile with theirs, but I said: “keep reading!” — because the shot was totally not set up.
And the second portrait is too cute not to post, even though I’ve been kicking myself for missing focus by a hair. I haven’t used this camera or lens in months, so it felt clumsy in my (admittedly cold) hands.
It’s funny how you see the same faces again and again in these protests; everyone looks familiar, but no one talks to anyone else. You show up with the group you organize with; you might even have a separate huddle two blocks away, confusing everyone about where the rally is actually happening, then wander over to join the rest to claps and cheers (based on a true story).
My new friends are a bit of an outlier in that trend. They see rallies and marches as an opportunity to meet people and talk to them about their ideas; protest in and of itself doesn’t take up too much space in their theory of change.
Of course, I can’t help by read these dynamics through a denominational lens. There’s evangelism; there’s doctrinal difference; there’s original sin. There are creeds and ecumenical councils we recognize and others we do not. And there are people looking in from the outside who don’t quite get the nuances who roll their eyes and wonder why they can’t just get along.
I don’t like when people are so easily dismissive. As one article puts it: “To be a Marxist is to actively position yourself in a tradition of revolutionary activity which contains people like this – who felt Marxism with such depth. What does it mean to put yourself in a tradition that people died for, killed each other over, and took on the really hard work of organising against the brute forces of state and capital?”
Like what? Like people who asked to be buried with copies of The Communist Manifesto instead of the Bible. The author relays true stories like that from Bavaria.
There’s a depth to even the most surface-level differences among us. That’s something conservatives refuse to acknowledge, and liberals cannot understand.