Fugitive of Empire

I became interested in the problem of organization as a participant-observer of the Occupy movement. Those who followed this unexpected course of events will recall that organization was an absolutely central - I would argue the central - axis of strategic debate. On one side were voices from the classical socialist and labor left, along with a new generation of neo-classicists, who argued that the Occupy movement needed to "get organized" to overcome its diffuse and ineffectual character. They convincingly pointed out that without some structure to orient the movement's activities and ensure its continuity, it would simply disintegrate - as it eventually did. On the other side were those who argued for the embrace of spontaneity, conceived as the very opposite of organization, since the latter was always imposed by leaders and hierarchies which would ultimately become obstacles to the realization of the movement's aims. Though their underlying theoretical approach varied widely, from autonomist horizontalism to ultra-left catastrophism, these critics pointed out that the classicists were operating on an ahistorical conception of organization, failing to understand the wide-ranging transformations that separated our present moment from the history of the workers' movement (a history far more contradictory than the various forms of socialist nostalgia imagined)