The Spontaneous Revolt
Reliance on Political Spontaneity is a Recipe for Disaster
In my last essay, I talked about the popular — and false — impression of revolution as a sudden, dramatic, and violent upheaval. This is reinforced by a lot of the media we consume in which revolution simply breaks out at some catalyzing moment. I use that phrase consciously because, when we see revolution portrayed on film, tend to be something that “breaks out,” rather than “builds.”
The mobs take to the streets. The final straw has broken the camel’s back. Now, the people are rising up in righteous outrage against their oppressors. They join together in the streets in their masses, acting as one and triumphing against tyranny. We see an example of this is in the first film in the Hunger Games franchise.
In one pivotal scene, a competitor in the titular bloodsport-turned-reality-show-a child previously characterized as an avatar of innocence and purity-dies a brutal and pointless death as part of this cruel game. The protagonist treats her death with the kind of gravitas and dignity it rightly deserves, then turns to the cameras and gives a salute used as a sign of respect. This moment of solidarity incites a revolt in the dead girl’s home district; we literally see people turn from the screen and charge at a line of armored police; presumably the first sign of revolt in generations.
Another example is John Carpenter’s classic of eighties paranoiac sci-fi, They Live. In the world of the film, we discover that our planet, at some point in the past, was invaded and quietly conquered by sinister aliens hoping to destroy our atmosphere and make it unlivable to humans. This is done with the help of the human ruling class, who collaborate with these invaders for their own personal enrichment.
In the film’s iconic final scene, one of the characters makes the ultimate sacrifice to destroy the aliens’ control mechanism and expose the truth. The implication here being that, with the monsters exposed, humanity will fight back and save their world.
In both these examples, we see revolutionary spontaneity at work. The people finally have enough of an unjust society and they fight back. The problem, of course, is that real-world historical precedent suggests that spontaneous action tends almost always to fail without the groundwork laid by a solid and dedicated political base.
In the summer of 2011, the Canada-based outlet Adbusters proposed the idea of an occupation of Wall Street. The idea was initially conceived of as a protest against wealth disparity and the influence of corporate power on the democratic process. The now-defunct website registered by Adbusters co-founder Kalle Lasn described Occupy Wall Street as a “leaderless resistance movement.”
Lasn’s characterization was reflected in the makeup of Occupy in general. There was no clearly-outlined ideological creed, theory, or even a stated objective to the protest movement. Occupy promised nothing more than an action to take in a situation in which no action was previously taken; an expression of rage against the global capital-owning class, or “The One Percent,” as they were more often known. Despite the vagueness of the proposal, countless thousands of people around the world ultimately heeded the call.
In those early days of Occupy, there was a genuine feeling of possibility in the air. For people of my age group, there hadn’t been any mass, global anticapitalist movement in living memory. This was set against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis, and the shockwaves of that collapse were still rolling across the globe. In that context — a situation in which nothing could happen — Occupy felt like a real moment in which anything was suddenly possible again.
This feeling would not last, though. There was always an anxious undercurrent, even in those early days of mass protest against the damned One Percent. Always the nagging question: “yes, and?”
Post-mortems of the Occupy movement are not exactly fresh in 2022. The bones of Occupy have been picked, examined, and cataloged by plenty of writers. However, there still persists within the embryonic Western Left a nagging attachment to the idea of spontaneity, nurtured in the cradle of Occupy, which has survived the analysis.
Spontaneity in Context
In the political sense, spontaneity can be interpreted as the belief that structures inhibit political possibility. Advocates of spontaneity hold that, when the moment is right, the people will instinctively know what to do and act accordingly.
Say, for instance, that the state were to suddenly disappear. All of the functions previously fulfilled by the state, from law enforcement to road construction, would suddenly be offline. Adherents of spontaneity argue that the people would instinctively organize themselves according to the needs of their communities.
Food co-ops would be organized to get food and other necessities into peoples’ hands. Democratic community patrols could be established to ensure safety of the people and prevent abuses in the vacuum of any formalized legal authority. Labor syndicates could be established to produce necessary goods and distribute them where needed. This is a sample of the spontanist vision for a post-revolutionary society; one in which we can effectively “jump” from a capitalist to communist mode of production with relatively few hiccups.
You have to admit that it’s a compelling vision. It’s also easy to understand the appeal to people who’ve been born into a highly-individualistic, atomized society.
The orthodox Marxist theory of change calls for putting in countless hours of base building. In contemporary practice, that means time spent knocking doors in the hot sun, calling phone number after phone number on a spreadsheet, and sitting through interminable meetings, all with no guarantee that it will ultimately translate to any measurable gain in political power.
In contrast, spontaneism posits that becoming a revolutionary requires no real up-front investment; one day, the levee will break and we will all become revolutionaries together in one sweet, beautiful moment. Class consciousness will annoint us like life-giving water. Not only that, but the spontanist vision promises that direct democratic processes will be baked directly into the revolution. There’s no need for a pesky vanguard to direct a revolution; that can only lead to the reestablishment of class distinction. Instead, we can rise up together, in unison, the material experience of the moment guiding our actions like a divine, psychic connection.
The thing about that…
Spontaneity as “Atheist Providentialism”
I, personally, am very skeptical of this approach.
There is a long history of Christian anarchism, as well as anarchist strains informed by other religions. However, it’s safe to assume that most self-conscious anarchists — the primary adherents of political spontaneity — would describe themselves either as atheists, or at least, not as adherents of any specific faith. Despite that seeming lack of religiosity, it’s hard to ignore that an appeal to spontaneity is, in effect, an appeal to faith. It is to trust that, when the moment arises, the people will instinctively know what to do, and that everything will fall into place. All the contradictions present will be resolved through democratic processes, which everyone will naturally recognize as valid and the best course of action.
Enrico Malatesta, one of the foremost anarchist thinkers of the early Twentieth Century, described faith in spontaneity as “atheist providentialism.” In response to a comrade who had charged him with laying out what are, in his view, the “practical means” for carrying out a revolution, Malatesta said:
“I could easily document that what I am saying now I have been saying for years; and if now I place more emphasis on it and others pay more attention to it than before, it is because the times are riper, in that experience has persuaded many, who formerly luxuriated in that blessed Kropotkinian optimism — which I used to call ‘atheist providentialism’ — to descend from the clouds and look at things as they are — so different from how we would like them to be.”
Spontanists have an abiding faith that the masses will realize their agency and recognize the right path forward in the right moment. They could argue for this from a position of material determinism; if it is true that peoples’ actions are guided by their material interests, then the masses pursuing their interests all at once will guide them toward the right course of action. What this ignores is that peoples’ actions aren’t determined by material interests themselves. Rather, peoples’ actions are determined by what they perceive those material interests to be.
Ideology will always cloud perception. One’s ideological lens will necessarily color the way in which a situation is perceived, and inform that person’s decision as to the right action to take in response. Most likely, this decision will not directly accord with material reality. There will be contradictions present, and ideology will shape how the subject understand — and responds to — those contradictions.
Think, for example, of a pint of beer sitting on a bar. There are two bartenders working; the first might see that pint and presume that the other bartender filled it halfway but got distracted before finishing. Based on that assumption, the bartender will decide to finish filling the pint. The other bartender, however, might see the same pint and presume that it was served to a patron, drank halfway, then left behind. Based on that assumption, the bartender will decide to take the glass and dump it out.
Political ideology works in the same way. While one person’s perception of a situation might lead that individual toward revolution, another’s perception of the exact same moment could lead them to counter-revolution and reaction. Therefore, a providential “faith” in the ability of the masses to realize the revolutionary moment to achieve a lasting and positive change, without any wayfinder to direct their action, can be inefficient at best, and deadly at worst.
Into the Great, Wide Open?
I don’t want to give the impression that spontanists reject political organizing outright. At least, not in so many words.
Spontanists often work side-by-side with one another to achieve set goals and to draw more people into a broader political struggle. The assumption, generally speaking, is that through the experience of struggle, individual members of the masses can identify the path forward. They’re correct in seeing that political struggle is, more likely than not, a necessary experience. The experience of political struggle is what strips away the twin illusions that no positive change is possible, and that any possible change can only be made through the processes given to the masses by their oppressors.
It’s also true that a commitment to absolute certainty, stripped entirely of willingness to embrace spontaneity, can paralyze earnest Leftists in the critical moment. Time and again, we’ve seen moments of great political opportunity pass by because all the Leftists with a “proper” theory of change are too busy passing notes in a Marxist study group to actually try to seize the momentum of the moment. Skepticism of opportunism is good, but absolute skepticism means one can only recognize genuine moments of possibility in hindsight. Such a person can correctly analyze the world, but never actually change it.
Regardless, we arrive at a bit of a contradiction of premises in the spontanist thought process here. Spontaneism posits that meaningful struggle occurs only in the moment of direct revolt. No groundwork laid before the moment of action can be revolutionary in nature. Building a political base cannot be revolutionary, nor can engaging in political education, establishing a political line, or maintaining message discipline regarding that line. That’s to say nothing of — dare we even entertain the idea — engagement in strategically-deployed electoralism.
The tendency is for spontaneity to come at the expense of base building. It comes at the expense of organizing by meeting people where they are at, rather than where we want them to be, then providing the right education, context, and a roadmap that can draw them into a broader, popular struggle.
Spontanists trust that, when the conditions are right, the people will know what to do. I applaud and admire their sense of faith in the people. It’s indicative of a kind of optimism that’s rare nowadays. However, can’t let optimism blind us to the realities of the forces allayed against us, nor can we ignore that the average working person does not entertain dreams of revolution.
To the average worker, revolutionary action is scary and unknown. Working people spend their days trying to keep a roof over the heads of their family and food in their mouth. Why would any person in that situation, regardless of how little they have left to lose, choose to embrace the unknown value of spontaneous revolution without any assurance that they will have dedicated, organized, and coordinated comrades by their side? Who would risk throwing a rock when, absent a pre-organized mass movement, there’s no guarantee that anyone will have your back?
Build You a Political Base
We have to consider the forces arrayed against us. We’re facing a hyper-militarized state; millions of active-duty soldiers and millions of cops. It’s true that, as living conditions deteriorate and pay stagnates, the ideological commitments of soldiers and cops — and thus their willingness to put themselves in danger for an increasingly detached ruling class — will become weaker. Nonetheless, the footsoldiers of the empire are unlikely to simply turn on their masters of their own volition.
Even more insidious, we’re up against an intense campaign of propaganda. Anti-socialist propaganda has become so deeply-entrenched in the American psyche over decades that, at this point, it’s practically pathology. The disinformation has been so effective that the average American can earnestly believe themselves to be “immune” to propaganda while, in the same moment, flatly parrot old State Department boilerplate.
We should not relish the idea of open conflict with the state, and we should not look forward to it. But, we have to remain clear-eyed in our read of the situation, and recognize that things will probably have to get worse before they get better. Given the direness of the stakes, it would be absurd to rely simply on blind faith in the people — on “atheist providentialism” — to organize themselves effectively in the absence of some larger, coordinating presence. This is especially true in America, where the fantasy of material self-reliance — a kind of phony individualism — has been drilled into the skull of every child since birth.
It’s essential that we organize a base of people, millions strong, to initiate the process of social change. This is the only thing that will allow us to act effectively when the next moment of revolutionary potential arises.
The fallout of the 2008 financial collapse marked a moment in which faith in the ability of capitalism to deliver a better world ebbed to a critical point. However, there was no organized “Left” to speak of which could capitalize on the moment. We had only the guttural howl of anguish embodied in the Occupy movement; a cry for change, with no mass movement to hear it. We can’t let that moment pass us by next time.
Originally published at https://arguechat.substack.com on July 17, 2022.
