On
Activism
“The philosophers
have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however,
is to change it.”
- Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach
In the context of our political engagements today, whether it
is about changing the trajectory of politics in Sri Lanka or opposing
the onslaught of US imperialism and repression, only a radical
activism can aim to change the world in the spirit of the quote
above. While there are intellectuals and academics who attempt
to interpret our world and have a progressive impact on the world,
they remain entrenched in their ivory towers; unless their politics
is grounded in an activism born out of struggles against war,
state terror, racism, sexism, poverty and such they will be muted.
On the other hand, there is a strong strand of anti-intellectualism
in the activist community limiting their vision of politics and
their understanding of struggles. As if to add to the division
of labor and specialization so characteristic of capitalist production,
the activists and academics seem to be cocooned in their own sites.
Any productive activism needs to bridge the gap between theory
and action; a critical need exists for greater interaction between
both communities.
Such interaction may on the surface seem to be hindered by the
arrogance of activists and the pompousness of academics. But the
roots of the gulf are grounded more deeply in historical conditions
and the prevalent social and economic system. In the post-Cold
War era, where traditional Left parties are on the retreat, a
variety of activisms have to take on a crucial role in struggles.
However, given their vital role, such activisms also have to confront
the danger of being co-opted or normalized by the sources of power.
Therefore, we need to be aware of how our relations as activists
and academics are produced, in order to consciously confront the
limits of our political action.
One characteristic of the capitalist system is its ability to
disguise not only its own reproduction, but also the production
of the very political literature that might challenge it. Capitalist
ideology has conceptually divorced productive-consumption into
categories of production, distribution and consumption. It is
only during a crisis that one is reminded of the unity of production
and consumption in the process of reproduction. Similarly, with
the production of political literature in the academy, it is only
a crisis in our political activism that might awake us to the
impotence of knowledge that is produced, hoarded, marketed and
consumed. If academics are in the business of producing jargon
packed research on debates for their own incestuous community,
then activists are in the business of consumption, though not
necessarily of academic political literature. The venues for production
such as academic conferences, and the medium of activist consumption
of papers and pamphlets, both remain isolated even in this day
of mass communication. Although technological advances in publishing
from academic books, to activist journals, to online magazines
should have made sharing of information easier, the gulf has remained.
The effectiveness of the student movements in the sixties was
their ability to open up the universities, so that it nurtured
activists. In our day, the universities have increasingly become
closed research institutes, where knowledge is produced like any
other commodity in a factory closed to the world. Just as businesses
guard their knowledge and technologies in the form of patents
and copyrights, academics also guard their work so it could be
produced, branded and marketed with their name. Furthermore, the
production of knowledge and activism is often funded and capitalized
by businesses and foundations with very different interests.
More recently the World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre was
an attempt to bridge a variety of forces. It was a network of
movements from the South and the North that had come together
to oppose the very global capitalist forces that attempt to divide
them. Academics and activists have traditionally divided theory
and practice respectively along North and South global relations,
where theory is produced in the North and practiced in the South.
The WSF and other such forums recognize that there is a North
within the South and a South within the North. Furthermore, they
want to learn from struggles around the world, and understand
how these struggles are related.
It is in this context that we should be concerned about the role
of the dominant schools of conflict resolution. This is a school
of thought produced in Western academic capitals in conjunction
with Western state institutions; it is an ideology not open to
the peoples’ aspirations much less based on them. It views politics
in an a-historical and “objective” manner and sees conflicts as
resolvable by bringing together the parties that hold power. Many
subscribers to this school do not recognize that everyday popular
struggles, or for that matter the struggles in their collective
political life, are oppressed by the same forces of power whose
conflicts they attempt to resolve through rational principles.
Even when such schools call for the people to participate in peace
building, it is only a limited, narrow view of conflict between
two parties in power, and a corresponding view of the peace that
they promote, and will not support popular struggles in their
multiplicity against the variety of the forms of power. These
are the dangers of making politics an abstract, science of management.
Furthermore, this is not a politics that is born out of the practice
of activism in engagement with theory; rather it is a product
of state and academic bureaucracies in the West exported to the
elites of the Third World.
Reliance on such a school of thought, which is complicit with
those in power, is the result of the bankruptcy of the academic
and activist communities both in the North and South. If we are
to begin to interpret the world and more importantly, change it,
we have to open our universities and research institutes, become
activists who engage in theoretical debates and consciously challenge
North and South divisions. There is an urgency to return to the
path of praxis, where our theory and action will be based more
on the day-to-day struggles of estate workers, children facing
exploitation, factory workers, people living with AIDS, ethnic,
caste and religious minorities, domestic workers, landless peasants,
communities fighting police brutality, women’s struggles for equality
in the work place, prisoners demanding better conditions…
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