A-Infos (en) THE NORTHEASTERN ANARCHIST #5 - What, If Anything, Is A Dual Power Strategy? - A response to the 'Bring the Ruckus' statement by Wayne Price

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Bring the Ruckus, the statement by the 
Phoenix Ruckus collective, declares itself for 
"a dual power strategy". It defines this as "one 
that directly challenges institutions
of power and at the same time, in some way, 
prefigures the new institutions we envision..." 
As an example, it gives its Copwatch 
campaign. Other "popular protests", however
well meaning, if they do not lead to this 
so-called dual power strategy, "should be 
abandoned" by revolutionaries. It gives the 
example of animal liberation, but could have
cited many more popular struggles.

What is "dual power" anyways? The term itself 
arose during the 1917 Russian Revolution. The 
Russian word "dvoevlastie" is usually 
translated as "dual power", but could be
given as "double sovereignty", or "two-power 
regime". It was used in Russia after the old 
Czarist state had been overthrown and a new, 
pro-capitalist regime, the
Provisional Government, was set up. It 
claimed to be for capitalist democracy 
although it did little to carry out a bourgeois 
democratic program (it did not call elections
or give land to the peasants or self 
determination to the oppressed nations of the 
Russian empire). But at the very same time, 
another power existed - the popular soviets
(councils). Rooted in factory committees and 
local bodies, these directly represented the 
workers, peasants and soldiers. Originally they 
were just popular bodies to
coordinate strikes. But they had such support 
among working people that they came to 
shadow the new capitalist state. For a period, 
there were two centers of power, the
Provisional Government and the affiliated 
soviets, and this was the dual power regime. 
This could not last indefinitely, and eventually 
the soviets were used to overthrow
the Provisional Government. A coalition of 
Bolsheviks, Left Social Revolutionaries 
(revolutionary populists) and anarchists used 
the soviets to smash the previous regime
and set up the soviets as the new power. As is 
well known, the Communist Party eventually 
replaced the soviets with a bureaucracy as the 
new state, which is another story.

Trotsky generalized this to other revolutions 
for the sake of revolutionary strategy (see 
Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution). 
Paraphrasing his ideas (as I now
understand them): During revolutionary 
periods, it is unusual for rising classes to 
establish a new power overnight. Instead, what 
is more common is for there to be two or
more institutions, competing for potential 
power. At some point this may take the form 
of outright civil war, with each side fighting for 
territory. One side tends to
include neighborhood committees, workplace 
councils, associations, directly-democratic 
forms and councils of delegates, which are 
counterpoised both to the power of the old
state and of the new capitalist state. All too 
often, the popular organizations do not see the 
need to stand on their own. They hold 
themselves subservient to the
liberal-democratic forces, until it is too late 
(which is what happened in Spain in the '30's). 
It is the job of the revolutionary organization 
to awaken people, to get
them to see the need to overthrow all the 
states in favor of the popular association as 
the new power (in Spain, this was finally seen 
by the 'Friends of Durruti', but too
late).

In the current North American anarchist 
scene, the term "dual power" floats freely with 
little to no connection to its original 
revolutionary meaning. For example, it is
often used to describe the 
alternate-institution strategy. That is, 
capitalist institutions should be gradually and 
peacefully replaced by cooperatives, 
communes,
intentional communities, worker-run 
businesses, free schools, etc.

These should spread and grow, behind the 
back of the capitalist state, until they would 
take the place of the authoritarian system. 
This is a program that goes back to the
early utopian socialists or to Proudhon. There 
can be nothing wrong with founding 
cooperative stores or worker-run enterprises. 
These are good in themselves and need no
justification. But when they are proposed as a 
strategy for replacing capitalism they are no 
better than other forms of reformism. Rather 
than build a movement to confront
the system, this strategy means to slip away 
from it. But the system is not run by fools (or 
at least, not entirely by fools). If such a 
movement were ever to threaten
them, they would suppress it, and there would 
be no mass movement to fight for it. More 
likely, the rulers would have co-opted it long 
before things reached this stage.
Coops tend to fail by success. That is, they do 
well and merge into the capitalist economy. (I 
live in a coop building, very well run by its 
tenants, and no threat to
capitalism.)

The Ruckus-ites have a very different 
intention. They want to confront the capitalist 
state. But, they tie their hands with a rigid set 
of rules. Somewhere there may be a
document explaining why revolutionaries must 
directly challenge the state and prefigure new 
institutions at the same time. I have not seen 
it. The reasons are not
self-obvious. As they know, although the level 
of struggle has increased, we are nowhere near 
a revolutionary situation in North America. 
We are far from a real dual power
situation. While Copwatch is a very good 
program, it does not really threaten the state 
under current conditions. Union organizing 
(very difficult in Phoenix) would be a
greater threat to business at this point. 
Instead I propose a strategy of opposition and 
class struggle.

Revolutionaries should encourage any and all 
mass struggle from below against the 
capitalist class and its institutions. We should 
be for anything that opens up people's
eyes to their oppression and leads them to 
fight for their own interests. We should 
support the needs of all oppressed people, 
while connecting these to the struggles of
the working class, due to its strategic power to 
change society. We support demands that 
would improve the lives of ordinary working 
people, and we propose demands and
methods of struggle which lead to further 
opposition to the ruling class.

Whether or not this oppositional approach is 
called a dual power strategy is not important. 
I do not see any advantage to calling it dual 
power. There is no point in tying
our hands with rigid definitions of what sort of 
struggles may or may not be supported.

Wayne Price
Open City Anarchist Collective 
(NEFAC-NYC)

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