“Strange Victories”
is a famous underground pamphlet about the anti-nuclear movement, published in
1979. Strictly speaking, it´s an issue of “Midnight Notes”, a magazine or
perhaps pamphlet series published by the mysterious Midnight Notes Collective,
of which very little else is known. They seem to be anarchist, but avoid the
typical anarchist jargon in favor of one which sounds more Marxist. Sometimes,
the collective is described as “autonomist” but I admit I know very little
about the autonomist current within anarchism (it´s distinct from the milieu
usually known as Autonomen, although there may be some overlap). “Strange Victories”
has been promoted as a pro-violence pamphlet, but while the Collective doesn’t shun
violence as a means of struggle, most of the publication deals with other
issues. The main point is to criticize the anti-nuclear movement (which was
particularly strong during the late 1970´s and early 1980´s) for being
dominated by the middle class. Instead, Midnight Notes wants an anti-nuke movement
of working class people, a movement directed directly at capitalism, rather
than simply against “nukes” which threaten “all of humanity”. There is also an
implicit criticism in the pamphlet of Green movements overall.
Midnight Notes
regard the 1970´s energy crisis as a hoax. There really was no crisis – the monopolistic
energy companies raised the prices simply because they had the power to do so.
Indeed, there are no shortages of energy and other resources at all. Everyone
in the world can be clothed, fed and get a high standard of living, if only
resources would be more equitably shared. Coal in particular is a cheap and
good resource. (Today, this ideas sound awfully naïve, but there was a thriving
ecologist movement already back in 1979, so I´m not sure if the Collective
really has any excuses here.) Thus, the energy crisis is simply an attack by
capitalism on the living standards of the working class. The nuclear power
industry takes this one step further. It represents the fusion of capital and
state power, and plays a generally repressive role in society with its tightly
regimented labor force, police and military protecting it, fear generated by
it, etc. Also, nuclear power is an attempt to break the power of unionized
labor in the coal and oil sectors. As for solutions to the “crisis”, while
nuclear power has to go, there is nothing in principle which could stop
capitalism from using solar power against the working class, perhaps by hiking
*those* prices too. Thus, workers´ management of production and distribution is
the only way to deal with the “energy crisis”.
Midnight Notes
then point out that despite all the above, the movement against nuclear power
isn´t working class in character. Rather, it emerged in rural areas, usually in
the immediate vicinity of the nuclear power plants themselves. The Collective
reveals that if looked at closely, the “rural” movement is actually made up of
back-to-the-land middle class people from universities and colleges. (I suppose
a less sympathetic observer would call them “hippies”.) While they do enjoy the
support of farmers, local small entrepreneurs and such fundamentally
conservative sectors, the organized movement – in this case, the Clamshell
Alliance – is fundamentally urban middle class and faux leftist. Or rather rurally
transplanted urban middle class. This creates a strong tension between the
anti-nuclear movement and the working class, which is usually conspicuous by
its absence.
The Midnight Notes Collective are scathing in their criticism of
the “leftist” intellectual types dominating the Clamshell Alliance. Being
discarded parts of the “educational”-propaganda apparatus, they have no direct
relationship to capital. They can´t protest their condition in any other way
than to pretend to represent “humanity as a whole”, but this really reflects a
relationship to capital at its most general level. The middle class hippies are
really positioning themselves as the future professional and intellectual
planners of generalized capital, a form of planning which will usher in a more “rational”
form of state capitalism. Even their seemingly radical back-to-the-land
philosophy does service to capital by experimenting with new ways of “labor
intensive” production (i.e. more exploitation, but of a “classical” sweatshop
labor kind). By contrast, ordinary workers have a direct relationship to
capital, and hence no other choice than to identify with their own “special
interests” (really class interests). They don´t really care, except in the
abstract, about whether or not nuclear power is a threat to “humanity” for the
next 500,000 years (one of the talking point of the Clamshell). No, they are
threatened by the energy crisis and its nuclear component *in the here and now*
on the basis of their proletarian position within capitalism.
The
pamphlet also criticizes the concrete structure of the Clamshell Alliance.
Decision-making was based on consensus, which according to the authors really
means that the privileged and well-educated take command. The “Clams” were organized
in affinity groups, really a kind of cliques based on personal friendship, and
hence excellent for creating social cohesion within the hippie subculture, but
excluding everyone else. Pacifism is disparaged by Midnight Notes as an elitist
tactic. Only people with long training in peaceful civil disobedience can effectively
execute pacifist actions. The actions are presupposed on the notion that the participating
privileged elements are “valuable” to society and hence can´t be touched by the
police or National Guard (seen as “lower”). If all forms of violence are
rejected, the only alternative to elitist peaceful disobedience is sheer
legalism, perhaps backed up by strictly non-confrontational protest marches at
designated places. These can mobilize the broad masses, but only as subordinates
to legalist politicians. (Shortly after the pamphlet was written, an
anti-nuclear political party was indeed formed, the Citizens´ Party.)
Despite
their “working class” perspective, I think it´s obvious that Midnight Notes
Collective were really part of the same milieu they are attacking. A “collective”
is, of course, an affinity group. How do they know so much about the Clamshell
Alliance and various “progressive” farms in New England? Because they have enough
spare time to join or visit. Why the strange poetry and obscure references to “Alice
in Wonderland”? Because they have college education. Also, note the strong
hippie flavor of the criticism against nuclear power plants at the end of
Section II. Nuclear power plants are said to be symbols of psychological
repression, they are built to suppress “obscure wishes and desires”, and so on.
Of whom? Hippies, of course. It seems Alan Watts (or was it Wilhelm Reich) was
the man even in the Midnight Notes Collective…
My main
problem with all this is something else, however. While I do sympathize or
empathize with the ecologist movement (or sections of it), their demands were
quite simply unrealistic. Without nuclear power, no nuclear weapons. Without US
nuclear weapons, Nazi Germany would have won the war. That would be a “strange
victory” indeed. During the Cold War, depending on which side you support,
either the US, the Soviet Union or China clearly needed nuclear warheads. Unless
you think anarchist “workers´ militias” work against Soviet Russian tanks…or
nukes. Today, the problem is the exact opposite: no, there aren´t “enough resources”
for everyone, they are shrinking, and due to climate change (the coal!), they
will shrink even more in the future. Who knows, perhaps the hippies will turn
out to be the real victors in this ideological confrontation. Before they get
eaten by roving packs of feral dogs emerging at midnight…
O Oysters,
said the Carpenter,
You´ve had
a pleasant run!
Shall we be
trotting home again?
But answer
came there none –
and this
was scarcely odd, because
they´d
eaten every one.
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