Analysis can be undertaken for a variety of reasons: as a critical appraisal of tactics, as an attempt to construct a plan for intervention within a specific situation, in order to learn the lessons of past failures, or simply to deepen our understanding of the functioning of this society. In this essay we hope to offer a critical look at some of the analyses of the insurrections in Algeria and Argentina, and an analysis the events following hurricane Katrina. We have used these three events in order to make a few points about analysis in general, things to avoid, as well as a few suggestions for ways of improving analysis.

Putting together a piece of analysis requires gathering as much information as possible in hopes of discerning what is "truly" transpiring. If we lack contact with those who are actually participating, we are usually left with news reports, NGO dossiers, or the analyses of a variety of political rackets. Each of these contains an implicit bias: for the media most revolts or uprisings are criminal acts of insubordination that should be crushed, and many political analyses by leftists are employed to only further their particular ideology. We are not, however, simply trying to escape bias, after all we have an agenda, which includes the destruction of this society as it now exists. What we hope to offer are a few criticisms of the way in which wishful thinking can allow for the misrepresentation of events, and how this misrepresentation does little to further our project.

New Orleans

When analyzing a situation, first and foremost, one must be honest and upfront about the amount of information being used as well as the type of information being used. When hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans area and looting ensued, an article from Army Times entitled "Troops begin combat operations in New Orleans," which was widely circulated on e-mail and on anarchist news-wires, stated that an insurgency was underway in the city. This was along with mainstream media reports, which stated that looting, carjackings, and general mayhem had spread across the entire Deep South. Some anarchists from St. Louis, in a piece called "Now is the Time? Now is the Time! The Potential of the Gulf Coast Crisis: Points for Discussion and Intervention," spoke of the beginning of some kind of Iraq along the bayou. This was in fact far from the truth.¹

We must be wary when using various sources of information because they will present things in a certain way. The mainstream media depicted looters as violent rapists and murderers, and also took part in vicious rumor mongering, spreading fear of armed black people on a rampage throughout the entire Gulf South. The Army Times writer, not surprisingly, presented events as a military operation, employing the most recent ideological prism: insurgents vs. American heroes. Most revolutionaries rejected mass media representations of events, but the Army Times article on the other hand was not subjected to a critical look because it promoted an idea that was appealing to the authors of "Now is the Time:" a possible armed uprising by the dispossessed of New Orleans. The lesson to be learned from this is that a critical appraisal of information sources is necessary across the board regardless of whom they are written by. Thus even if a situation is depicted in a way that seems favorable from our point of view, it should be scrutinized nonetheless.

Despite the faults in "Now is the Time..." the writers attempted to do something that is sorely lacking within American anarchist discourse, analyzing events as they are occurring and making proposals for action. It was not an attempt to outline an ideological position, but rather a proposal for struggle. Thus it becomes even more important to critically employ sources of information. Seeing an insurgency where there is none, based solely on one news report, is a product of wishful thinking. Therefore one task of analysis should be to take a cold hard look at the often bitter reality of situations.

Algeria

Publications such as Willful Disobedience , Class War , and Communism described the village committees , or aarch , as vehicles towards a self-organized society. An article from Willful Disobedience stated that "[t]he strength of the insurgence in this region is due largely to the fact that it has been able to revive and use old tribal methods of horizontal communication."² These horizontal methods an 11-point honor code which prevents delegates from making statements in the name of their aarch or its coordinating body, from accepting a position of power (elected or appointed), or of using their position for electoral ends. Delegates are also revocable and held no decision-making powers over other members of the aarch . Therefore it should be clear why these structures were of interest to anarchists: they appeared to be anti-political organs of struggle.

  It was later found out that the aarch were not as horizontal as they appeared. In fact women were barred altogether from taking part in the decision-making. Even younger men had a difficult time being accepted within the aarch . Clearly women played a role in the insurrection, participating in mass demonstrations and road blockades, but this is not enough. Also young men were a strong force behind street fights with police, attacks against offices of political parties and looting. As a result many of those who took direct action and made the insurrection what it was, were excluded from the aarch all together.³ The insurrection was not simply the aarch . To call these organizations horizontal, or coordinating bodies for the insurrection would be a mistake. The analyses that misrepresented the delegates and the aarch at the least suffered from a lack of information, as most news sources from Algeria are obviously written in Arabic, and to a lesser degree French and Tamazight. The articles, which mention the exclusion of women, were few and difficult to find, but this does not change the fact that it was a major oversight. Thus it is important not to jump to conclusions concerning the nature of specific insurrections.

Argentina

The insurrection in Argentina, which broke out in December of 2001, is another case in which a variety of writers simply wanted to prove the party line. The full course of events is too large to go into here, and I admit to lacking the capacity to do so, but a few points can be made nonetheless concerning the various piquetero groups. The piqueteros became heroes to leftists and anarchists across the world as unemployed people who were blockading highways across Argentina, effectively halting the flow of commodities inside and outside of cities. Some spoke of building a dual power through the coordination of piqueteros and neighborhood assemblies, while others spoke of horizontalism and autonomy that represented a new form of politics.   Either way there was a tendency to avoid intricacies and cheer for one's ideology.

For those not familiar with the situation in Argentina, it was easy to homogenize the piqueteros' actions and to ignore the complexities of real events. The piqueteros are in fact scores of local groups of the unemployed, which predated the uprisings by nearly a decade. Each piquetero group is affiliated with larger coordinating bodies, each with different politics. Many were, and remain, autonomous from parties and unions, while others are appendages of leftist parties and even the Peronists. Being wedded to parties led to some piqueteros taking part in reformist, and one could even say counter-revolutionary, actions during the insurrection of 2001.⁴ So even using the term piqueteros is problematic in that is implies a homogeneity that does not exist.

To illustrate this point further, in their Spanish-language organ, Communismo , the International Communist Group (ICG) claimed that the actions of the piqueteros , "demonstrated to the world that the proletariat was able to affirm itself as a historical subject," meaning that the actions of the piqueteros as a whole represented anti-political communist activity. If, however, many of these groups are in fact appendages of party organizations, then they absolutely are not anti-political, and their practice would not extend towards the abolition of capitalist social relations. While the ICG is guilty of homogenizing the activities of the piqueteros , this is indicative of a larger trend in radical analysis towards the homogenization of groups and activities within an ideological framework.⁵

Conclusion

1) For anarchists, analysis should never be undertaken in order to spread an ideology or to try and prove the correctness of one's ideas so as to gain adherents. Many leftist rackets use uncritical cheerleading as means of recruiting members for their organizations or in order to sell more newspapers.

2) Insurrections are not pure events, and often they have contradictory tendencies within them. Therefore it is important to highlight those elements that we find encouraging, but not to overemphasize them. We gain nothing through misrepresentation or wishful thinking. Those aspects that we find deplorable should obviously never be hidden, nor should they be deemphasized.  

3) Homogenizing events and activities, or trying to fit them within a particular political framework can lead to ignoring evidence, falsification and useless conclusions. The reality of situations can be disheartening, but seeing revolution everywhere does not change the actual content of movements and events.

4) It is impossible to know about the particularities of every situation, but intellectual laziness is also a danger. Simply finding the information that supports the story one wants to tell is the hallmark of mass media. Therefore it is important to be honest about how much information one has and recognize the obstacles that a lack of information presents.

5) We can easily sharpen analyses through a variety of means. It would greatly benefit revolutionaries to learn other languages in order to have access to a wider array of information. Of even greater importance is the necessity of establishing international contacts with whom we can share information, analysis and critique. Comrades on the ground can help give us a more nuanced understanding of insurrectionary events, rather than us painting them with a broad brush due to a lack of information.

Kellen Kass

Notes         

1. " Troops begin combat operations in New Orleans," Army Times , September 2, 2005.
" Now is the Time? Now is the Time! The Potential of the Gulf Coast Crisis," St. Louis Indymedia , September 3, 2005.
2. "Insurrection Continues in Algeria," Willful Disobedience , Spring/Summer 2004.
3. See "Les archs misogynes", El Wata n, 7 March 2002, which is cited in the International Crisis Group's dossier on the Kabylia uprising.
4. For more background on the complexities of the piquetero movement, see " Picket and Pot-banger Together:" Class Recomposition in Argentina?, Aufheben 11 (2003).
5."Acerca de las Luchas Proletarias en Argentina," Communismo #49 , November 2002. We do not expect many readers to be familiar with the ICG, but we still feel it is important to address some of their writings. There are particularly interesting writings of theirs online about the worker's councils in Iraq in 1991.