Black Autonomy Podcast: Dual Power

Black Autonomy Podcast: Dual Power

A Simple Explanation

Dual Power: A Simple Explanation

Jan 27, 2021

Dual power can be explained as the building of a transitional program for political, social, and economic transformation. Itcreates survival programs to oppose state power and creates a new type of autonomous public sector when the state fails the people.

This is how to go beyond protest to building an anarchist societal infrastructure. 

JoNina Abron-Ervin is a former editor of The Black Panther newspaper, author of Driven by the Movement: Activists of the Black Power Era, and a co-founder of the Black Autonomy Federation.

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin is the author of Anarchism and the Black Revolution, a co-founder of the Black Autonomy Federation, and a former member of the Black Panther Party.

This podcast is produced by a collaboration between writer William C. Anderson (@williamcson) and members of Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation (@BRRN_Fed).

Artwork by Third Aye (@Thirdayetheory). Introduction music is an instrumental version of Song 33 by Noname.

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survival programs to oppose state power and creates a new type of autonomous public sector when the state fails the people.

Actually, this is called social work. It may do something good things but it is no threat to anything. Dual power emerges in a context of a society-wide mass upheaval, where the state and the old order have lost their moorings, and a new social movement has come into being and has not yet advanced to the level of actually toppling the state yet. Examples of this being the French Revolution, Russia in 1917, Spain from July to Sept. 1936, France for a few weeks in May-June 1968, Iran with the downfall of the Shah, and more recently Egypt.

It looks like the authors of the perspective touted above have not moved beyond the failures of the pro-Mao and pro-electoral politics Black Panther Party, and are just attaching a circle a decal to them.

Most social workers I know are employed by the state (or work for organizations that are funded by it) and are absolutely not opposing it.

This is sooo 60s "Wow c'mon people we can have good politicians not interested in personal power who only want to serve the people who voted for them in this beautiful positive capitalist system hallelujah! "

Whether they are aware of it or not that's pretty much what this comes down to.

There is no difference between social work now and dual power. Whether one opposes the state or capital is a non-issue. All of this is social management, and will continue to be regardless of what is happening in "society." Anarchists have been critiquing other anarchists doing this kind of thing for a very long time (see Malatesta and Makhno, re platforms). Why the need to take responsibility for others survival, in a general sense? This is, as has been pointed out, what governments do, and what the social contract is based on.

Why the need to take responsibility for others survival, in a general sense?

Uhhh -- how about, because humans are social animals, and we owe each other solidarity? And because that's the negation in practice of the dog-eat-dog reality of market society?

Actually, what Komboa Ervin proposes here makes a lot of sense. It's clearly an immediate practical response to the unendurable suffering that vast numbers of people have to endure in this declining and despicable social order, and maybe it can play some very real positive role in the rise of a new mass revolutionary movement. In and of itself it isn't 'dual power' and confusion on this might derail some kind of larger aggressive response to the social order while trying to understandably immediately remedy immediate mass hardship.

"Actually, what Komboa Ervin proposes here makes a lot of sense. It's clearly an immediate practical response to the unendurable suffering that vast numbers of people have to endure in this declining and despicable social order, and maybe it can play some very real positive role in the rise of a new mass revolutionary movement."

This is exactly the problem. Anarchism makes no sense in this current society, and it shouldn't make sense either. There is nothing wrong with people forming groups to help people practically. But why call yourself an anarchist then? What differentiates anarchists from other do-gooders? Because we really believe it, where others lie? What Komba-Ervin says makes no sense to me, or the fact that you talk about 'vast numbers of people enduring this social order.' Am I not one of the those faceless masses of people - I am no different from them and share with the fact that I am powerless. Anarchists who talk as if they will create a mass revolutionary movement by practically helping people get by seems to be very similar to many other small groups of people that have decided to take it upon themselves to displace their own need for change onto people they have never met.

"This is exactly the problem. Anarchism makes no sense in this current society, and it shouldn't make sense either. "

Look... your problem is pretty straightforward. You're an authoritarian dog. A sheeple. You got perhaps abused by The Man, or by "your man", or by your dad or your boss, but then you started seeing this bad pattern everywhere around you as the One and Only Truth There Is.

Meaning, the State has won already like way before your mom got laid with that guy.

i.e. "determinism". A perfect moral cuck's belief system.

Translit: "Property is the only way coz the State sez so. And I won't oppose the State because. LEgalism the only way, maaaaan! Choose anything else and your supporting oppression of the Oppressed. But hey did I just say you ain't got no choice? So why am I even arguing... OBEY."

Moral of the story for idiots: Nothing makes sense. What makes sense is what you make into making sense.

Constructivism always checkmates, mate.

Always.

Anarchists who talk as if they will create a mass revolutionary movement by practically helping people get by seems to be very similar to many other small groups of people that have decided to take it upon themselves to displace their own need for change onto people they have never met.

In the US, anarchist come in two flavors: self-involved children going through a phase that almost all of them age out of, and long-term self-involved cranks. Which are you?

I did not anticipate being called names when responding to the content of this thread. All of these personal insults are very telling about the actual state of anarchists in the US. What is this about being a crank, a child, a dog, or a sheeple? We do not engage in actual debate about what we are doing, or what those who claim to be us are doing. Instead, if someone decides they do not like a person's program about dual power, or whatever it may be, they are told there is something wrong with them. if you are not able to affirm the basic humanity amongst others, how would you expect *masses of people* to come and join you? It is no wonder that the numbers of anarchists in the world has dwindled for the last one hundred years. You are not able to perceive yourselves from the outside. Instead, it seems to me that you are displacing your own frustration with the world onto others who are trying to live.

> All of these personal insults are very telling about the actual state of anarchists in the US.

Point of clarification: you're being insulted by people from all around the globe, including UK, AUS, US, CAN, EU, and SEA.

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