Quan described Occupy Oakland's shutting down of the port yesterday as "Economic Violence". If the movement is not driven back, it will not be long before the dreaded "T" word appears more often in the bosses' media and out of the mouths of the political representatives of the 1% like Jean Quan and another former lefty demagogue Gerry Brown.
The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote about the bankruptcy of individual terrorism as a means of struggle by the working class as opposed to the mass action. Individual acts of terrorism (the assassination of capitalist politicians for example or the bombing of state institutions by small groups) by their very nature mean that those involved have to exist outside the working class. Their actions are an attempt to substitute the assassin's bomb for the conscious involvement of the working class.
But as in all things, there is a class issue to consider. From the bosses' point of view, the strike is, as Trotsky wrote, "The principal method of terrorism". Damaging the bosses' machinery or property is terrorism as is disrupting the Labor process which is what the strike does. The Labor process is the source of profit and capital accumulation and must not be interrupted.
As the class struggle intensifies in response to the capitalist crisis, we will begin to understand the changes that have taken place since 911 and the introduction of the Patriot Act and other measures. American workers and youth will not be exempt from the laws introduced since 911 under the guise of fighting terrorism and keeping us safe. We will be reminded that we live in a democracy but a bourgeois or capitalist democracy. Ancient Greece was also a democracy----for slaveowners. It was a slaveowners democracy. In this democracy of theirs they make the laws. Yes, we have won concessions from this democracy, but when they have to affirm their rule, they will resort to whatever means are necessary to do so.
Mayor Quan calls a work stoppage economic violence and she's right. It hurts the economic interests of capitalists. Mayor Quan would not call the cutting of city workers' pay or laying workers off violence, she's done a fir bit of that and more. The forcible removable of people from their homes and therefore shelter is not considered violence by those who carry it out, including Quan. Since the illegal invasion of Iraq began some one million Iraqi's have died. The total death toll if we include the mostly children that died due to US imposed sanctions might be around two million. Then there is Afghanistan and other countries around the world where Obama sends his drones. None of this is called violence. Madeline Albright, the former US representative at the UN called the loss of some 500,000 lives due to her country's sanctions "worth it."
Denying people medical care because they are poor and denying people shelter or a decent education or making them homeless are all acts of violence as is denying people food becasue they are too poor to pay for it.
Yes, it all depends which side of the class divide your on. The 1% define violence from their point of view and we can define it from ours. On the issue in general, I agree with Malcolm X when he said that he believed in being non violent with people that were non violent with him. But capitalism is organized legal violence and that is what we have to put a stop to.
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