The Lost Art of the Fighting Organization

Look anywhere near a mutual aid grouping and you will see the slogan “Solidarity, Not Charity”. While the look of “charity” and its association with philanthropy may not be what is intended, and it is arguable if the model is different enough to say it is not charity, the point is that “solidarity” doesn’t describe service work. This is concurrent with a historical decline in class struggle organization.

By conflating “solidarity” with service work, people’s risk impoverishing what solidarity actually means and feels like. If your work is visibly indistinguishable from NGOs, capitalist firms, well-meaning religious groups, and even fascists, you cannot expect the political content to actually be different. No amount of plastering red flags changes this.

Proclaiming “solidarity, not charity!” doesn’t actually put you in a position of solidarity with the people you claim to fight for, solidarity isn’t about service, it’s about reciprocal defense of each other because peoples are in the same social position. It also means “skin in the game”, you’re all in it together. That feeling, that massive undertaking, all the building that happens prior to the march on the boss, are not bonds formed by sharing their meager crumbs, but coming together to take what is their’s. It’s high points are preceded by less flashy work, but it’s based in the kind of relationship between people willing to sacrifice themselves for each other.

Look anywhere near a mutual aid grouping and you will see the slogan “Solidarity, Not Charity”. While the look of “charity” and its association with philanthropy may not be what is intended, and it is arguable if the model is different enough to say it is not charity, the point is that “solidarity” doesn’t describe service work. This is concurrent with a historical decline in class struggle organization.

Critical Reflection on the Relationship Between ‘Solidarity’ and ‘Service Work’ in Organizational Strategies

Proclaiming “solidarity, not charity!” doesn’t actually put you in a position of solidarity with the people you claim to fight for, solidarity isn’t about service, it’s about reciprocal defense of each other because they are in the same social position. It also means “skin in the game”, you’re all in it together. That feeling, that massive undertaking, all the building that happens prior to the march on the boss, are not bonds formed by sharing their meager crumbs, but coming together to take what is theirs. It’s high points are preceded by less flashy work, but it’s based in the kind of relationship between people willing to sacrifice themselves for each other.

It is certainly not easier to do actual organizing, with targets and demands, amongst people who are actually positioned to be in solidarity with each other. It takes a great deal more patience, planning, ground work, research, courage, pain and sacrifice. However, it is without any substitute. So, they need to think critically and politically about what is elevated as “good work”, because there’s a lot that’s getting thrown around as such which is getting them nowhere.

Some may detract and point to the need to organize collective care work and the creation of a new world, and this deserves consideration. However, this is always proposed in the context of a clearly demarcated struggle. Proponents of mutual aid differ in that they presume the relationship of fighting organizations to mutual-aid efforts, and presume their political content, whereas those who sought to revolutionize care work paid close attention to the relationship of their reproductive labor to capital. What is proposed by these proponents looks markedly different than the mutual aid that Spade proposes.

If their mutual-aid efforts are not closely linked with target-and-demand driven fights with bosses, landlords, administrators, it has no relationship to organizing. What passes as “organizing” today is mostly being a member of an organization and doing whatever it takes to make that organization grow. Like “solidarity” and “direct action”, they have to draw some lines and some contrasting of “organizing” with mutual-aid.

Why does the Liberalism in Mutual Aid Prevail?

What is the grip that mutual aid has on the left? Why do people take to mutual aid so quickly, instead of building a target-and-demand-driven fighting organization? The answers seem pretty clear.

It requires little risk on anyone’s part. If there is a risk, it is also a risk for the state to repress it, given the moral consequence and optics of trying to impede service work. It poses very little challenge to the state and capital, who view these efforts largely indifferently, or even positively, as they actively contribute to the reproduction of workers, a burden increasingly relegated to the working class.

Anyone can participate regardless of their social position. A group of aristocratic worker/petite bourgeois socialists can easily engage in the work without blowing their cover. There is very little in common they actually need to have with the people they are serving. In fact, there’s a stark power division; they have something valuable that these people need and do not have.

Because this does require some labor, they get away with all the ability to capture the rhetoric of “organizing”; they are doing “the” “work”. They can tell people, “well, what are you doing?” Most leftists who become active and reach out to leftist groups are looking for the first thing to DO and will latch themselves to the first thing that looks good. They can “do first, think critically about what they’re doing later”.

The optics are undeniably good, and they get all the moral high-ground. Their critics become critics of feeding people, and their opponents can be framed as not desiring people to be fed. This moral buffer can even be used to excuse other unrelated problems with their politics or practices. In this sense, it serves the same function as philanthropy from the ruling class.

Professional and managerial tendencies translate neatly. Their skill in juggling five different communications platforms and workflows is needed. They learned everything they need on how to check vibes, social network, “emails emails emails”, the whole thing. They’re on the cutting edge, and there is important work to do. Who’s gonna send the email about it?

It requires neither the patience nor discomfort of class struggle work. Instead, the “good feelings” are immediate. The payoff and gratification of “doing something” comes instantly and cannot be taken away from them. They may have had to enter an uncomfortable conversation, but for the most part, they can do a lot just talking to the people they know. In today’s fast-moving world, their redemption and sleep at night come to the lowest bidder on a first come, first serve basis.

While this might seem counterintuitive to rationale 5 above, much of the economy is already service-oriented. Therefore, it is easy for some to reduce it to the same interchangeable parts, and the work is accessible, and people know to expect a grind. It is easier to get people to give their labor in a strategic way than it is to get them to withhold it.

It’s not as simple as it is to say it’s “easy,” as mutual-aid organizations do a lot of work. In fact, the point of it is sort of that there’s always work to do. It’s more accurate to consider the myriad of political reasons why this gets attention over organizing. Mutual aid projects are more well-supported than fighting organizations because they alleviate conditions on an individual basis (even if done many times over) without challenging their source, and it also provides no challenge to “common sense” consciousness that pervades much of US liberalism.