Bookshelf: A road map for radicals

Bruce Levine - Occupy Wall Street insider Jonathan Smucker’s recently published Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals (AK Press, 2017) is the post-Occupy guide for how to be smarter about politics. Smucker, a long-time grassroots organizer, does not dismiss what Occupy did right but is honest about its failures. The 99% remain just as powerless as ever, and we still have endless wars, corporate control, and increasing social and economic injustices.

In the tradition of Saul Alinsky and Antonio Gramsci, Smucker points out that “knowledge of what is wrong with a social system and knowledge of how to change the system are two completely different categories of knowledge.”

Smucker spares nothing and no one—including himself—in his passion to achieve political victory. Smucker asks himself: “How many times, I wondered, had I favored a particular action or tactic because I really thought it was likely to change a decision-maker’s position or win over key allies, as opposed to gravitating toward an action because it expressed my activist identity and self-conception? How concerned were we really, in our practice, with political outcomes?” Smucker concludes, “We often seemed more preoccupied with the purity of our political expression than with how to move from Point A to Point B. It felt as if having the right line about everything was more important than making measurable progress on anything.”...


Failed social movements, Smucker tells us, often don’t overcome the political identify paradox. Specifically, social movements need to foster a group identify and have a dedicated core willing to put in many hours. But fostering this group identity can lead to isolation and failure to connect with others outside the group. The group that only cares about cohesiveness and maintaining its identity is not going to accomplish anything but just that. Focusing exclusively on creating a strong identify can “create a wall between them and potential allies.” Smucker observes, “Building a community, for example, is a worthy pursuit. But these motivations become a problem when they trump our motivation to accomplish our ostensible political goals.”

One byproduct of focusing too much on group identity is being dismissive of potential allies because they were not radical enough. For Smucker, “Every time a prominent supporter was snubbed, a message was sent to all potential supporters: ‘Your support is not wanted. This thing is ours.’ ” Successful social movements build a large base of support “outside the choir,” and they put great effort into actively courting influential supporters. Smucker tells us, “Occupy Wall Street had an incredible opportunity to do this—indeed, many influential supporters were courting us—but too often we did precisely the opposite.”

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