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The black bloc's ungovernable protest

Jeffrey Paris
Published online: 19 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Jeffrey Paris (2003) The black bloc's ungovernable protest, Peace Review: A
Journal of Social Justice, 15:3, 317-322, DOI: 10.1080/1040265032000130913
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Peace Review 15:3 (2003), 317322

The Black Blocs Ungovernable Protest

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Jeffrey Paris

A yearlong government assault on civil liberties combined with a(nother) questionable invasion has led to the rebirth of a peace movement in the U.S. and
a generalized discontent that recalls the social crisis of four decades ago. Or does
it? The U.S. invasion of Iraq has been compared, often glibly, to the Vietnam
War, but this comparison raises as many questions as it does answers. What
might we learn from another look at the protests sparked by the invasion, and
from the intellectual response to the breakdown of law and order in those places
where the protests turned ungovernable?
Unsurprisingly, San Francisco has been a maelstrom of discontent. For
decades, the city has attracted progressives, nonconformists, and youth travelers,
becoming a counter-cultural haven. Massive demonstrations shook its streets
after the U.S. air campaign began in March 2003, and direct actions continued
throughout the month of the invasion. (They continue even now, after the war,
although the focus has shifted to corporations such as Bechtel and Lockheed
Martin which are reaping the post-war prots.) The scale of the actions literally
shut down large parts of the city, as demonstrators blocked busy streets and
bridge access roads, interfered with businesses, and engaged in targeted acts of
property destruction. Such actions had already become common during the
months preceding the invasion, as bands of demonstrators splintered from the
peaceful mass marches and spontaneously took over intersections, faced off
police lines, broke store windows, and so forth. These actions are often associated
with the Black Bloc, groups of black-clad anarchists who received media
prominence after the uprising in Seattle in November 1999.
In response to these protests, the city mobilized the most repressive police
forces in years. Over 2,300 people, many innocent bystanders, were arrested in
the rst three days, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars per day.
Children were torn from their parents shoulders; a political red squad targeted
local organizers; bicycles were overturned and their riders brutalized.
If intellectuals have concerned themselves at all with this radical wing of the
protest movement, it has only been to smear them with denunciationsnot
unlike the new mandarins of the 1960s. In what follows, I wish to explore the
parallel between the intellectual response to the radical protest then and now,
beginning with a look at some critical theorists at the center of the debate on
tactics and social change during the Vietnam War era.

uring the Vietnam War, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School enjoyed
one of its most creative periods. In 1955, Herbert Marcuse published Eros

ISSN 1040-2659 print; ISSN 1469-9982 online/03/030317-06 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1040265032000130913

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Jeffrey Paris

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and Civilization. In 1962, Jurgen Habermas published Structural Transformation of the

Public Sphere. Marcuse continued with his groundbreaking One Dimensional Man in
1964 and An Essay on Liberation in 1969, while in 1965 Theodor Adorno
published Negative Dialectics. These visionary texts each posed a stark contrast

between a repressive apparatus of state and society and the possibility of a more
authentic human existence.
But this period also saw the transition of critical theory into a philosophy of
abstraction, complacency, or complicity. Adorno and Habermas each ran into
conicts with student protesters involved in the Movement against the Vietnam
War, who found their theoretical innovations unhelpful for analyzing either the
conditions that brought the war to its peak or the forms of resistance that
emerged in response. Habermass worries over undemocratic practices led to his
infelicitous denunciation of the movements left fascism. Adorno and
Horkheimer were each viciously mocked by students in Germany. Nearly alone
among critical theorists, Marcuse maintained ties toand drew inspiration
fromthe emerging New Left. (Martin Beck Matustks recent Jurgen Habermas:
A Philosophical-Political Prole offers the best account to date of Habermass
break with the Student Movement and the contrast with Marcuse; Rolf
Wiggershauss The Frankfurt School remains the classic account of the relation
between theory and practice for all of those named above.)
What accounts for these differences? After all, Frankfurt School theorists were
united in their attempts to develop a post-philosophical social theorya critical
theoryin the tradition of Marx. Nonetheless, crucial differences in their approaches to critical theory can be elucidated by referencing their competing
experiences vis-a`-vis the student movement. I believe these differences can then
be applied to todays radical opposition, and help us understand (or, if we prefer,
avoid) the traps both set and sprung by todays new mandarins. I will look rst
at these varied approaches to philosophy and to protest, and then turn afterwards to the question of direct action and the Black Bloc.
n well-known essays from the 1930s, Marcuse and Horkheimer each articulate
a fundamental difference between philosophy, or what Horkheimer called
traditional theory, and critical theory. The distinction is summed up well by
Marcuse in his early book on Hegel, called Reason and Revolution, when he writes,

The transition from Hegel to Marx is, in all respects, a transition to an essentially
different order of truth, not to be interpreted in terms of philosophy. We shall see that
all the philosophical concepts of Marxian theory are social and economic categories,
whereas Hegels social and economic categories are all philosophical concepts [I]n
Hegels system, all categories terminate in the existing order, while in Marxs they refer
to the negation of this order. They aim at a new form of society.

The tension between Hegelian and Marxian approaches serves to demarcate

idealist philosophy from post-philosophical materialist social theory. But the
transition to genuinely materialist theory remained tenuous and ambiguous.
Twenty years later, Marcuses One Dimensional Man walked the thin line between
Hegel and Marx to a more thorough critique of the normalized repression of
advanced industrial society and the declining chance of an alternative. The
consolidation of a nearly unlimited order of repressiona one-dimensional
universe of thought and actionled Marcuse to fall back on the awareness of a

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merely abstract possibility of social change, politically impotent refusals that do

not burst the illusory veil of reication. With such a pessimistic conclusion, it
should be surprising that One Dimensional Man served as a popular reference point
later in the 1960s. Probably its inuence derived from the publication of Repressive
Tolerance the following year and the lectures on the Vietnam War that Marcuse
gave in the mid-to-late 1960s. The indigenous Vietnamese resistance was, he
thought, more than an isolated battle against colonialism; it was a break with
one-dimensional practice of global signicance. In an address to the German
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in Frankfurt, he said,
Vietnam has become a symbol of the future of economic and political repression, a
symbol of the future of the domination of man over man. What would the victory of the
national liberation movement in Vietnam mean? Such a victory would mean, and in my
view this is its decisive aspect, that a fundamental rebellion by the people can succeed
against the most powerful technical apparatus of repression ever created.

The real possibility of a successful rebellion led Marcuse, in works like Repressive
Tolerance and An Essay on Liberation, to develop a less pessimistic point of view in
which the practical experiences of the participants engaged in radical opposition
became his guiding thread.
Compare this with Adornos retreat during these same years behind pure
philosophy in Negative Dialectics. By a masterful assault on the philosophy of
identity, he hoped to dislodge the drive to totality that underwrote the repressions identied in Marcuses One Dimensional Man (which was, after all, a
reconstruction of many themes that rst appeared in Adorno and Horkheimers
1944 Dialectic of Enlightenment). Consequently, the book that resulted appears more
like speculative philosophy than a genuinely material theory of society. Adorno
himself admitted to this; as he famously wrote, Philosophy, which once seemed
obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed. Concerned that
materialist social theory can run into a defeatism of reason if it gives up on the
philosophical task of interpretation, he went on to write that The liquidation of
theory by dogmatization and thought taboos contributed to the bad practice.
Thought must not bow irrationally to the primacy of practice. By
practice, here, we are to understand all of the organized resistances that were
turning American and German universities into mini war zones.
Adorno thus defended philosophy as escape from the tumult and contradictions of anti-establishment practice. He had a series of confrontations with
student movement participants, culminating in a famous incident in which he
called the police on students occupying the buildings of the Institute for Social
Research, an incident for which Marcuse resoundingly criticized him. Some of
this clearly had to do with the personalities at stake, and Adornos passionate
commitment to his writing and teaching. But more than that, it shows a fear of
spontaneity, the potentially irrational facet of a practice that is ultimately
ungovernable.
In contrast, Marcuses Repressive Tolerance takes a radical anti-authoritarian
stance in relation to the question of practice, defending a natural right of
resistance and supporting extralegal means of protest for oppressed minorities
much like Jean Paul Sartre did ve years earlier in his preface to Fanons
Wretched of the Earth. By 1969 Marcuse had extended this right of resistance,

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Jeffrey Paris

with its extra-parliamentary action and uncivil disobedience, to the unorthodox refusals of the youth movements in the United States and abroad. Dissent
within the pre-established connes of democracy, he argued, merely reinforces
the system of monopoly capitalism which that democracy is shaped to protect,
and thus also reinforces the devastating war on poor and minority populations,
not to mention the systematic moronization of pretty much everyone else.
In An Essay on Liberation, he defends the antinomian, anarchistic, and even
non-political aspects of the rebellion. They are part and parcel of a moral
rebellion against hypocritical, aggressive values and goals. This new breed of
protesters dramatizes the New Subjectivity and pregures a liberated society:
protest and refusal are parts of their metabolism. The idea of a Great Refusal
raised in his earlier works manifests itself in the streets of Paris and America. Most
important, Marcuse does not shy away from the fact that such protests are
ungovernableindeed, that is the source of their strength. The very category of
opposition thereby undergoes a dramatic change, emerging directly from the
student movement rather than attempting to guide it. A new generation has not
simply emergedit has invalidated the force of previous conceptions of social
change.

he same is true today. The different directions taken by Adorno and

Marcuse should teach those of us trying to understand the new emerging
movements of dissent and opposition. As I noted, many activists today look to
parallels between the new peace movement that has emerged in the wake of
the War on Iraq and the Vietnam War or the 1960s more generally. Most of
these parallels are, on the economic and political level, pretty shallow, a point I
wont argue here (though readers are referred to an earlier essay of mine in the
annals of this journal, entitled The End of Utopia). But, there is an important
parallel in terms of the critics of U.S. policy, a break between those who want
to manage resistance and those who wish to develop their categories and
concepts out of the very resistances that are spontaneously emerging. The former
lack acuity in their judgment of the most radical core of the global protest
movement, misunderstanding those who forsake nonviolence for face-to-face
confrontations with police and corporate propertywhat Marcuse would call
uncivil disobedience.
Consider the comments of a prominent critic of U.S. foreign policy in March
in the San Francisco Chronicle. Asked his opinion of the so-called breakaway
marches associated with the Black Bloc, he replied, These [violent breakaway
protesters] are nihilists, not anarchists Theyre basically hoodlums looking for
a mass rally to ride the coattails of. They dont have a political agenda. And the
worst thing is that they dont have any leaders you can negotiate with.
To this critic, any group that lacks self-identied leaders by denition lacks a
political agenda. One wonders, naturally, what strange understanding of anarchism would allow it to rely on leaders? More important, he neglects the
abundant information (some of which the police have collected through questionable surveillance) of the widespread discussion and organization involved in
these breakaway demonstrations. But what concerns him most of all is that Black
Bloc protesters are fundamentally uninterested in negotiation. This lends their
actions a distinct ungovernability, since one cannot expect them to conform to
established rules and regulations.

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For instance, one signicant difference between these tactics and those of
traditional nonviolent civil disobedience is its hit and run style. Black Bloc
protesters generally do not wish to spend time in jail (though it is not uncommon
for them to do so). Thus, demonstrators who are not intending to be arrested are
often caught up in the general melee, especially as the police begin rounding up
marches in great numbers in order to re-establish order. This is precisely what
we saw in San Francisco, as thousands of law enforcement ofcers were shuttled
around in city buses to re-establish order. Fortunately, the level of coordination
among protesters was also extremely high, as couriers collected lm and
videotape of police abuses to deliver to safe houses and post to the internet.
Centers for food preparation and storage were set up to be distributed at
city-wide hot spots by bicycle-powered Food Not Bombs volunteers, and brought
to the jails and detention centers to greet hungry demonstrators as they were
released.
But the Black Bloc is not a group or a movement; it is a tactic open to anyone
who seeks to escalate the social and economic costs of repressive governmental
activity. Afnity groups engaged in Black Bloc tactics come from a large
spectrum of ideologies, though many or most identify as anarchists. These
activists typically make what is not an especially difcult philosophical distinction
between the violence of property destruction or direct engagement with police
forces (for instance, when protesters rush police in order to unarrest those who
have been detained) and the violence being perpetrated in wars of aggression.
With over 2,000 arrests in a few days in San Francisco, we can see that such
tactics of disruption spread well beyond the small, masked cadres usually
associated with the Black Bloc.
n contrast to more conservative voices, I believe this adoption of Black Bloc
tactics in San Francisco is a powerful testament to the failure of ordinary left
or progressive politics, including traditional acts of civil disobedience, when they
are not taken in conjunction with a more radical opposition. Critics and
defenders of U.S. policy alike call for the establishment of principles of order and
negotiation. This is ultimately no more than an Adornesque trap, seeking to hide
behind a philosophical idealism in contrast to the reality of the street protests.
Lets look, then, at Marcuses closing lines to Repressive Tolerance. He writes that

Law and order are always and everywhere the law and order which protect the
established hierarchy; it is nonsensical to invoke the absolute authority of this law and
this order against those who suffer from it and struggle against itnot for personal
advantages and revenge, but for their share of humanity. There is no other judge over
them than the constituted authorities, the police and their own conscience. If they use
violence, they do not start a new chain of violence but try to break an established one.
Since they will be punished, they know the risk, and when they are willing to take it, no
third person, and least of all the educator and intellectual, has the right to preach them
abstention.

To escape the trap and legacy of philosophical idealism supporting the status
quo, we must begin with the radical opposition, wherein lie the greatest potentialities for altering the current conditions of oppression. Black Bloc tactics are not
newthey have been utilized explicitly throughout the 1990sbut they have
clearly reached a level of generality that has changed the nature of the conict

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Jeffrey Paris

in places like San Francisco. I dont expect that this heralds a new wave of open
warfare on the streets of the U.S. Like Marcuse, I simply wish to side with a
movement that serves as the ferment of hope in the overpowering and stiing
capitalist metropoles; it testies to the truth of the alternativethe real need, and
the real possibility of a free society.
Thus, I also think that the period of the Vietnam Warand the intellectual
controversies that marked itholds unrealized possibilities for a post-philosophical standpoint from which critical theory can develop its resources. Taking cues
from Marcuse, we must identify the movements and people that escape societys
repressive apparatus and serve as an inspiration for a free society. This will
require a shift in the political self-conception held by many critical theorists and
policy analysts. We need to take a closer look at the possibilities that critical
theory has for developing its resources as an anti-authoritarian and anarchist
movement of thought and praxis, rather than relying on the obviously tired
socialist or left democratic theories of state and society. We need to stress the
search for New Subjectivities and Great Refusals as the means to burst the tight
circle of degradation identied in powerful works including Dialectic of Enlightenment and One Dimensional Man.
Let me close with words from a well-known communique that emerged in the
wake of massive criticisms of supposedly mindless Black Bloc actions in Seattle
in 1999:
When we smash a window, we aim to destroy the thin veneer of legitimacy that
surrounds private property rights After N30 [November 30], many people will never
see a shop window or a hammer the same way again. The potential uses of an entire
cityscape have increased a thousand-fold. The number of broken windows pales in
comparison to the number of spellsspells cast by a corporate hegemony to lull us into
forgetfulness of all the violence committed in the name of private property rights and of
all the potential of a society without them. Broken windows can be boarded and
eventually replaced, but the shattering of assumptions will hopefully persist for some time
to come. (ACME Collective)
RECOMMENDED READINGS

Adorno, Theodor W. 1973. Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton. New York: Continuum.
Marcuse, Herbert. 1941/1960. Reason & Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory. Boston: Beacon
Press.
Marcuse, Herbert. 1965/1969. Repressive Tolerance. in Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore,
Jr. & Herbert Marcuse (eds.), A Critique of Pure Tolerance. Boston: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, Herbert. 1969. An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press.
Matustk, Martin Beck. 2002. Jurgen Habermas: A Philosophical-Political Prole. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleeld.
Wiggershaus, Rolf. 1994. The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories and Political Signicance, trans.
Michael Robertson. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Jeffrey Paris is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Francisco, where he teaches
political philosophy, critical theory, anarchism, and postmodern theory. Special thanks for comments
and criticism on this essay go to William S. Wilkerson and Eduardo Mendieta. Correspondence:
Department of Philosophy, University of San Francisco, 2130 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94117,
U.S.A. Email: paris@usfca.edu