Authored by: WeedyLiver on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 05:36 AM CDT

"Why"(?) wrote:

It didn't "stop nuclear power,"...

You quoted a string of words that Graeber didn't even use in his article. What he said was that one of the medium-term goals of the anti-nuke movement was to "delegitimize the very idea of nuclear power". The short-term goals of stopping the construction of specific power plants failed, but the goal of deligitimizing nukes in the public's eye worked. They might build new nuclear power plants, but people by and large are definitely not enthusiastic about them.

Also, if you wanted to make an argument that capitalism took advantage of the anti-nuke movement by investing in other forms of energy that were more profitable (in your words: "an example of something in the interests of activists also being in the interests of the capitalist market"), you could easily have mentioned how they've been (in Graeber's words) "moving towards conservation and green power", since that's (1) enormously profitable for capitalists and (2) serves as a much better example of capitalist opportunism merged with co-optation of activists' desires. Nevertheless, it would have been a pretty boring tangent, 'cause it's like Duh - capitalists want to make money off things -- really?!

Oh, and then there's the part where you say:

So if something is in the interest of capitalists, I feel that it's completely silly to actually give them what they want.

Haven't you ever done anything, ever, that a capitalist can make money off of? I'll bet you a million dollars that you will do at least 5 things within the next year that some capitalist somewhere will profit from. Or, are you the One that is so pure and holy and beyond the reproach you have for others?

And while I'm at it, let me knock this one down, too:

"Discussing stragety [sic] inevitably requires accepting criticisms from people like Bill Not Bored. If his criticisms of a given discussion were treated the same way during a stragetic [again, sic] meeting, I think nothing useful would come out of it."

Um... Bull. Shit. [sic to death of your lame arguments] ... Nothing good came of Bill Not Bored's flimsy criticisms, and nothing good is coming of yours, since (in my humble opinion) both of you presented rather idiotic and pointless blather masquerading as intelligent debate. If you or Bill Not Bored were in a stra-te-gic meeting, you'd probably just be ignored.

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Authored by: Why on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 07:32 AM CDT

"The short-term goals of stopping the construction of specific power plants failed, but the goal of deligitimizing nukes in the public's eye worked."

Oh, OK, so we're talking about the public percepction of nuclear power. Fine, yes, they fearmongered people into disliking nuclear power except for places like France. But that wasn't the big thing stopping nuclear power, look at history, the Non-Poliferation Treaty went to great extents to do it, and this was needed because as an exploitive first world state you don't want third world countries having access to nuclear technology (since it allows for one to make nukes and then be on an interesting playing field as far as policy is concerened). So not only did they "back down" making nuclear power plants, they prevented the third world from having it, too.

I'm still amused by supposedly intelligent Americans protesting the launching a space probe that has so little nuclear material in it that it's essentially irrelevant.

"They might build new nuclear power plants, but people by and large are definitely not enthusiastic about them."

Erm. Yes, of course they're not, but "peoples enthusiam" is irrelevant. The state is going to build a power plant as the need arises (be it a nuclear power plant, a hydroelectric power plant or some varient thereof), and if you look at the statistics in the USA that is *exactly what is happening.* There is no "slow down" of nuclear power, it continues as demand is met. The only difference is that it did not take over coal as a power source as it was purported to do back when practically every country was throwing billions of dollars at the problem (thus, really, making the issue not marketable anyway). Coal still won, which is precisely what the capitalists wanted, because nuclear at the time was too expensive and not an ideal energy source in an environment where fossil fuels are magnitudes cheaper. In places like France and Japan which lack fossil sources nuclear wins the day. And if you were to go to France and protest nuclear power plants I assure you that they won't be fearmongered into cowering down and saying "oh no 80% of our power is evil!!"

So you just ignored what I said and picked at one niggly pedantic word. I say "stop" I should've said "hinder." Boo hoo.

"you could easily have mentioned how they've been (in Graeber's words) "moving towards conservation and green power", since that's (1) enormously profitable for capitalists and (2) serves as a much better example of capitalist opportunism merged with co-optation of activists' desires."

Read my blog "Live Earth a Smashing Success for Green Capitalism." I have for quite awhile been writing about this issue, and I get flamed for it but what can I do. I've noted the consumerist aspect of activist circles for awhile. But we were talking about a more specific example, that is, the "success" of activists "deligitmizing nuclear power," when all they did was prevented it from taking over coal power (which was already cheaper and more profitable for capitalists anyway). So I had no desire to reiterate something I've been saying for awhile.

"Haven't you ever done anything, ever, that a capitalist can make money off of? I'll bet you a million dollars that you will do at least 5 things within the next year that some capitalist somewhere will profit from."

Of course I have. But I don't sit back and say I was an activist and my activism actually resulted in harming fucking capitalism when I do it! Harming capitalism, fucking it up, is not an easy task. It can profit from destruction just as much as it can from building. It is such a pervasive entity that we really really do need to look at a given situation before we come to the conclusion that our actions were successful at harming capitalism. But it seems here that in this instance the intention wasn't to harm capitalism, but rather to harm nuclear power, or at least that's what it seems you're arguing. That's fine. But as I pointed out it didn't work. Nuclear power wins the day in places where it is strategicly beneficial to utilize it. Places without local abundances of fossil or hydrolocial resources.

"Nothing good came of Bill Not Bored's flimsy criticisms, and nothing good is coming of yours, since (in my humble opinion) both of you presented rather idiotic and pointless blather masquerading as intelligent debate. If you or Bill Not Bored were in a stra-te-gic meeting, you'd probably just be ignored."

Ad homs are all you people have been throwing at Bill Not Bored, so you only helped prove my point when you direct them at me. If we really were expressing "idiotic and pointless blather" then it would've been incredibly easy to ignore both of us, but people attached to Bill Not Bored, albeit without being substantive. I say the word "stop" instead of "hinder" and you pick at it like a vulture.

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Authored by: davidgraeber on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 08:43 AM CDT

actually, my responses to Bill's attacks on my "loopy self-congratulation"
were:

1) that he was attacking me for a statement that I had obviously
never made (that "we" are "winning" in some grand overall struggle)
2) that his supposed refutation of my observation about the US
government tends to use war as a way of undermining internal
democratic mobilization employed fallacious logic

in what way were these ad hominems? An ad hominem is when you
divert attention to someone's arguments by attacking their personal
character instead. My comments addressed Bill's arguments (stating
that the first was irrelevant, and the second logically incoherent). About
his personal character apart from his arguments I know nothing at all.
David

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Authored by: Why on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 10:22 AM CDT

Did you forget the part where you called him a "loud, belligerent, and frankly in this case at least rather stupid person"? Among many other insults you and others threw at him? C'mon, be honest here guys, you didn't like what he was saying so it pissed you off.

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Authored by: davidgraeber on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 11:35 AM CDT

yes, but you know for what it's worth that's not an ad hominem because
I was simply describing his arguments and style of argument. If
someone makes arguments in a belligerent style it's not "ad hominem"
to say they are doing so. If someone makes stupid arguments it's not
an ad hominem to say that "in this case, at least" they are acting
stupid. It might be rude, but lord knows Mr. "Not Bored" is the one who
introduced the extreme rudeness element, not me. Sorry. If you write
something saying "I think in certain campaigns we've won our middle
range goals so quickly it's impeded our ability to win our long-range
ones", and someone jumps in and starts screaming "how can you be
such an idiot as to believe we are winning the overall war against
capitalist imperialism!!!!" you are kind of asking for such treatment. If
you are going to attack someone in a rude, arrogant, and superior
fashion, you should at least get your basic facts and logic right, or
people _will_ point it out, and probably in an equally impolite fashion. To
complain about their doing so seems downright bizarre. It's like
someone runs in and tries to punch me, misses, slips on a banana peel
and falls on his face, and you're complaining that I'm laughing at him.

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Authored by: Why on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 10:27 AM CDT

BTW, I don't get this whole discussion about "winning" myself. You wrote at the conclusion of your article, "Actually, recently, we’ve been winning quite a lot."

Which I might agree with on different issues (not the ones you write about).

Bill Not Bored! merely responded to that statement with their misgivings within the movement. It then devolved into this, gosh, 50 reply discussion about winning or not. Geez.

Anyway, I'm done responding (though I might stealthily respond a few months from now as I've done that before because I just can't help it when I get unnecessarily flamed). ;P

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Authored by: davidgraeber on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 11:44 AM CDT

No he didn't. That statement clearly says that we've been winning "quite
a lot" _of specific campaigns_ - not that we are winning some grand
overall war against capital, as should be obvious from the repeated
statements throughout the article that (a) we are destroying the state
and capitalism, and (b) we don't even have a clear vision of how we
would. Taking one phrase out a context that _could_ be read in one way
and saying that he was responding to that one phrase and not to the
article as a whole is just childish. Even you must know that's not really
true.

As for the nuclear industry: well, if that's what you want to think, fine. It
is my understanding, from friends who were part of the Abalone
Alliance, for instance, that PG&E was planning over 50 new nuclear
plants when the Diablo Canyon campaign began. Every one except
Diablo Canyon was cancelled. But sure, if you prefer: nothing we do
makes any difference. Let's all just go home and feel superior to each
other for successfully proving just how hopelessly fucked we all are and
that will make things much better.

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Authored by: davidgraeber on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 11:46 AM CDT

oops - the statement above "we are destroying the state and capitalism"
should obviously be "we are NOT destroying the state and capitalism"

sorry. typo

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Authored by: Why on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 01:13 PM CDT

Since you didn't flame me I felt I should respond. You said:

"But to start in that direction, the first thing we need to do is to recognize that we do, in fact, win some. Actually, recently, we’ve been winning quite a lot."

This does not read as "winning specific campaigns," it reads as "we are winning a lot of campaigns." Because you say, at first, that we "win some," but then go on to say we've been "winning a lot." Do you see what I'm saying? A lot implies that our successes are more than 'some' and may even imply to some that it is the majority of our attempts. Anyway, would you consider this a reformist, as opposed to a revolutionary, position to have? Picking here and there at the state and hoping that one day all of our changes will make it collapse? I'm a revolutionary and I don't ascribe to those views. And I'm certainly more pessimistic about these things than most. Though I don't think that warrents saying I don't think certain actions cannot work, merely that those actions are not for me.

Anyway, the Abalone Alliance pwned PG&E, no doubt. And that was a great success for that movement. But there are 70 operational nuclear power plants in the country, perhaps the goal of 50 power plants was met after all, although not by PG&E (the cost of the Diablo Canyon plant was incredibly insane). The mindset back then was that nuclear power would *replace* coal power, not *supplant* coal power. But clearly that was economically infeasible (although not in France which has almost no fossil resources). So if you go to the second energy link I posted, you can see a chart showing total energy use, and total nuclear energy use, and it is clear that it is supplanting coal and other energy sources, as time goes on. There was never any realistic hope of nuclear just taking over coal overnight, coal is dang cheap. But within 20 years coal will be taking the back seat no doubt.

Pointing this out by no means devalues the actions those people took. Nor does it encourage a defeatist position that nothing can be done. It merely points out the success rate in a reasoned manner, nothing more, nothing less. You take with it what you will. If some people take from it that they shouldn't act, that is just fine, as not everyone should have to act. Likewise if people take from it a change of tactics, then that's great too!

To respond to the ad hom thing, I think that the first couple of responses to Bill Not Bored calling him stupid gave him every right to become belligerent, though I think if he was smart he wouldn't let stuff like that get to him.

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Authored by: davidgraeber on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 01:23 PM CDT

I see what you're saying but it's absurd. Yes, I said we've been winning
a lot of campaigns - though I also specified (over and over again) this is
in terms of middle-range and not long-range goals, and that in fact we
have the problem that our very success in achieving middle-range goals
often seems to impede our ability to successfully challenge the state and
capitalism in the long term. This is obviously not the same as saying "we
are winning" in the long-term campaign against the state and capitalism
and if someone loudly declares that's what I was saying, it's hard to
conclude anything other than that they either had read the piece with no
comprehension whatsoever, or they had decided for some reason to
willfully misrepresent its contents. Basically what you are doing is making
up desperate excuses for self-evidently stupid and obnoxious behavior.
But enough of that. That conversation contributed absolutely nothing to
anything so I shouldn't be keeping it alive - my bad. I will no longer talk
about Bill Brown and from now on confine myself to topics that might be
of some actual interest.

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Authored by: Why on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 01:40 PM CDT

Do you really think that the meat of his comments were about whether or not you said we were "winning"? It seems that wasn't the brunt of his comments at all yet that's what people decided to focus on. Call this observation "absurd" if you will. But whatever, we can let it die.

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Authored by: davidgraeber on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 02:21 PM CDT

this was Bill's first response to the piece:

>Bush and Cheney are still in office; torture is widely practiced and
called
>legal and justified by those who perpetrate it; none of Bush/Cheney's
>cohorts are in jail (not to mention swinging from trees); the US military
>is still in Iraq and Afghanistan and may soon be in Iran, too; the
election
>"results" of 2006 have proved to have been completely illusionary; all
of
>the Democratic candidates with any possibility of getting elected are
pro-
>occupation, pro-war and pro-Big Business; global warming and pollution
>proceeds at an ever-quickening pace; all kinds of products from WTO
>member state China are being recalled for containing lead; New
Orleans
>is still under water; snitches and FBI plants helped put away several
>ALF/ELF radicals; etc etc etc.

>If this is Graeber's idea of victory, I'd hate to see his idea of defeat.

then, when biofilo pointed out that wasn't my point, saying (accurately
enough) that I was pointing out, among other things:

>"We're a long way from winning, but we're actually contenders in a
fight,
>not spectators--at least when we choose to be--and that's an
important
>thing to understand."

he replied

>Good point: only it's not the point that Graeber makes: he thinks we
are
>winning, as if the anti-capitalist movement was like a soccer game

look, just give it up. The guy misread the piece completely and insisted
we all debate an issue that he invented even as he argued that it was
stupid. Thus he effectively prevented discussion of almost anything
actually in the text. Now let's stop - I shouldn't even be posting this, I
said I wouldn't, but I really find it tiresome to watch all this weaseling -
let's talk about something interesting for a change

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Authored by: Why on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 10:30 AM CDT

BTW, WeedLiver, here's a site with the statistics I talked about: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/nugen_small.jpg

Click on Graphs: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/nuclear.html

It's been steady for the past 3 decades. There's no doubt about that. So just because "perceptions were changed" means squat, which is what I was arguing.

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Authored by: Admin on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 12:59 PM CDT

I forgot to mention the grassroots campaigns against nuclear power as another victory for our movement. Anarchists were also involved in that movement so we can add that to our list of successes. Some of the older activists involved with the anti-globalization movement cut their teeth on the anti-nuke campaigns of the 1970. So, in addition to halting the construction of nuke plants, those campaigns also trained activists who went on to be involved in other movements.

There is a move afoot to start building nuke plants again. It looks like we'll have to re-educate the public once again about why building nuclear plants are a bad idea. Perhaps anarchists can add some extra analysis about the dangers of centralized, government-controlled industries.

Chuck

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Authored by: Why on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 01:26 PM CDT

Just so you know, many nuclear power plants have just been retrofitted or additions have been made rather than "building new ones" over the years. According to wikipedia it looks like a lot of them have gone through this process (which also increases electrical output). Nuclear power is pretty scalable, so they just add another boiler and steam tower, pow, double the output.

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Authored by: Admin on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 03:26 PM CDT

It doesn't surprise me that current nuke plants have been upgraded. I would assume that this is the case, because energy companies are always upgrading and improving their facilities (for the most part).

But the anti-nuke movement had a significant effect in stopping the nuclear power industry from building more plants. This was a significant victory for grassroots activists and I'll bet that the ruling class and the power industry are still smarting from losing that battle.

Chuck

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