Love and Rage
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- This article deals with the US Love and Rage. Love and Rage was also the name of a Sydney student political organisation which was predominantly Autonomist Marxist and anarchist.
The Love and Rage Network had its genesis in a November 1989 conference to launch a North American revolutionary anarchist newspaper. The "newspaper project" grew out of a series of North American Anarchist Gatherings in 1986 (Chicago), 1987 (Minneapolis), 1988 (Toronto) and 1989 (San Francisco). At the 1986 gathering, a network of groups began to cohere. At the 1987 gathering the loose Mayday Network was established and the following year discussions of a North American Anarchist Newspaper led to the production of two one-shot newspapers, 'Rage' and 'Writing on the Wall', that were precursors of 'Love and Rage/Amor y Rabia.'
The main initiative, however, came from the Minneapolis-based Revolutionary Anarchist Bowling League (RABL). The formerly Trotskyist Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) (who disbanded immediately before a fraction of their members participated in founding the new project, and gave them their 501(c)3, the Aspect Foundation) was also one of the main forces behind this. The initial supporters included anarchist collectives from Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, Atlanta, Toronto and Knoxville. They began publishing their bi-lingual newspaper - Love and Rage/Amor y Rabia -- in January 1990. Some anarchists were wary of the network and their federation, wondering if they were truly anarchist, some anarchists even wondered if the RSL was a Trotskyist group performing some kind of entryist tactic. Subsequent developments revealed the former RSL members to be among the most orthodox anarchists in the organization.
In its various incarnations (as newspaper, network and federation) Love and Rage had a strong activist orientation and its members participated in a variety of struggles around different issues. The first major action supported by Love and Rage was the 1990 Earth Day Wall Street Action, a day of direct action targeting the ecological consequences of capitalism. Love and Rage called the first national black bloc in the United States as a breakaway from the main body of a January 1991 March on Washington DC against the first Persian Gulf War which attacked the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund.
From the beginning Love and Rage members showed little regard for anarchist orthodoxies, and adopted positions heavily influenced by several varieties of Marxism, most notably support for national liberation struggles and embracing a white skin privilege analysis of racism in the U.S. that argued that the material and psychological benefits received by white workers at the expense of non-white (especially African American) workers undermined the basis of multi-racial working class unity and therefore had to be confronted directly if such unity was desired. The theory has complex roots in Black nationalist and American communist thinking and became influential in the New Left through the writings of Noel Ignatiev and Ted Allen. In the late 1950s and early 60s Ignatiev and Allen were both members of the Provisional Organizing Committee, a proto-Maoist breakaway from the CPUSA. Ignatiev became active in Students for a Democratic Society and was later a leading figure in the Sojourner Truth Organization, an organization influenced by Maoism and Italian Autonomist Marxism. He briefly joined Love and Rage but left after a year. Love and Rage also echoed Lenin in arguing for the need for disciplined forms of revolutionary organization. These positions led some critics to accuse the organization of harboring Leninist tendencies.
In 1991 the groups putting out the newspaper formed the Love and Rage Network. That same year an anarchist gathering in Cuernavaca, Mexico led to the creation of the first Amor y Rabia group in Mexico City. In 1993 the Mexico City group, with the support of others in Mexico, began publishing their own newspaper, Amor y Rabia. The U.S. based newspaper became mono-lingual at this point and the Mexican paper was distributed to Spanish readers in the U.S..
In 1993, the core New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Mexico City groups and others expressed the desire for a tighter federal structure, which caused some other groups to leave and new people to join. This is when the Love and Rage Network was renamed the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation. At this time Love and Rage members were very active in doing anti-Klan and anti-Nazi work and in building up Anti-Racist Action (ARA). Others were active in defending abortion clinics and prisoner solidarity activism.
The 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico focused much of the attention of the organization on Zapatista solidarity work. Members of Amor y Rabia made quick contact with the Zapatistas and Love and Rage members in the United States were early participants in setting up Zapatista solidarity groups and in disseminating English translations of their communiques. At the 1994 convention of Love and Rage, "Mexico Solidarity," "Prison Abolition" and "Anti-Fascism" were decided as the three main areas of work for the organization.
Love and Rage members also participated in a variety of fights against neo-liberal measures in the U.S.. These included the fight against budget cuts and tuition hikes at the City University of New York (CUNY) and a Living Wage campaign in Vermont.
By 1996 major divisions began to appear in the organization. Some of the most active members were moving away from anarchism. Another trend made up mainly of older former members of the RSL who argued for an anarchist politics focused on the working class, in opposition to two other factions, both which focused on race: one which wanted to make "white skin privilege" the central concern; the other of which focused more broadly on a Third World Marxist program which included an endorsement of nationalism by non-white racial groups, combined with a focus on gender and sexuality. There was also a regional division in the organization, related to differing priorities in the locals based in New York City and Minneapolis. Many members were caught between the two organized trends, or found the debate to be irrelevant to organizing work, and began to leave the organization. The Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation formally dissolved in 1998. The Third World Marxist faction formed the Fire by Night Organizing Committee, a non-anarchist cadre group which had chapters in San Francisco and New York; after a brief existence, some members entered the Marxist organization Freedom Road Socialist Organization. A second group - those who endorsed the idea of 'white privilege' and were grouped around Joel Olson - formed the Bring the Ruckus! federation, who described themselves as between Leninist party and an anarchist network. Another group, made up of former members of the RSL began publishing The Utopian, and some of them later entered the platformist anarchist federation NEFAC. And many other individuals went on to be active in anarchist and non-anarchist forms of activism.
While the formal membership of Love and Rage never exceeded 150 at any one time (and fewer than 40 attended the final conference), several times that many people passed through the organization and it enjoyed an even larger circle of sympathizers and readers of its newspaper. (The print run of the last issue was 9,000.) Love and Rage had a very lively culture of internal debate that -- for most of its life -- successfully avoided sectarian bickering. While they largely rejected its emphasis on building a disciplined revolutionary organization, Love and Rage influenced the political perspectives of a fraction of the young activists who would go on to play major roles in the anti-globalization movement, in particular their understanding of the distinct role of racism in the workings of U.S. society.
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