direction.” (Fox-Piven 1977, xi). Francis Fox-Piven decries the cleavages and backlash that led to white working class reactionary oppression of Black proletarian struggle. Today we see this with the racialized leftist recuperation of rioting against the police and mass incarceration where rioting is framed as an unfortunate side effect of the failure to implement this or that reform, is decried as the sneaky work of outside agitators, or moralized through a white gaze as begging the question of would destroy own community like that” as if to naturalize the “why ‘they’ ‘their’ sense of entitlement of white middle class observers have toward public space or to discount the joyous ecstasy experienced though disruptive agency. The deliberative democratic theorists like Barber attempt to organize struggle around a set of deliberative institutions around reasoned debate and the ability of compromise to present itself in every given situation, or at least that should be the goal. However, the flaw I find in Barber’s arguments is similar to most democratic theorists coming out of the Western canon in that they carry with them liberal assumptions about the ability to distribute violence throughout a society to allow for stable exploitation through the property relation. Barber himself has a useful insight when he attempts to describe what coming to consensus looks like in a fair deliberative arena, that there would have to be some degree of autonomy in order for a claim that consensus has been reached. In short, to make an agreement that meets the standards of deliberative equality sought by democratic theories, those making the decisions must be made with semi-autonomy. What deliberative theorists miss is that democracy as a concept cannot be separated from the conditions and modes of survival available to those in struggle. The goal of approaching struggle as a set of tactical tendencies I hope illuminates the necessity for the escalation of conflict as a means to develop praxis. The demobilization of disruption is part of a recuperative strategy on the institutional liberal left as well as through state forces of repression acting on our movements. The upholding
direction.” (Fox-Piven 1977, xi). Francis Fox-Piven decries the cleavages and backlash that led to white working class reactionary oppression of Black proletarian struggle. Today we see this with the racialized leftist recuperation of rioting against the police and mass incarceration where rioting is framed as an unfortunate side effect of the failure to implement this or that reform, is decried as the sneaky work of outside agitators, or moralized through a white gaze as begging the question of “why would ‘they’ destroy ‘their’ own community like that” as if to naturalize the sense of entitlement of white middle class observers have toward public space or to discount the joyous ecstasy experienced though disruptive agency. The deliberative democratic theorists like Barber attempt to organize struggle around a set of deliberative institutions around reasoned debate and the ability of compromise to present itself in every given situation, or at least that should be the goal. However, the flaw I find in Barber’s arguments is similar to most democratic theorists coming out of the Western canon in that they carry with them liberal assumptions about the ability to distribute violence throughout a society to allow for stable exploitation through the property relation. Barber himself has a useful insight when he attempts to describe what coming to consensus looks like in a fair deliberative arena, that there would have to be some degree of autonomy in order for a claim that consensus has been reached. In short, to make an agreement that meets the standards of deliberative equality sought by democratic theories, those making the decisions must be made with semi-autonomy. What deliberative theorists miss is that democracy as a concept cannot be separated from the conditions and modes of survival available to those in struggle. The goal of approaching struggle as a set of tactical tendencies I hope illuminates the necessity for the escalation of conflict as a means to develop praxis. The demobilization of disruption is part of a recuperative strategy on the institutional liberal left as well as through state forces of repression acting on our movements. The upholding
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