Step 5: Limited Lawlessness

A problem for revolutions is that they destroy the respect for order that keeps society peaceful. I'm not saying that if you remove the police, everyone, especially the poor, is going to go berserk. But there are anti-social elements, and what's more, there are people with a bone to pick with authority from excesses in the past, AND there are going to be groups that disagree with the revolution. Once you've destroyed the restraints of the law the only way to suppress genuinely dangerous elements will be through physical violence, which will inevitably distort whatever sort of movement you're trying to create.

At the same time, when you're trying to protest a lawless state with out-of-control cops, it's ludicrous to expect to accomplish anything if they're going to send in agents provocateurs, or to conduct preventative arrests, or if they're going to launch mass-arrests followed by strip-searches, brutalization and sweeping punitive restrictions on your freedom of movement.

But when you confront a lawless state and its agents, you can't expect that they'll respect anything. Once you decide to confront them on their own grounds you must expect to be harassed and attacked.

That's why it should be announced that your protest has a specific goal to accomplish (I'll talk about that some other time) and it should known by any police who are sent out to thwart it, that should they engage in any illegal suppression of the protesters' rights, then in this particular time and this particular space, there indeed does exist a "Charter-Free Zone." It is limited to the extent of the protest, and any agents of the state who, through their illegal activities have nullified their right to demand obedience to the rule of law from the protesters.

Such a movement, when it forms, should obviously recognize that it's leaders and members will be henceforth targeted by the state and should take measures to ensure their relative safety in all other locations and times as well.

But when they are arrested (as they probably will be) they must be able to truthfully argue that their violations of the written law were in response to illegal actions by the government against them first. Juries can be convinced of first: The justness of the cause itself (for example protesting against corporate-rule treaties) and their reasons for their tactical law-breaking.

One thing for other leftists to do is to stop mindlessly condemning all violence perpetrated by anti-capitalist forces (from the removal of office furniture from the offices of neo-liberal political goons to road blockades to physically resisting arrest) as being unacceptable and discrediting. The less of this stupid "tut-tutting" that we have to deal with, the easier it will be to make our case to the rest of society.

The less we will have to deal with activists who have worked up "violence" into their heads into being a line that, once crossed, means the abandonment of all sense and restraint. It's possible to keep your bearings, because smashing a lamp is not the point of no return.