When anarchists are having a debate, they're having a debate about tactics, 'Should you do this?', 'Should you do that?' The question isn't 'Should you do this?', 'Should you do that?', the primary question is how do you build confidence among the masses of people who experience hierarchies, who experience exploitation, who experience oppression.
Vijay PrashadOrganizing is always a relationship between the person who arrives and says 'Let's meet together' and the person who comes to the meeting.
Vijay PrashadYou see, one strand...of anarchism believed that you needed to use essentially homeopathic doses of terror by assassinating people, et cetera, the so-called 'propaganda of the deed', and that this propaganda of the deed would rouse people up, give them confidence to rise up. Another section believed 'No, it was not by seeing something happen that people get confidence, but it's by acting', in other words, the movements must go among the people and produce small struggles, bigger struggles, to give people greater and greater confidence.
Vijay PrashadI understand politically that uprisings take place as a combination of spontaneity and preparation, not that preparation is more important than spontaneity.
Vijay Prashad