EDIT / PREFACE (June 5, 2023):
In the post below, I write about the relationship between “taking action” and “developing theory” and how we might decide to divide our time and energy between these two goals. While I believe this post is accurate about all that, I think that similar—if not exactly the same—points can be made more generally. That is, what I think I had in mind was less about a division between action and theory, and more of a divide between “Using our available labor power and other material resources to take action upon the rest of the material world beyond our organization” and “Using our available labor power and other material resources to develop practices, theory, and capacity—internal to our organization”. These new categories respectively encompass the article’s categories of “action” and “developing theory/analysis” that I was referencing in the below post.
I believe this post is more informative and understandable if it is taken to be talking more broadly about this kind of difference between “external action” and “internal action”—rather than simply “action” and “developing theory”. I would also add that external action is likely able to build up internal capacity, as previously-unorganized people become freer to take radical action themselves, and as we all become more familiarized with the possible ways of taking radical action in coordination with others. Similarly, internal action allows a group to develop and figure out the best ways to take effective external action.
Indeed, I think it would be practically useful to transition the term “praxis” into being about those new categories I described. I think what I have described is an explicated, more rigorous definition, which would help us in discussions when we are trying to develop our best organizing practices—beyond what we can achieve by simply speaking in vulgar terms of “Praxis is taking actions based on theory and then reflecting, to develop your theory”. Instead, when people refer to praxis, I think it should mean something along these lines: (June 9, 2023)
Praxis means to perform external and internal practices in a way that consciously allows our internal practices to develop our external practices, and vice-versa. External practices are the actions we take with the intention to affect things beyond what we can simply commit to as individuals, and beyond what we can democratically control within our organizing groups. Our internal practices are those practices we commit to as individuals or which we democratically agree to do as our organizing groups.
Our internal practices determine our guiding analysis, planning, and execution of our external practices—i.e. these are developments beyond what would otherwise be a set of less conscious (more reactive) external practices. Reflecting on the results of our external practices informs how we might want to change our guiding analysis; methods for planning; capacity to act; and our organization’s institutional structure, rules, and norms—i.e. it develops our internal practices.
~ ~ ~
I was thinking about how I would introduce organizing to people who are relatively new to it. Something that immediately came to mind is probably one of the most common organizing pitfalls that I see:
How do we find a good balance between:
1. taking action and doing things, and
2. having a proper analysis so that your actions may be focused strategically on things that effectively build toward your long-term goals.
Leftists talk about praxis a lot—‘praxis’ being defined as actions which are guided by theory, the outcomes of which are then helpful for further developing our theory. But the existing revolutionaries’ writing on praxis doesn’t seem too helpful for new organizers / leftists / revolutionaries. Currently, the advice is to: “Take actions based on theory and then reflect, to develop your theory. Don’t get too focused on action or you’ll end up as an Adventurist who likes flashy shit but has no serious strategy; and don’t get too focused on theory or else you’ll become disconnected from the struggle, ineffective, and at worst, will misguide people who are putting their labor power towards taking action.”
This seems accurate, but imprecise and vague. How do we tell if we’re focusing “too much” on something? Can we get some positive guidance, rather than vague prohibitions about what we shouldn’t do? What are some best practices for reflecting? Where do you start if you’re just beginning?
How much is “too much” action or theory?
There’s clearly no set level of how much action or theory we should engage in. That is, I can’t simply say, “Split your efforts into 70% Action, 30% Analysis”.
The balance will depend on the organizing situation, which obviously changes and develops. When our actions don’t seem to be getting the group anywhere, or don’t seem like they’re going to be fruitful in the long-term—then it’s probably good to take a step back and develop our analysis to find a better way of doing things. When a situation is reaching a tipping point, in which we need action in our organizing to tip us over the edge to success, then we should trust our understanding of theory and our ability to engage in principled improvisation, as we focus most of our efforts on taking action. When we’re totally lacking in theory in a particular situation, it will help to simply set goals, create an imprecise best-guess analysis, take action, and update our analysis in conscious reflection.
Ultimately, how we judge this balance is decided by democratic deliberation and voting—or at least it ought to be if we want to be effective. In our chats and planning meetings we should get a feel for what people think are the most pertinent issues for our organizing, and people’s reasoning behind their reads of the situation. Combining these diverse considerations helps us understand which areas of our organizing would benefit from action, and which would benefit from further analysis. If we don’t have consensus about how to move forward, taking a vote between competing options helps us get a useful prediction of what the best option is most likely to be.
This style of deliberation and voting is also effective for putting our theory into practice—to plan actions according to our analyses.
What are best practices for reflecting on an action to develop theory?
Before you can reflect on an action, it helps to know what your goals are before going into the action. What do you specifically want to achieve with this action? Even if we don’t achieve our specific intended goals, what would we generally consider a successful action? For example, I might have a specific goal for an action to “Put pressure on the profits of a capitalist, such that the capitalist accedes to our demands.” Another example of a specific goal might be to “Actively engage at least 50 workers in an action that builds solidarity and develops our class consciousness.” Even if the action doesn’t go the way we were planning, and these specific goals aren’t met, we can nevertheless have a successful action. I would consider a successful action to be “Anything that brings us materially closer to our broader campaign / organizational / revolutionary goals.” I would also love if this were quantifiably measurable in some way, although we often we have to settle for qualitative observations and judgements about counterfactuals.
When reflecting on an action, we first begin by judging whether our action achieved our desired goals, or otherwise brought us closer to achieving a working class revolution. Was our action successful? What could we have reasonably done which would have made the action go better? How should we judge success in this case?
Then, we should consider the reasonings that occurred in prior deliberations—that is, the reasonings which led us to act in one way rather than another. In doing so, we develop our analysis into something more nuanced and accurate than it was before the action. What analyses in our pre-action planning deliberations were weighted properly when determining how to act? Which analyses should have been weighted more? What about less? What did we not take into account in our pre-action analyses which would have helped? What is it in the results of our action which leads us to change our analysis in these ways?
Don’t psych yourself out, especially if you’re new to organizing.
I should also mention: sometimes we get caught up thinking that we need to get so much worked out analytically before taking action. Sometimes, it’s best to act and improvise—not because we necessarily think we’ll be effective, but because this can give us more information about the situation, which we need if we want to make an informed analysis of the situation.
Getting experience is often necessary if people are new to organizing. We can theorize from an armchair about what is needed until the cows come home, but this isn’t usually the best route. Indeed, we can learn a lot from reading past theory—and we should read past theory. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, and the broad goals of our organizing can be worked out. (For example, I’ve landed on these few broad goals: “Develop socialized productive forces”, “Build working class organizing capacity and experience”, “Build working class consciousness”, “Help with harm reduction if it doesn’t hurt the overall strategy.”) But if we go too deep into exactly what we declare to be the details of our strategy and end goal, we risk instilling our organizing with dogmatism and utopianism. In this case, we would not be engaging in enough action to inform our theory.
A spirit of improvisation and experimentation is useful for new organizers, but it helps us inasmuch as we find ourselves in unclear waters.
Here’s an example of when we might want to just jump into action: Many meetings to plan for future meetings or socials among comrades can largely be skipped. If the meeting / social we are planning for will be recurring, then it’s often easier to jump into the first meeting without all the particulars of the meeting worked out beforehand. So long as we ask the participants to be forgiving, “Because it’s the first of this kind of meeting, so we don’t have everything totally figured out,” then we can be intentional about getting feedback and more information about what participants would like to see from these meetings. We improvise and iterate, with our reflections on our actions informing our analysis, and our developing analysis guiding our future actions.
Be careful not to lock yourself down into a particular analysis “too quickly”. Here are some practices for developing an open-minded analysis, rooted in your contemporary organizing conditions.
If you’re just starting in organizing, it helps to get experience in a wide variety of existing organizations—and not quickly deciding exactly where you stand theoretically. Engaging in actions helps inform your theory broadly, but it’s not effective to find yourself locked down to one very particular theory from the get-go. It is, however, important to develop your analysis, starting from broad commitments to things like freedom, autonomy, and anti-exploitation, and learning how to get more specific as the practical organizing situations require you to do so. By doing so, we don’t get tricked into following old theory that doesn’t have relevance to our organizing environment.
To prevent yourself from getting locked into a dogmatic style of analysis, we can develop our analyses as the situation and actions seem to demand us to. There is a need to theorize about our broader overall strategy according to the broader organizing environment we find ourselves in; and there is a need to theorize about the particulars of actions based on the immediate demands of the situation.
Admittedly, that begs the question, How much theorizing is demanded of us given a particular organizing environment? Don’t ask me! Instead, take your best guess, and then deliberate and weigh the situation with others. This will reveal our collective best guess of what ought to be the proper level of development of our analysis for a particular topic. Aspects of our organizing environment are uncertain, and we should share our analyses of how much we think we can be confident about particular tendencies in our organizing environment. In this way, we develop an understanding of (1) the accurate balance of the competing and reinforcing tendencies in how things are likely to develop, and (2) how much we should be confident that our analysis of a particular tendency is not only accurate, but also precise and consequently how much it should weigh into determining our organizational actions.
It helps to develop our theories both in deliberations with others and in individual moments of reflection. We benefit from learning from each others experiences, but this doesn’t mean we have to adopt the analyses which others have landed on. We should reflect on our own perspectives and experiences—this is what makes deliberation so effective: we’re using our own points of expertise to fill in each others’ blind spots in analysis. (Read Hélène Landemore!)