And we were going to come out of the closet, so to speak, and to embrace the awkwardness of our politics. No more excuses. No more would we apologize for our Luddism: technology is class war. Neither would we hide our race traitor politics: white supremacy is the glue that holds American capitalism together. We would oppose the cadres and mass organization-builders. We wouldn’t disguise our contempt for the Left: we have no use for their recuperations and professional activism. We would continue to emphasize that there are no objective economic conditions for revolution: we can burn this down whenever we want (and don’t we try a little bit every day?). We wouldn’t shirk from our determination to drive a stake into the shriveled heart of this vampire capitalism but we would stick to our conviction that the most likely way to topple the capitalist dictatorship was by attacking the contradiction of white supremacy. Still, we wouldn’t be dogmatic about where that struggle would be — it could just as well be at the border as in the streets. We were going to think hard about how we engaged our enemies and perhaps re-evaluate who we considered our friends. We’d listen hard for sounds of movement we might have otherwise missed. As a political minority, we were going to look for arguments that would have the power to remake movements and to open opportunities for struggle that were libertarian. We were going to look for the weak points in the armor of our opponents. And we weren’t going to compromise. The middle ground is the graveyard of movements.
We would take those ideas that were useful, wherever they were, and we would make them coherent and consistent because, after all, they were to us, regardless of whether they were to anyone else. We would show how they were all class war to us. We’d acknowledge a history of anarchist struggle that went back both a hundred thousand years and at the same time to all the dates that the Euro-oriented anarchists celebrate. We’d recognize Ukraine, Spain, Hungary, Czechoslovakia. 1917, 1936, 1956, 1968. Et cetera. We’d dutifully mourn on the correct anniversaries. But we’d also defer to a thousand years of Indigenous living and struggle in the Southwest “U.S.” And word up to Chiapas, Argentina and Chile while we’re at it. And sweet Greece, our lover still. At the same time, we’d remember Nat Turner, the LA riots, the Underground Railroad, Bleeding Kansas and the San Patricio Brigade. These would not be contradictions to us.
Most importantly, perhaps, we were going to try and show how anarchy can win. How we can avoid boredom and accomplish goals. And we wanted to celebrate a culture of success and reject routine. We want to read, think and attempt. Then do it again. Try something we haven’t and see what happens. Push on a contradiction and see how things re-order themselves. Have our hands in a few different pots to see which one seems fruitful.

— Thoughts at the end of one year of organizing and the beginning of another

In the kitchen, a colleague asks about buying a textbook: Should she get it from Amazon or download the Kindle version? Bowles quickly rules out the Kindle because it makes the text impossible to share. Reading between the lines, Bowles’ choice reveals the hidden symbolism of each medium: If the paperback is Karl Marx, the Kindle is Ayn Rand.

— Born Poor?

Being willing to sit in a boring classroom for 12 years, and then sign up for four more years and then sign up for three or more years after that—well, that’s a pretty good measure of your willingness to essentially do what you’re told.

—

Samuel Bowles in an excellent interview about income inequality in New Mexico published by the Santa Fe Reporter, Born Poor? [via]

ugh.