06.20.2009 10:41

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"The Demise of Love & Rage: What Happened?" by WEB

Despite its ultimate dissolution, Love and Rage did have successes. The first is that it lasted as long as it did…Second, L&R established a legitimate pole within the anarchist movement for supporting national liberation struggles…Third, Love and Rage re-established a pole within the movement for participating in mass struggles and raising revolutionary politics…Finally, L&R also re-established the idea of building an international anarchist organization, as opposed to the cultural and localistic orientations of many groups of the 1980’s…The members of Love and Rage agreed on the points listed above. But this agreement obscured deep differences. These differences were reflected in the fact that in its entire existence, Love and Rage never drafted a comprehensive statement of aims and principles.
The failures of Love and Rage were rooted in these differences. The latter in fact represented a split between those who wanted to address the problems of anarchism from within anarchism and those who wanted to adopt the methods and outlook of authoritarian ideologies; in particular, Marxism and Maoism

I really find more value in discussing why things didn’t work than discussing why they did or why they will. I particularly like when failed federations or collectives take the time to reflect on their failures and write about them.

I am also clearly having a good time reviewing the L&R archives. While I am too young to have been involved in that (seeing as I was .. 12 at the time of its dissolution) I worked with a lot of people who came of age during L&R anarchist organizing, & it brings a lot of perspective to my experiences working with them, as well as our particular infights.

I always found it bizarre how many people with authoritarian political orientations wanted to participate in anarchist organizations. I would think that would be a group in which your recruiting would be particularly unsuccessful.

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  • anarchists
  • marxism
  • politics
  • love & rage

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This is just a collection of things I think are neat.

A general overview of 'things I think are neat':abandonment/the post-industrial midwest, anarchism (syndicalism, insurrectionalism, etc), race/ethnicity (esp. defining/constructing the boundaries of whiteness), gender, class (talking/thinking about class generally seems to be an underrated activity), health care (access to, the experience of obtaining, etc), art, science fiction, punk music, conservative talk radio and anthropology (which probably incorporates almost everything else about people).





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