Sometimes anarchists are slow learners. Disregarding the famous, definitive and prognostic Marx-Bakunin split in the First International near the end of the 19th century, anarchists overall have continued to cling to the obsolete notion that anarchy is best situated within the otherwise statist Leftist milieu, despite the bourgeois democratic origins of the Left-Right spectrum. Since then communists and Marxists, liberals and conservatives alike have had us right where they want us - and it’s shown in our history. In continuing to view ourselves as Leftists, despite the glaring contradictions in such a stance, we have naturally relegated ourselves to the role of critic within larger movements, and often found ourselves either marching towards goals which stand in direct opposition to our own interests or suckered by counter-revolutionary appeals to anti-fascist or anti-capitalist unity. [via]
What happens to the politics of antiracism when the phenotype of white
supremacy “changes?” …I am less anxious about the future of the “Obama administration” (whose policy blueprint is and will be relatively unsurprising) than I am about the speed and effectiveness with which it has rallied the sentimentality and political investment of the purported U.S. “Left.”
Again and again, anarchists are forced to make nuanced arguments about how “property destruction is not violence” and that “the real violent element is the police”…Do anarchists really eschew violence? Not at all… Rather than making the point that violence is often necessary and even appropriate within the struggle, we have allowed the moralizing Leftists and liberals to control the dialog and to impose their own hypocritical standards of violence on us. It should not be forgotten that Leftists inherently believe in the legitimacy of the State… Implicitly recognizing the right of some to rule over others, Leftists seek to “speak truth to power”, not to smash it. Even Leftists who support armed struggle are in truth merely extreme examples of the overall trend within Leftism as a whole; while they may approve of violence as a means of struggle for their particular group or faction, in the end they seek to reconstitute the State’s monopoly of force – in their hands, or that of their party (where, presumably, we are to believe they will utilize it more justly). In this sense they are very much within the “burn the village in order to save it” political tradition – a tradition with which, like fascism, the State is clearly quite comfortable. The skepticism with which most anarchists view these groups’ commitments to post-revolutionary non-violence is certainly justified. It also should not be forgotten that even revolutionary Marxist groups do not reject electoral politics as legitimate vehicles for change.
— Against the Corpse Machine: Defining a Post-Leftist Anarchist Critique of Violence
anthropophagous
Archive Audio Images RSS FeedThis 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).
