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]
Confronting Adamic’s text seventy-five years after the fact demands that readers ask themselves a number of difficult and politically loaded questions: to what extent is our seemingly peaceful labor system already (and always) bound up in the latent violence of capital? The very notion of a post-war labor “peace” conceals the underlying violence upon which that “peace” was brokered. The illusion of labor peace is predicated upon the state’s power to unleash violence against workers should they break their end of the deal. Was the subsumption of the American labor movement under layers of government bureaucracy–in exchange for an end to violence–on the whole a victory for workers? Or has the post-war labor peace been an unequal compromise? Certainly, no unionist is nostalgic for the days when a worker could be shot dead for walking a picket line, but the alternative we have isn’t that great either.
Huzzah, It’s The Top 10 Trotskyist Pickup Lines!
10 “Hey sweet thang, wanna dictate my proletariat?”
9 “My revolutionary Party has a huge, militant membership - wanna lesson in Entryism?”
8 “Is your father a commisar of production and distribution? Because he surely expropriated some bourgeois diamonds for your eyes”
7 “Do you believe in love at first sight? Or do you need to be broken of your false consciousness by the vanguard since without us you’re only capable of trade union consciousness?”
6 “Hey baby, If I said you had a peasantry capable of being led by a tiny working class would you hold it against me?”
5 “Wanna see my bra? It’s a size (Provisional)CC”
4 “Trotsky was all for women’s lib, you know… have you heard of Nadezhda Krupskaya?”
3 “Is that a deflected permanent revolution in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?”
2 “Like my hairstyle? I’ve done it up like a pimp…”
1 “Are you a girl? Please will you talk to me. I promise not to mention Trotsky
— Bunty commenting on What in the hell … :: … is the best lightbulb joke? :: February :: 2008 - StumbleUpon [via]
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.
[W]hen we understand fanaticism in this way, we see that it’s not inherently undemocratic. That what zealotry really is is a critique and a rejection of political moderation - not a rejection of reason, of rationality or anything like that. And, as such, fanaticism and reason can be consistent. And furthermore, it can be consistent with justice and democracy in times when moderation lends support to the enemies of democracy… so at certain points in history perhaps fanaticism is the more democratic option over liberal moderation.
— Joel Olson, quoted in Kansas Bleeding Again
It’s in the context of welfare rights movements that anarchists and other revolutionaries need to enter the discussion more forcefully. We should step up our efforts to help build movements fighting for programs of mutual aid, and to put forward the general vision of a society with free education, free health care, and enough food to go around. But we should never forget as we defend a communal value system that it is capitalism itself and the greed at its core that stands in the way of realizing values of mutual aid. We need to keep movement towards long-term solutions in mind, even while working with groups focused on short-term measures
The problem with welfare isn’t just the belief in the family wage, but the notion that wage-slavery is a natural and irresistable state of affairs. Capitalism creates its own surplus labor pool (the unemployed) in order to keep wages low…Welfare struggles are important to support because they assert a person’s right to decent food and shelter, as well as our responsibility towards one another as human beings. But the kind of ‘mutual aid’ where the well-off give to the poor isn’t enough; the real struggle is against class division itself. But keeping this larger goal in mind doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work with welfare groups or argue for the value of “giving to strangers” while we live in a class society. It is up to us as anarchists and revolutionaries to think and act in a way that doesn’t count on an increase in poverty and despair as the spur of potentially revolutionary social collapse. In this age of anti-social individualism, welfare rights struggles, which shore up values of mutual aid and community, are an important part of the battle against right-wing revolution.
— First Pity Then Punishment: The History of Women and Welfare
There are dozens and dozens of good economic and social reasons that women choose to terminate pregnancies that have nothing to do with expanding their “careers” — which is something not everyone in this country has the privilege to be able to aspire to. Too many women are too often just trying to scrape by, and an unwanted pregnancy (or child) is just going to add additional strain that it’s entirely possible they can’t handle. That’s the whole purpose of the Obama Administration’s purported focus on reducing the economic consequences of child-bearing, not to help women better shape their lucrative careers.
— Some People Underestimate The Economic Impact Of Abortion [via]
The Iranian experience also raises some serious questions about Foucault’s thought. First, it is often assumed that Foucault’s suspicion of utopianism, his hostility to grand narratives and universals, and his stress on difference and singularity rather than totality, would make him less likely than his predecessors on the left to romanticize an authoritarian politics that promised radically to refashion from above the lives and thought of a people, for their ostensible benefit. However, his Iran writings showed that Foucault was not immune to the type of illusions that so many Western leftists had held toward the Soviet Union and later, China. [via]
Some white men got very upset when Sonia Sotomayor expressed pride in the fact that she is a Puerto Rican Latina, and noted that her identity shapes her worldview. This was controversial to conservatives because “white man” is not an identity, and therefore white men are not influenced by identity. Only people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ folks, and women have “identities” — which they must ignore, lest they be considered biased.
Keith’s critics have long charged that his willingness to make common cause with racists, sexists, and homophobes was a sign of his own racism, sexism, and homophobia; Keith’s defenders have insisted that it was all just part of the big-tent strategy against the Real Enemy. Well, Keith has now clearly decided that he prefers a coalition with racists, sexists, and homophobes to a coalition with anti-racists, anti-sexists, and anti-homophobes; make what you will of that. Make likewise what you will of Keith’s references to “psychologically damaged personalities … pissed-off, man-hating dykes with an excess of body hair … self-hating whites, bearded ladies, cock-ringed queers, or persons of one or another surgically altered ‘gender identity’,” which some of us politically-correct types might be hyper-sensitive enough to interpret as indicative of some sort of prejudice on Keith’s part, despite his assurances that, ooh, he’s personally known gays he didn’t hate and nonwhite women he was broad-minded enough to fuck. (It’s also strange how our lack of enthusiasm for Keith’s intolerant right-wing buddies is diagnosed by him as intolerance on our part, but their lack of enthusiasm for us cultural-lefty types is not similarly diagnosed.)
— How to Convert a Big Tent Into a Small One [via]
More thoughts on this winner
More importantly, when we appeal to some notion of an unmodified or undecorated body, we participate in the adoption of a false neutrality. We pretend, in those moments, that there is a natural body or fashion, a way of dressing or wearing yourself that is not a product of culture. Norms always masquerade as non-choices, and when we suggest that for example, resisting sexism means everyone should look androgynous, or resisting racism means no one should modify the texture of their hair, we foreclose people’s abilities to expose the workings of fucked up systems on their bodies as they see fit.
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).
