I feel like we've been giving the Anarchists a lot of noogies on this site lately, so I'm going to re-post a post I made on yesterday's thread right when it got unpinned.
Man, it is like anarchists have good theory but lack a rigged structural framework to allow them to translate it to good praxsis.
I’m not sure this is it. Anarchists at their best tend to be on the bleeding edge of praxis, and they have a good collection of practical manuals to boot. IMO, the problem with an orthodox Anarchist approach is scalability. In order to have a movement spanning a region the size of the US (let alone an international revolutionary movement), I remain convinced that there needs to be some amount of connective tissue and structure. At risk of sounding silly, we need a certain degree of good hierarchies to coordinate our struggle against the bad ones.
I spent a few weeks on the ground at Occupy Wall Street, which was a fully horizontal, ahierarchical project, and there were a lot of things which worked beyond my wildest expectations. We did an outstanding job of feeding people, providing shelter, teaching, providing first aid, legal assistance, outreach, jail support, and going off on spontaneous “missions.” But where it failed was coordination and focus. At its peak, we had protest encampments in over 60 of the largest cities in the country, but there was no superstructure to coordinate actions between them, nor any unified political program besides “this government is a fucking scam.” We honestly would have been better off doing the lib thing and electing delegates to form a national assembly.
The obstinate dedication to horizontalism helped prevent the liberal NGO complex from hijacking the movement, but it didn’t carry us to the promised land either.
Despite these failures, it would have never gotten as far as it did without the autonomous ad-hoc organizing to nail down the essential functions of sustaining such a movement. An army marches on its stomach, and a supply of dry socks goes a very long way towards raising morale. This was managed successfully without any bureaucracy whatsoever.
I also got to see Cornel West in person, which was cool.
I was going to link to a video of the cops trying to break into a polling place in Catalonia and immediately catching a chair to the face in effort to prevent the independence vote, but the cops have apparently deleted the video :(
Edit: TL;DR: if you were there when the video got posted, the riot cop got completely owned by the chair.
I mean, my take is that hierarchy is something which will inevitably occur whether it is planned or not. My go-to example is a book club. Even in something as mundane as a book club, you will have members who are collectively deemed as well read and insightful, and voilà - you have a hierarchy. To me, the important thing is being able to recognize these hierarchies and interpret how they influence social relations. OWS on the other hand had a very infantile interpretation of hierarchy where all forms of hierarchy or leadership were to be shunned. Still though, it got farther than you'd expect on such a primitive basis. <edit> And I must reiterate, in particular, even this naive approach did a very good job at undermining co-option </edit>
Naturally, there are various tendencies throughout the anarchist canon. I'm not particularly familiar with them all, but I could point to syndicalism (and extending from syndicalism, federation of syndicalist units) as examples of building up organizational structures within an anarchist framework, so its not like some revolutionary new concept or anything. There are theory and history behind such formations. It seems to me like the bigger problem is that a lot of people simply glom on to an extremely vulgar interpretation.
When it comes to the whole online tendency pissing contest though, I suppose my point is that no social movement can be boiled down to the application of one specific organizing strategy. I think if you take a deep enough look at any revolutionary struggle, you will find people applying a variety of different strategies, and more often than not, they compliment each other in achieving the end goal.
I mean, my take is that hierarchy is something which will inevitably occur whether it is planned or not.
yeah, you have to plan to eliminate it and work hard to keep it from cropping up. this is what the Tyranny of Structurelessness is actually about. anti-hierarchical organizing techniques exist to build relatively flat, cohesive, and functional groups but nothing happens accidentally and you sure as fuck aren't going to get there if you haven't read theory.
the flipside is that the benefit of doing so is how utterly pleasant these groups are to be in and work with. it's literally easier to get things done when the people who need to do a piece of work are the ones empowered to make decisions about it.
trying to build orgs without anarchist theory is like trying to overthrow capitalism without reading Marx.
Thanks for the acknowledgment, we aren’t all libs LARPing as revolutionaries... also that’s pretty awesome you got to see Cornel West, got mad respect for him, even if he could be more radical.
To your point on networking, I think it’s something that could be addressed through tech, some form or encrypted p2p app/website that allows for groups to form and dissolve federations in real time while offering a democratic platform allowing users to casts votes and lend support to different initiatives and allow for consensus decision making. Idk, not really a tech guy so maybe someone could elaborate on this better or shoot it down for impracticality ¯_(ツ)_/¯
You make a really strong counter argument. Maybe I got too much acid Marxism in my brain but I feel like the problem is reduceable to fundamental forces . If you want to make changes it requires energy. Anarchism is like increasing the pressure in a gas, it can be used to do work, however it is a low density process. MLM vanguard action is like a crystalline solid. So if you wanted to destroy jeff bezor for example, you could hit him with tens of thousands of psi in gass. that would work. Or a steel guilline blade. The goal is the the same, the results are the same. The issue is how much energy are you spending on achieving the goal, and how much waste heat do you have to generate and deal with.
Similar would creating a popular front mass movement require fantastic forces to get the work done. However I can build a guillotine with the tools and materials I got in the back shed. As maintain the oppressions of capitalisms requires the energy of many people, simply cutting off that flow will more efferently achieve the goal. Do I need to try again when I am more sober or does analyzing theory through the lens of consequential utilitarianism not make the true path forward clear?
I feel like we've been giving the Anarchists a lot of noogies on this site lately, so I'm going to re-post a post I made on yesterday's thread right when it got unpinned.
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miss revolutionary catalonia, hurts so bad, just want the generalitat back
I was going to link to a video of the cops trying to break into a polling place in Catalonia and immediately catching a chair to the face in effort to prevent the independence vote, but the cops have apparently deleted the video :(
Edit: TL;DR: if you were there when the video got posted, the riot cop got completely owned by the chair.
when will these liberal anarchists learn, you cant just ask the officer to take a seat while you explain the importance of electoralism! smh my head
edit: for real tho, that video sounds nice.
This is why we need socialist social media. The capitalists delete the best clips,
I dug up a three year old thread on r/justicereturned and all the original source material is gone
:100-com:
can we shorten that to socialist media?
I mean, my take is that hierarchy is something which will inevitably occur whether it is planned or not. My go-to example is a book club. Even in something as mundane as a book club, you will have members who are collectively deemed as well read and insightful, and voilà - you have a hierarchy. To me, the important thing is being able to recognize these hierarchies and interpret how they influence social relations. OWS on the other hand had a very infantile interpretation of hierarchy where all forms of hierarchy or leadership were to be shunned. Still though, it got farther than you'd expect on such a primitive basis. <edit> And I must reiterate, in particular, even this naive approach did a very good job at undermining co-option </edit>
Naturally, there are various tendencies throughout the anarchist canon. I'm not particularly familiar with them all, but I could point to syndicalism (and extending from syndicalism, federation of syndicalist units) as examples of building up organizational structures within an anarchist framework, so its not like some revolutionary new concept or anything. There are theory and history behind such formations. It seems to me like the bigger problem is that a lot of people simply glom on to an extremely vulgar interpretation.
When it comes to the whole online tendency pissing contest though, I suppose my point is that no social movement can be boiled down to the application of one specific organizing strategy. I think if you take a deep enough look at any revolutionary struggle, you will find people applying a variety of different strategies, and more often than not, they compliment each other in achieving the end goal.
yeah, you have to plan to eliminate it and work hard to keep it from cropping up. this is what the Tyranny of Structurelessness is actually about. anti-hierarchical organizing techniques exist to build relatively flat, cohesive, and functional groups but nothing happens accidentally and you sure as fuck aren't going to get there if you haven't read theory.
the flipside is that the benefit of doing so is how utterly pleasant these groups are to be in and work with. it's literally easier to get things done when the people who need to do a piece of work are the ones empowered to make decisions about it.
trying to build orgs without anarchist theory is like trying to overthrow capitalism without reading Marx.
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Thanks for the acknowledgment, we aren’t all libs LARPing as revolutionaries... also that’s pretty awesome you got to see Cornel West, got mad respect for him, even if he could be more radical.
To your point on networking, I think it’s something that could be addressed through tech, some form or encrypted p2p app/website that allows for groups to form and dissolve federations in real time while offering a democratic platform allowing users to casts votes and lend support to different initiatives and allow for consensus decision making. Idk, not really a tech guy so maybe someone could elaborate on this better or shoot it down for impracticality ¯_(ツ)_/¯
oh hey it me.
You make a really strong counter argument. Maybe I got too much acid Marxism in my brain but I feel like the problem is reduceable to fundamental forces . If you want to make changes it requires energy. Anarchism is like increasing the pressure in a gas, it can be used to do work, however it is a low density process. MLM vanguard action is like a crystalline solid. So if you wanted to destroy jeff bezor for example, you could hit him with tens of thousands of psi in gass. that would work. Or a steel guilline blade. The goal is the the same, the results are the same. The issue is how much energy are you spending on achieving the goal, and how much waste heat do you have to generate and deal with.
Similar would creating a popular front mass movement require fantastic forces to get the work done. However I can build a guillotine with the tools and materials I got in the back shed. As maintain the oppressions of capitalisms requires the energy of many people, simply cutting off that flow will more efferently achieve the goal. Do I need to try again when I am more sober or does analyzing theory through the lens of consequential utilitarianism not make the true path forward clear?