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.
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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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