Hardt & Negri: The New Federalist?

[Chuck0]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> 
> Andrew wrote:
> 
> >Nice theory except the left anti-state movement is many, many times
> >stronger in Europe then it is in the US.  There are considerably
> >more anarchists in a single organisation (CGT union - 45,000 members)
> >in Spain there there are anarchists in the entire N.American continent.
> 
> It seems to me that our contemporary anti-statist American leftists
> are not into building an organization.  Building a union of 45,000
> members would probably violate the American spirit of
> decentralization. :)  The anarchist current that has been influential
> in Europe is anarcho-syndicalism (to which the CGT, the CNT, etc.
> belong).  Anarcho-syndicalism probably is a little too disciplined &
> organized to appeal to anti-statist sentiments of American leftists
> (including American anarchists) today.

Exactly. Andrew and I have discussed this over the years. I'm not sure
if all American activists could be called Leftist, but more and more of
them are becoming anti-statist and anti-authoritarian.

The preference for American anarchists for a style of anarchism
different than anarcho-syndicalism (which is popular in Europe) has more
to do with geography and the nature of American working class history.
Most American anarchists have become radicals in a activist milieu where
anarchists organizations are weak or nonexistent. The organizations that
are present within Left activism are pretty unappealing as models to
American anarchists.

It's no accident that the J18/N30 methodology of organizing has caught
on so quickly among anarchists and contributed to an ongoing increase in
our numbers. The resistance network that is developing is not about
building large mass organizations, although some nodes, like NEFAC, are
trying to build organizations on the anarcho-communist model.

Actually, I'm seeing that anarcho-syndicalism is appealing more and more
to younger American anarchists. I suspect this gravitation to the red
amd black may be short-lived, as they run into the older guard of
American anarcho-syndicalists, who can be pretty dogmatic and
unimaginative.

<< Chuck0 >>

This was the year *everything* changed.

      -- Commander Ivanova, 2261

Mid-Atlantic Infoshop    -> http://www.infoshop.org/
Alternative Press Review -> http://www.altpr.org/
Practical Anarchy Online -> http://www.practicalanarchy.org/

Homepage -> http://flag.blackened.net/chuck0/home/

"A society is a healthy society only to the degree 
that it exhibits anarchistic traits." 

        - Jens Bjørneboe