>I'm arguing an anarchist position here, albeit it take more explanation
>than a simple give and take allows.
Specifically, what anarchist position are you argueing? There are a few. Some come from historically and presently recognised anarchist strains of thought, and some come from strains of thought which most anarchists critique as being reactionary, and reflections of middle class culture more than class struggle.
>I never said that I was against marches and speeches. There are perfect
>times and places for these things. I enjoy a good speaker as much as the
>next comrade, but I think history has shown that a program of social change
>that consists ONLY of approved marches and speakers and permitted protest
>is not going to be one that makes any changes. This was the nature of the
>American Left in the years leading up to Seattle. Even the simple of idea
>of "civil disobedience' had been bastardized by activists who got PERMITS
>to do CD.
Sure, it goes without saying that getting permits from the government to do anything is a form of co-opting the struggle. Obviously, marches and speeches can do some to build a mass movement, but fall short of the real concrete organising that has to go on. Organising which consists of direct action and direct/delegate democracy, the arragement of revolutionary unions and anarchist federations, etc. Of course, there are many more facets to the struggle.
>I don't know where Paul lives or what anarchist scene the is describing,
>but anarchists certainly support other forms of opposition to the state
>apparatus, the most significant being the decentralized "Net War" strategy
>being used by anarchists and libertarian leftists for the past 7 years.
>Paul maybe describing strategies that are common among anarchists in Europe
>or Australia, but these strategies are a minority tendency among American
>anarchists. At this time, the first strategy is being promoted by NEFAC in
>the U.S. The second strategy is represented by anarchists who work with the
>IWW and within less radical labor unions.
First of all, I come from the north west coast of the anarchist movement, in north america. Since the anarchist movement in north america is currently incredibly weak and in many cases disorganised [there being many exampls where we have consistently failed to mount sufficient opposition over several issues, for example building a strong anti-war movement right now], my comments on the anarchist movement were naturally a reflection of the dominant currents in north america, but primarily the currents in the coutnries with more developed anarchist movements, namely Argentina, Brazil, Spain, France, Germany, and such.
To my knowledge, there is no implementation of this "net war" strategy you speak of, and this is an important point you bring up. There is this illusion among some who like to give themselves the title "anarchist" that there exists massive networks of anarchists who are actually opposed to the federational approach to organising, which has been the hallmark of anarchist unity for well over a century.
So, lets look at the anarchist organisations that do exist. Besides a myriad of collectives, *many of which are currently engaged in forming anarchist federations*, we have already existing federations like the North Eastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists [NEFAC], the Great Lakes Federation of Revolutionary Anarchist COllectives [GL-FRAC], the community anti-capitalist coalition [CLAC], and even our own semi-deceased historical society, the IWW [to clarify, many IWW organisers do strong work out here on the west coast, but as an organisational whole, the IWW is a nostalgia cult in many ways. I still keep an IWW membership in this sense].
The history of anarchist organising has told us that anarchist groups that fail to unite through federations become isolated, and eventually reformist in character. They turn inwards upon themselves, and almost withdraw from class warfare. For example, we can look at the extremely reactionary and individualist politics of the Direct Action Network [DAN], an almost wholly protest organisation. Or we can point to the German Autonomen, who came from the lengthy German Autonomist movement. We can even look no further than our own backyard, and see what has happened to the Chicago anarchist movement, and it's adoption of non-anarchist politics in the form of mild affinity with the ideas of one "the prince" hakim.
>Thank you. My intention has never been to posit myself as being the most
>radical. Shit, if you knew anything about me, you'd understand that
>personally I'm not very radical. However, I think that we've learned alot
>in recent years about what works. Why are the anti-globalization movements
>growing? It's not because of any of the standard tactics being used, like
>marches or rallies. It's not because we're all trying to build one radical
>party.
But we are trying to build a mass movement of opposition to capitalism on a global level, which is what i was trying to say. Our Idea of building a mass movement, however, rejects the idea of imitating burgeois structures and using a political party. by the CPN.
>In most cases, I fail to see the difference. We understand what happens
>when these movements succeed. They replicate the old structure and
>frequently make life worse for those under their control.
I agree, they replicate the old structure of relationships, but with subtle differences. I don't think it is sufficient or even proper to latch onto the capitalist arguement that marxism = fascism, because I don't think this is entirely true. Marxism is a diverse range of theories, and even though the strongest currents have consistently led to fascism and near-fascism in many respects, there are noteworthy differences. besides, it is the capitalists who are the true inheritors of the fascist tradition, and who use fascist reaction to supress revolutionary movements. Let us also not forget that while groups like the CPN in Nepal are imitiating burgeois structures, and we can even say engaged in work that is counter-revolutionary on many respects, they are still made up of people in desperate conditions of poverty with real needs and real aspirations. It is important to support people in struggle, even sometimes when we have disagreements over how that struggle is being carried out. This doesn't mean we should support the CPN, it means we should support the rank and file militant, and hope they can be educated or persuaded around this issue.
>Yes, it's a matter of figuring out what works, especially when we don't
>have enough experiential knowledge to decide. But another thing to keep in
>mind is that what works in one part of the world may not work somewhere
>else. If we can learn anything from the century of authoritarian communism,
>it's that models aren't applicable and exportable to every situation. The
>Zapatistas will choose a path that is different than working people in the
>U.S. or Canada.
I agree that "finding what works" is critical, and this is especially true of Anarchism - anarchism develops very much within the cultures it exists, bringing elements into those cultures that share a common thread with all cultures anarchists work in. However, I disagree with the idea of adopting "identity politics", of merely saying that [to paraphrase] "the zapatists have chosen a different path from us, let them have it". I think this is the wrong approach, because we are creating an "us and them" barrier, and it is very much a denial of the objective reality that exists around us [I most frequently see this arguement eminating from po-mo marxists and their ilk].
What I'm trying to get at is that there are very concrete and systematic cases, and maybe the Zapatista case is one of them, where we can say that some things were done wrong and maybe we shouldn't quite do them like this. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the politics of Chris Day, an old Love and Rager and sometimes maoist who visited the Zapatistas. He came back from that experience very much in conflict with anarchist practice partly because he adopted identity politics, and saw what they were doing as more appropriate. If we look at what the Zapataistas actually have gained in struggle today, we can say that possibly they should have done some things differently, and it may have cost them their movements and their freedom - we don't know yet, but the mexican government has been slowly encroaching and encircling for some time now. Specifically, being mixed up with Catholic politics in the region and the peacetalks really sunk the Zapatista cause. This being said, I still support the Zapatista in their just struggle, I merely disagree with some of the forms that struggle has taken.
>I think most anarchists would disagree with that last statement, because we
>understand that there is a political angle to scientific progress and
>technology. These institutions imply certain relationships and systems. It
>doesn't take a wild-eyed primitivist to point this out.
My exact point is that there is a political angle to scientific process and technology, in fact a socio-political/economical angle to this process. And it is this very thing which some people who claim to be "anarchist", yet have no real connection to the anarchist movement [primitivists, as you have mentioned, come to mind], miss entirely.
We must always be careful, as anarchists, to place things and functions in their appropriate context. When we don't, we are creating abstractions, objectifications of reality that satisify our own petty illusions that help us "cope" with the world and objective reality.
Capitalism is a context. So too is anarchism, marxism, etc. And we can say also that industrial developement that, under capitalism, as vastly different functions and implications [both on the environment and on people] than it does under anarchism. We can say that there is a correlative relationship between the context and the function being conducted under the context, and that when you change the context, the intentons behind the function [and therefore the very nature oif the function itself] changes. Far from being luddites, Anarchist theorists, from the beginning of anarchist thought to the present, have consistently and always attacked those who possessed these luddite views, and have always heralded sceintific progress as being beneficial to the growth and development of mankind *under certain contexts, such as anarchism*.
>I also think that the dismissal of "going back to the land" is an easy way
>to dismiss much of what anarchists have been arguing for over a century. We
>understand from ecology and other sciences that cities are unsustainable.
>If you doubt this, I invite you to experience Washington, DC on a Code Red
>day. Personally, I like cities, but I think that if our planet is to
>survive into the next century, we're going to have to change the ways that
>we live, especially in the Global North.
I agree that Cities, in their current incarnation, under the context of capitalism, are unsustainable in many ways. I don't need to experience a "code red day" to understand this, nor do I need to visit the slums of Sao Paulo, Brazil or Mexico City. And while I agree there is a very serious threat to the eco-system and environment, I don't see this threat as "bearing fruit" within the next century. I think there are major consquences, but not "our very survival". This kind of fear-mongering only serves to discredit ourselves when we try to point out the real ecological damage and destruction being done.
While I do agree that the nature of farming needs to be changed, and the mode of living with the land needs to be changed, I don't see this change coming under the context of capitalism. I see it being realized under the context of anarchism, and I see it as a gradual process, marked with rapid advances and years of settling into the gains of those advances. As far as "going back to the land", in some kind of luddite sense, this is entirely ridiculous. It is not even worth debating on this list, and I doubt any serious anarchist would ever, ever argue in favour of this kind of "luddite" mentality. Certainly evne the anarchists of the great Spanish Revolution argued against the luddites [who thankfully in that time never claimed to be anarchists] of their time.
Paul
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