I'm flaming Brian. Pure and simple. I've tried to engage him in rational discussions, but it just isn't possible.
> I think Brian is actually argueing AGAINST the "anti-technological"
> critique of anarchism at this point. He is argueing the anarchist
> position. Obvious, technology, just like all other facets of human
> production and distribution [small wonder] should be accountable in an
> anarchist society, that is the nature of such a society.
Brian is arguing HIS position, which he is free to do. There is no one anarchist position on this, obviously, since anarchists are arguing about these issues. There is a strong critique of technology that has been part of anarchism for many years. This critique ranges from activism that anarchists engage in against certain technologies (nuclear plants and genetically-engineered foods) to a more wholesale rejection of high technology and civilization. And there are anarchists who like high technology and recognize its bad points. It's a spectrum, not one consistent position.
Accountability is one thing, but what some anarchists argue is that technology is a more fundamental problem.
>> Shit, I agree with him on most of these points. However, he doesn't
>> understand what people like me are saying because he is too busy
>> building a strawman out of our views. I'm not against all technology.
>> I'm not against forks, spoons, and good sanitation systems. I
>> certainly would never argue that we "destroy technology," because that
>> is not what this critique is about. And most anarchists would agree
>> with me about this.
> He's not building a strawman of your views, he's attacking them for what
> they are. As anarchists, we don't claim that opponents of anarchism who
> are luddite in nature want to all "destroy technology", we say that *the
> basis of their critique against technology is an objectified one,
> alienated from the context and functions of society*.
Brian consistently engages in strawman arguments of my views. He thinks that I'm part of that primitivist "axis of evil," when I've developed my critique of technology independent of writers such as Zerzan.
>> The "anti-technology critique" is basically a critical approach
>> towards the use of technology in our communities and our world. It
>> asks questions that are about accountability, sustainability,
>> responsibility, and approriate use. It asks fundamental questions that
>> any radical should be asking about institutions in our capitalist
>> societies. If we argure for a radical alternative, what would that
>> alternative look like? If we value basic human values, anarchist and
>> socialist philosophies, and a world where the environment isn't
>> destroyed, how can we keep around institutions (inlcuding
>> technologies) that are antithetical to what we value?
>
>
> The "anti-technology" attack on anarchist principles is not a "critical
> approach", but rather an attack on industrial relations within
> capitalism as if those industrial relations would be unchanged in an
> anarchist society. It is also a position that often devolves into
> advocation of returns to idealist agrarian societies, and other lunacy.
Again, the anti-technology critique takes many forms and people have different levels of critique and opposition to technology. Some anarchists have taken the anarchist critique of capitalist relations in the workplace to its logical end, by looking at other factors that contribute to that alienation.
> Technology, such as nuclear power, is in no way anti-thetical to the
> principles of anarchism. You are saying that a thing, an idea, an object
> can be anti-thetical to the principles of anarchism. But this is far
> from the truth, because no object can hold that position. Only the
> *application* of an object, by a person or society, by a living social
> organism, can hold that positon. The luddites attack us anarchists for
> our belief that it is the application of technology, not technology
> itself, that is a problem under consumer capitalism.
I thought the Luddites were dead? Which luddites are you talking about?
Anarchists have long been opposed to nuclear power, because they understand what it represents. This long-standing opposition is one example of why the anti-tech critique has been part of anarchism.
>> Brian has constructed this strawman where he suggests that I am
>> "against airplanes." I would respond by asking Brian how much of the
>> world manages to survive without airplanes? Is this way of life, where
>> people don't travel by airplanes, such a bad one? I think that this
>> example is one where Brian hasn't even examined the economic aspects
>> of airplane travel and the aeronatatic industry? Why do we have jet
>> travel? Because of the military industrial complex and the situation
>> after WW II. Who mostly travels on airplanes? Why were airplanes so
>> empty in the months before 9-11? What do these things tell us about
>> the function of airlines in a capitalist society.
>
>
> I think this arguement around the relevance of airplanes is a bit
> abstract and off the point. Let's get down to a better example.
> Recently, in the anti-anarchist press of the primitivists and their
> luddite followers who call themselves by a myriad of names
> ["insurrectionists", "green anarchists", neo post-modernists, to name a
> few] there was an article saying that groups in the third world were
> fundamentally wrong for struggling for advancements in their community
> like electricity and such.
Aha, I think you've just thrown a wrench into the process of this argument. By suggesting that a bunch of anarchists are anti-anarchists you've effectively defined away much of contemporary anarchism. This is a dishonest debate trick that Brian Oliver Strawman uses all the time. Brian thinks that the only acceptable anarchists are anarcho-syndicalists.
Green anarchists, some primitivists, and insurrectionists are anarchists just as much as you or Brian or I am.
I'm not going to participate in any discussion that engages in discourse like this.
Chuck0
------------------------------------------------------------ Personal homepage -> http://chuck.mahost.org/ Infoshop.org -> http://www.infoshop.org/ MutualAid.org -> http://www.mutualaid.org/ Alternative Press Review -> http://www.altpr.org/ Practical Anarchy Online -> http://www.practicalanarchy.org/ Anarchy: AJODA -> http://www.anarchymag.org/
AIM: AgentHelloKitty
Web publishing and services for your nonprofit: Bread and Roses Web Publishing http://www.breadandrosesweb.org/
"...ironically, perhaps, the best organised dissenters in the world today are anarchists, who are busily undermining capitalism while the rest of the left is still trying to form committees."
-- Jeremy Hardy, The Guardian (UK)