> This is incorrect. My post was not a personal, "ad hominem" attack on Chuck,
> but a more or less dispassionate, clinical dissection of his politics (such
> as they are). He is not alone in holding these politics, though his attitude
> is so "pure" that it comes off as a Platonic archetype, which is why I
> sometimes wonder if he really holds the ideas he professes. The following
> article has some ideas on how to deal with people who have politics like
> Chuck's:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/9jx48
My politics do not resemble the strawman you've constructed nor the ad hominem attacks you refuse to fess up to.
The charge that anarchists are "individualists" goes way back. There are some anarchist individualists, but most of us are NOT individualists. It's really silly to call us invidualists simply because we have no interest in building YOUR PARTY or following orders from buffoons like Comrade Leader Avakian Who Is In Exile In Paris(tm).
Lacny: "Chuck is an individualist who doesn't want to be accountable to anyone else..."
I am not an individualist. I've never said that I don't want to be accountable, but I do understand that accountability is a very complicated thing. I'm pretty open about my opinions and actions, something my friends think has left me open to all kinds of unfair attacks. I understand, more than anybody else, that I'm accountable to the broader movement and to other activists. In my experience, other people don't understand that accountability is a two-way street and they fail to see the irresponsibility of their own actions.
"considers democratic decision-making in a mass movement context 'authoritarian'"
This is laughable. People attack me for my defense of democatic decision-making methods such as consensus. I am opposed to the authoritarian methods which you seem to favor. An organization where a person or cadre gives orders to other people is NOT democratic. Shit, this was something worked out by the New Left 35 years ago.
"..and favors free-floating "leaderless" (feel free to laugh) groups of "activists" who will never organize masses of ordinary people because they are simply not interested in doing so."
Again, another strawman misrepresentation of my actual politics. All groups have leaders of some kind--I'm often the leader of many groups, given my age and experience--but the difference is that I favor leadership that isn't based on hierarchy and authority. This is Anarchism 101 and is how most activists see this issue. We just reject authoritarian leadership.
I'm not interested in organizing masses of ordinary people? Then what the hell am I doing every day? I guess this means that I didn't do this: http://www.infoshop.org/wiki/index.php/List_of_March_2006_antiwar_protests Nor do I work on the Infoshop project which aims to get people working together to make social change. All that work I did in the anti-globalization movement must have been a hallucination.
"They are interested in a subculture, not a movement, and if I recall correctly..."
You have to have both. That's how I see it. I see my work as being one of movement-building. Mass movements are based on culture and their own institutions. The mass movements of the 1960s had their culture, which promoted solidarity, cohesion, a sense of being part of something big, fun, sex, and much more. The radical labor movement of the early 20th century had its subculture. The contemporary American conservative movement is based on its subculture" churches, pro-life protests, "left Behind," Fox News, think tanks, and so on.
Chuck