[lbo-talk] chavez, bush, the devil and jon stewart

[Tayssir John Gabbour]

B. wrote:
> "Chuck0-as-list-representative-of-the-entirety-of-anarchism"
> is something I'd caution people against, as appealing
> as it might be for folks who don't like anarchism
> anyway, no matter what wisdom there is in that
> tradition.
>
> (And there is a lot, incidentally, whether some people
> like it or not).

I think many might like skimming through David Graeber's readable
_Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology_, which the publisher offers
free online:
http://www.prickly-paradigm.com/paradigm14.pdf

Anarchism is usually presented so... archly, ironically. ;) I found it
much more understandable when applied to daily life: increasing autonomy
in relationships with others; having work motivated more by mutual aid
rather than dominance. These are things one can practice in daily life,
"within the shell of the old" ways, where the results of incremental
work is quickly apparent.

(Corporate management lit actually does this -- they often talk about
worldview, not just "Jack Welch said this, IBM's Black Team did that."
They often touch on basic motivations which can be applied to daily
life; you as a manager have natural authority over employees kind of
like parents have natural authority over their children...)

So instead of the revolution-or-bust attitude, some high-profile
anarchists hesitate to even use words like "revolution," because they
don't want to see revolution as just some discrete event; it can also be
a continuous process. [1]

In particular, I was impressed by Graeber's description of an anarchist
friend [2]:

"I remember talking to a friend of mine in Belgrade, who's organizing a
PGA conference in Serbia, who was visiting these various factories
occupied by their workers, and he said that in several cases people just
started crying because when he came and said, 'Well, we just want to
listen to what you're doing and see how we can help you', nobody had
ever said that to them before. Everybody else showed up and started
telling them the real analysis of their situation and what they had to do."


Tayssir


[1]
http://www.radio4all.net/pub/archive/04.01.05/agitkid@killradio.org/710-1-20050308-Indymedia_On_Air_What_is_Revolution_030705.mp3

[2]
http://www.radio4all.net/pub/archive/04.01.05/agitkid@killradio.org/710-1-20041122-Indymedia_On_Air_112204.mp3