Also, there will be pauses. Of a week, of six months, of a year. And those who want nicely packaged programs will sigh happily. Then something else will explode somplace else, and everybody on the sidelines will "criticize it. I'm being sarcastic about criticism because it self-consciously stays OUTSIDE the conversation that is going on.
Carrol
On 10/3/2011 9:30 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
> pretty much. I mean Doug has often said - or was it Carrol? I
> forget... anyway, what has often been said is that people in power
> were scared shitless when they saw what *might* happen. so, they
> instituted reforms designed to co-opt the protests.
>
> Which is actually a good example of how the system is so difficult to
> overturn, how it's self-correcting, homeostatic as the functionalists
> like to say. People in power do things to forestall the people from
> rising up to take their shit.
>
> one thing about anyone who is seriously well off -= their mindset --
> that i've always found interesting when I've read about the rich: they
> are filled with guilt such that everywhere they look, they see poor
> people who want their shit.
>
> when they see 15 year old girls having a picnic on the plaza they
> don't really see her and her friends. they see throngs of poor people
> with battering rams, guns, and missile launchers aimed at their shit,
> trying to take their shit away from them.
>
> ha ha.
>
> anyway, contra doug? (I think, stupid webmail. hate it.), they do have
> a theory: it's that the institutions that exist are not places to
> which we can turn for an answer. we can't ask congress to help us. we
> can't ask corporations to give us jobs. we can't ask rich people to
> donate money. as soon as we do this, we are resignifying existing
> relations of power. We put ourselves in the
> position of asking, of begging, of pleading... please, please oh
> powerful ones, do stuff for us....
>
> they're not having any of that. that is their theory. it's also their
> theory that there is no reason to have a coherent message or to agree
> on one big goal or even three big goals.
>
> will they reinstantiate systems of power while engaged in practices
> which _claim_ that they are all about not doing so? it is my view that
> they very likely will... if i had all my shit unpacked and didn't have
> a meeting every night this week and next, i might be bothered to
> explicate this by reposting analyses I've already written --
> criticisms of the radical politics that inform anarchist movements...
>
> but in the meantime, these folks aren't without theory. at least not
> as graeber has explained it. it doesn't look like they are all about
> activistism, doing anything as long as its something. this action
> seemed pretty informed by the knowledge and wisdom gained from those
> actions held elsewhere. we're watching theory and praxis play
> themselves out right now. no one is (yet) sitting around taking
> insights learned on the ground and writing theories about it just yet,
> but it will happen. sometimes, as we learned with the women's
> movement, it was happening at the time, in communiques, newsletters,
> notes, etc. that were passed back and forth, mimeographed.
>
> but the very notion of NOT having a message, of refusing to ask, has
> itself been informed by theories - and those theories were informed by
> political praxis.
>
> that they want to start a conversation suggests to me that it's not
> that they are allergic to sitting around and talking about things.
> they don't seem to be into doing anything just to avoid paralysis of
> analysis, but are inviting people to start a conversation discussing
> an analysis and discussing ways to solve the problem.
>
> i don't what eric meant when he said this was challenging anarchist
> methods/theories, but I'd say this is one big push in that direction.
>
>
>
>
>
>> Not a criticism of anybody here in particular,
>
> fucking wimp.
>
>
> but suppose they
>> hammered out
>> a manifesto and a compact set of pithy demands. What should happen
> next?
>> I'll tip my own hand and say the way that something happens is if
> this
>> thing
>> grows like T
>
>
>
>
>
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