> Old habits die hard. Between Julio's hard force of
> discipline and uniformity of tactics and Bhaskar's
> and Carrol's soft force of expanding the movement
> so as to marginalize the anarchists, the urge to purge
> remains strong. It's almost comical. Just when I think
> anarchists are engaging in anachronistic taunting for
> invoking Stalinism, it rears its fetid head.
For the record, one, there's nothing Stalinist about collective discipline. The need for discipline flows from the need to cooperate.
I am not talking about forcefully imposed discipline to some hierarchy apart and separate from us. But it is discipline nonetheless. Any and all social structures result from people cooperating (not necessarily with full consciousness of it), but doing things guided by some shared purpose. If people do not subordinate their individual actions to the shared purpose, then the shared purpose amounts to little.
Two, I did not call for "uniformity of tactics." Actually, I wrote somewhere that what is necessary is *tactical flexibility*, whichever combination of tactics may emerge, but vetted through a collective process, as transparent and inclusive as practical circumstances may make possible. I am convinced that there's no place on this planet where circumstances are more conducive to people pondering, discussing, and sorting things out collectively and rationally, with the least restriction, than the U.S. today.
Again, if people don't engage in this process *consciously*, that doesn't mean that the aggregation of individually decided actions (and omissions) won't happen and have consequences. It is going to happen, one way or the other. It'll just happen "behind our backs" (as the old man used to say), in ways that reinforce those most alienated, hierarchical, oppressive social structures that we are allegedly trying to dismantle. You may believe that, by refusing to subordinate yourself to the basic discipline any movement requires to maintain a modicum of unity and coherence, you're kicking authoritarianism out of the door. The problem is that, by so doing, you may actually be ushering in through the window a worse type of authoritarianism. I am not saying that collective democratic process are without problems, that they cannot be captured and turn into oppressive monsters. But the dangers on both directions won't go away just because we avoid to face them consciously.
Three, I am not calling to purge anybody. Bhaskar and Carrol can speak for themselves, but as far as I'm concerned, I want the 99% engaged in this. No purges.