# Problems with libcom



## cats hammers (Nov 11, 2005)

As people may have noticed, libcom has been down since this morning.  We're currenty experiencing some problems with transfering to a new server - many of you may have noticed we've had more downtime than usual recently.  This is due to a combination of problems with our previous hosting, and the massive increase in traffic the site has experienced recently.  Basically, we've become victims of our own success, but are working to get things sorted as soon as possible, and we presume everything will be sorted in the next few days.  Thanks to everyone for their continued support, and we will keep you all updated as to progress.

-The libcom team


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## blamblam (Nov 12, 2005)

Now our old hosts have put up an old version of the site, so we've had to close down the forums, and bits and pieces are browsable... hopefully not too long now though...


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## cats hammers (Nov 14, 2005)

We're back!

Most, if not all the site is up again.  Posts from Thursday seem to have been lost, but everything else seems to be up.  Thanks everyone for your patience.

-The libcom team


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## rednblack (Nov 14, 2005)

down again!


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## catch (Nov 14, 2005)

I fucking hope you're joking.  

Just to let people know - other sections of the site won't be completely restored until this evening - so you may get error messages if you look at anything other than the forums (if any of you ever do )


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## rednblack (Nov 14, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> I fucking hope you're joking.



no.


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## rednblack (Nov 14, 2005)

working now though


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## Raw SslaC (Nov 15, 2005)

who really gives a fuck if libcom is down? self-referential activist bollox.

raw


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## revol68 (Nov 15, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> who really gives a fuck if libcom is down? self-referential activist bollox.
> 
> raw



you just posted some Dissent shite on it about an hour ago you daft fuck.

Just cos the bigger boys tore your pish poor interpretation of operismo to shreds on it, no need to be bitter.


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## Pickman's model (Nov 15, 2005)

rednblack said:
			
		

> working now though


i know.


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## cats hammers (Nov 15, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> you just posted some Dissent shite on it about an hour ago you daft fuck.



...But how could he do that, I thought libcom "censored" the wombles?


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## knopf (Nov 15, 2005)

jackwupton said:
			
		

> ...But how could he do that, I thought libcom "censored" the wombles?



Yeah, you stopped linking to their website, you authowitawian bastards!


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## cats hammers (Nov 15, 2005)

knopf said:
			
		

> Yeah, you stopped linking to their website, you authowitawian bastards!



I don't think you're taking this vile attack on their civil and political rights seriously enough.


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## knopf (Nov 15, 2005)

jackwupton said:
			
		

> I don't think you're taking this vile attack on their civil and political rights seriously enough.



Somehow I think I am.


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## Taxamo Welf (Nov 15, 2005)

*quote of the year:*

NFB 'I find it really worrying that on grouo of libertarians could censor another.'

LC 'would you not censor anything and have it turn into indymedia? Would you print something by hakim bey for instance, a known paedophile?'

NFB 'I'd have to look at the article.'


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## Taxamo Welf (Nov 15, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> who really gives a fuck if libcom is down? self-referential activist bollox.
> 
> raw


you are not an activist yourself?


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## Emma Herself (Nov 15, 2005)

No he's much too clever for that.

Anyway, activists do it on purpose, raw's just naturally revolutionary


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## Raw SslaC (Nov 15, 2005)

oh no the libcom admins after mees!   

quick run! 

 

I actually enjoyed the meeting at the bookfair. It was interesting to see the level on (non) debate. Plus I think my contributions actually livened up what was a dull little meeting.


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## Rob Ray (Nov 15, 2005)

That's one way of putting it, the other of course would be that you wilfully wasted the time of various attendees (including me and the Black flag ppl who have nothing to do with it) by interrupting with something that was largely irrelevant to the point of the meeting. I would have been happy to talk about your idea to set up a womble magazine (which you mentioned once, in passing, claiming it was your main reason for being there) but there was little chance of that, sadly.

On the other hand, I note you still haven't linked to Freedom, Black Flag (or indeed libcom) on the Wombles' own site despite a couple of requests? An oversight I assume, as you clearly wouldn't be censoring us, would you?


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## Taxamo Welf (Nov 15, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> oh no the libcom admins after mees!
> 
> quick run!
> 
> ...


I'll give you the following:
1) the meeting was goinf nowhere
2) you aregued your case well

but i'll have to subtract:
1) it had nothing to do with the topic
2) you knew full well there was no chance of a conclusion
3) Its all bollocks anyway

which i'm afriad leaves you wth a score of minus 1 

You don't go away empty handed tho, you libcom biro, a libcom pack of coloured pencils and a libcom lunchbox.


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## Taxamo Welf (Nov 15, 2005)

Rob Ray said:
			
		

> On the other hand, I note you still haven't linked to Freedom, Black Flag (or indeed libcom) on the Wombles' own site despite a couple of requests? An oversight I assume, as you clearly wouldn't be censoring us, would you?


The main page still has G8 stuff on it, so its probably just needing updating.

No wait freedom and BF have been running for decades.

oooh.


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## cats hammers (Nov 15, 2005)

Rob Ray said:
			
		

> That's one way of putting it, the other of course would be that you wilfully wasted the time of various attendees (including me and the Black flag ppl who have nothing to do with it) by interrupting with something that was largely irrelevant to the point of the meeting. I would have been happy to talk about your idea to set up a womble magazine (which you mentioned once, in passing, claiming it was your main reason for being there) but there was little chance of that, sadly.
> 
> On the other hand, I note you still haven't linked to Freedom, Black Flag (or indeed libcom) on the Wombles' own site despite a couple of requests? An oversight I assume, as you clearly wouldn't be censoring us, would you?



Be careful, you wouldn't want to be branded as part of the runt litter.


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## Rob Ray (Nov 15, 2005)

Nah Raw wouldn't do that, iirr I argued in his favour when it first happened, my main change of view now is that I think it is so utterly trivial that a year is quite long enough to have moved on beyond the point of bothering to complain, let alone to actively disrupt other peoples' meetings, and particularly when you are yourself on the wrong side of the debate you're trying to win.


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## Emma Herself (Nov 15, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> oh no the libcom admins after mees!
> 
> quick run!



Psht... Like you'd ever get that lucky....


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## 888 (Nov 15, 2005)

Do you all realise how pathetic this looks from the outside?


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## catch (Nov 15, 2005)

I do.


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## Raw SslaC (Nov 15, 2005)

Hi Rob Ray and others,

(1)There was no intention to disrupt the meeting. I have no problem with people as long as they do what they say they do and Black Flag though I have had problems with it not doing what it can do (though I'm sure the people involved know this) have improved consideriable.

(2)I think I raised important issues in the context of libertarian media and my intervention in the debate was a response to comrade who mentioned about setting up some "media response unit" to clarify certain political/factual inaccuracies in capitalist media. If you remember I disagreed with it on the basis of presenting anarchism in a good, acceptable light, something which is impossible to justify considering that anarchist ideas and actions have been illegal, anti-moral and sometimes fucked up. My example was the informal anarchic federation (FAI in italian) and the subsequent statements by anarchist federations.

(3)The magazine I spoke about is not a "wombles magazine" it is seperate and includes people from different groups and background. It will be a 96 page magazine which will come out twice yearly and will attempt to go beyond whats out there, in a comradely way.

(4)Revol is a cock, I assume a little cock. What else would be the reason for continuosly assuming he knows more about operaismo/autonomia than I do. I haven't as yet written an analysis of it, anywhere, so I don't know what he is refering too.

(5)Regarding the links. Well if black flag will publish our contact details in the next issue (which it hasn't and doubt will ever do) then I'm sure we will publicise them. However if you would like to suggest a link to our website then please email us and it'll be up in a day! We're not as petty as the little runts.

(6)I heard on the grapevine that the "spacehijackers" are anti-organisational AND anti-community, when are they gonna get kicked off libcom?

raw


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## revol68 (Nov 15, 2005)

So you don't think anarchists should disown themselves from fuckwits?

Are you going down the montevideo road of everything ever done by the working class (as a class in itself i might add) is beyond judgement, except like a proper activist you replace "working class" with Anarchist?

And do you accept that Libcom have the right to link or unlink to any group they wish?

You might not agree with it but you can't call it censorship.

I don't see a link from the WOMBLES to Organise! (thank fuck!) does that mean you are censoring my Belfast comrades?

And you have put forward various piss poor interpretations of Autonomism on the libcom boards, in particular your daft notions that autonomism is a geogrpaphical space eg squat instead of a a description of the working classes own dynamism within the process of capital.

if only the summer would come and then youse twats could spend your time penned in by the police being ogled at by the public as some sort of Damien Hirst piece gone astray.


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## cats hammers (Nov 16, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> (2)I think I raised important issues in the context of libertarian media and my intervention in the debate was a response to comrade who mentioned about setting up some "media response unit" to clarify certain political/factual inaccuracies in capitalist media. If you remember I disagreed with it on the basis of presenting anarchism in a good, acceptable light, something which is impossible to justify considering that anarchist ideas and actions have been illegal, anti-moral and sometimes fucked up. My example was the informal anarchic federation (FAI in italian) and the subsequent statements by anarchist federations.



Oh god, I forgot this, it was so amazing!  You seriously claimed that it was bad for IFA to disassociate themselves from any mentalist with a fetish for random bombings that call themselves, didn't you?

Auto-critique!


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## rednblack (Nov 16, 2005)

he is right about a 'media response unit' being utterly pointless though, who gives a fuck how the mainstream media present us - they will always try and smear anarchists


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## Larry O'Hara (Nov 16, 2005)

*For what it's worth...*

1) Have just read through some Wombles stuff I got at the bookfair--very interesting indeed, and refreshing in its iconoclasm

2) Look forward to the Wombles magazine.

3) Have just read through the latest Black Flag--interesting article on anti-fascism, but the revisionist interpretation of events in Leeds AFA hardly impresses.  

4) The old Black Flag did have some fascinating stuff, much still worth reading today, on the secret state/far right.  I would love it if this aspect of BF was revived.


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## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> So you don't think anarchists should disown themselves from fuckwits?
> 
> Are you going down the montevideo road of everything ever done by the working class (as a class in itself i might add) is beyond judgement, except like a proper activist you replace "working class" with Anarchist?
> 
> ...



(1)I called it censorship in the context of it where that link was place i.e. that section of the website describes groups/social centres/publications in certain areas. If someone is to take it as a comprehensive list (as it is NOT showing libertarian communist groups only) then WOMBLES in fact have been censored from it. End of story. 

(2)In relation to autonomism, well that period of struggle and the theoritical debates which arose provides certain analytical tools to analyse capitalism and class struggle. When we talk of autonomy, we talk about in all contextes not restricted to work but other areas of production. (BTW I have NEVER said that "autonomism" is a "geographical space like a squat"!!! For fuck sake). If you want to here my ideas on why social centres have a POTENTIAL for reovlutionary autonomous working class resistance then I'll be happy to share them wit youse.

(3)If you think it's good that people are penned in by the police and attacked then atleast I know where you'll stand in a middle of such a thing - like your comrades from libcom did on mayday. Atleast our experience has taught us well to stand up for ourselves and people around us, even if it means getting beaten, arrested or sent to jail. I know who I'll rather had next to me if that happens. You seem to talk the talk and all that but it really doesn't get you nowhere, like I mentioned to jack and the CAG lot (what happened to them by the way, Ive had farts that lasted longer than their political manifestations!). There is a difference between comradely debate and just whinging youths saying how much a counter-revolutionaries we are for not following a certain idealogically pure thread of struggle. 

(4)Revol is still a cock!


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## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

and i do know where i stand when it comes to fightig the police, i just don't see the point in being so fucking stupid as to continously walk into police pens, have a pathetic bit of argy bargy, some people get scooped and on we go again.

but hey keep on trying to ape the actions of reformed stalinists in Italy, i'm sure it will be really successful.

Libcom wished to disassociate themselves from the wombles because they have nothing to offer libertarian communism and think it stupid to provide roads to dead ends.


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## soulman (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> Libcom wished to disassociate themselves from the wombles because they have nothing to offer libertarian communism and think it stupid to provide roads to dead ends.



Is that what the Libcom collective as a whole have agreed upon?


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## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> and i do know where i stand when it comes to fightig the police, i just don't see the point in being so fucking stupid as to continously walk into police pens, have a pathetic bit of argy bargy, some people get scooped and on we go again.
> 
> but hey keep on trying to ape the actions of reformed stalinists in Italy, i'm sure it will be really successful.
> 
> Libcom wished to disassociate themselves from the wombles because they have nothing to offer libertarian communism and think it stupid to provide roads to dead ends.



Don't really give two fucks if we "have nothing to offer libertarian communism", I interested in how people resist the social reality and try to change it and are not afraid in sticking their necks out for something they care passionately about.

Plus I never mentioned fighting the police, though that has its place as it's usually these fuckers (especially in London) that you have to deal with, thats definetly a problem. 

You keep throwing mud but your badly off target, mainly because your speaking from experiences mediated by internet discussion boards. You don't really know who we are, you haven't really discussed face to face with anyone actually involved. But hey don't let reality get in the way of a post.

sort it out!

raw


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## cats hammers (Nov 16, 2005)

soulman said:
			
		

> Is that what the Libcom collective as a whole have agreed upon?



The collective as a whole agreed upon the removal of the wombles from the contact lists.  That is still our unified position.


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## cats hammers (Nov 16, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> like I mentioned to jack and the CAG lot (what happened to them by the way, Ive had farts that lasted longer than their political manifestations!)



Nothing, people either moved away, or decided to carry on doing the same work but realising trying to relate it to the pathetic mess that is the left/anarchist mileau is a fucking waste of time, and in fact counter productive.


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## Rob Ray (Nov 16, 2005)

> Regarding the links. Well if black flag will publish our contact details in the next issue (which it hasn't and doubt will ever do) then I'm sure we will publicise them.



Surely on those grounds though Libcom has no responsibility to link you, as you have never published theirs, and still don't (Freedom doesn't link either of you, mainly cos the website's crap/not updated/has no links at all, but at least we're fair-minded about it ). If you're going to talk about censorship, then perhaps that concept should not be a one way street. 

I still think that if you are going to take a moral high ground on this subject then you've got to walk the walk (and yes I'm aware you very much do so in other instances, that's not the point). Libcom, Freedom and Black flag are all relatively well known media, have been for years, but you haven't linked any of them. Nor do you link various federations (solfed, AF, IWW), which have been in existence for longer than you and again, are well known in anarchist circles. That's not an oversight. No-one who would call themselves anarchists and have been around as long as you have would be ill-informed enough not to know about the above.

Jack et al, Raw's (still) got a point about the space hijackers, fair enough if you're going to start categorising as a an organised class struggle-specific site I guess, but at least be consistent.


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## catch (Nov 16, 2005)

> If someone is to take it as a comprehensive list



Where does it say comprehensive?

Rob Ray: There's a few links I'd like to cull from the listings myself, but that'll probably happen if there's a major update, not because people feel hard done by.

Space Hijackers seem harmless enough, but I don't think of them as a political group - more like sections of the Mark Thomas Comedy Product with a smaller budget.


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## Emma Herself (Nov 16, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> you haven't really discussed face to face with anyone actually involved.



Have you? 

I was actually very keen to talk to you after that meeting at the bookfair, but unfortunately you'd scarpered pretty damn quick. Which was a shame. You wouldn't even make eye contact with any of the libcom team, so I hardly think it's fair that you have a go at revol for not having spoken to you or your comrades face to face, as he's in fucking Belfast, and has better things to do with the short amount of time he spends in London.

FWIW, the wombles have NEVER linked to libcom (or enrager),for personal reasons. Did we ever complain? We could hyave kicked up an equal amount of fuss at any point, but didn't feel the need to. And given what had just happened between your mates and my mates the night before the original site was launched, it's a wonder you were ever listed at all.

Besides, if libcom is such a load of self-referential activist bollocks, and we're such a bunch of "cocks", why do you give a shit if you're group isn't listed with us then? I know you want to be associated with any knobjockey who calls themselves anarchists out of solidarity, but we don't even call ourselves anarchists, so what's the problem?


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## Emma Herself (Nov 16, 2005)

Good post Rob Ray - as for SH, I'm with catch on that one.


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## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

Rob Ray said:
			
		

> Surely on those grounds though Libcom has no responsibility to link you, as you have never published theirs, and still don't (Freedom doesn't link either of you, mainly cos the website's crap/not updated/has no links at all, but at least we're fair-minded about it ). If you're going to talk about censorship, then perhaps that concept should not be a one way street.
> 
> I still think that if you are going to take a moral high ground on this subject then you've got to walk the walk (and yes I'm aware you very much do so in other instances, that's not the point). Libcom, Freedom and Black flag are all relatively well known media, have been for years, but you haven't linked any of them. Nor do you link various federations (solfed, AF, IWW), which have been in existence for longer than you and again, are well known in anarchist circles. That's not an oversight. No-one who would call themselves anarchists and have been around as long as you have would be ill-informed enough not to know about the above.
> 
> Jack et al, Raw's (still) got a point about the space hijackers, fair enough if you're going to start categorising as a an organised class struggle-specific site I guess, but at least be consistent.




Yeah nice editing of my comments!! I also said that if someone where to email us to suggest a link then our webslave will stick it on up!!!   

As for the nat fed links, well if those nat feds saw it as a problem then they'll email us. There is no sectarian reasons why we haven't done, surely if people feel so much about it they'll tell us, like black flag (and also wombles contact in black flag) if we really care that much to email youse about then we would have done it. Its different is a website which attempts to list all non-hierarchical groups from the "circle community squat" to "rhythms of resistance" to "space hijackers", that use to list wombles and then due to personal reasons its taken down.


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## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

yes well do you expect the Libcom collective to put up with your continous digs at them on their own site, not to mention physical threats and still link to youse?

I mean your not even banned from the forums, raw.


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## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

Zoë Herself said:
			
		

> Have you?
> 
> I was actually very keen to talk to you after that meeting at the bookfair, but unfortunately you'd scarpered pretty damn quick. Which was a shame. You wouldn't even make eye contact with any of the libcom team, so I hardly think it's fair that you have a go at revol for not having spoken to you or your comrades face to face, as he's in fucking Belfast, and has better things to do with the short amount of time he spends in London.
> 
> ...



Yeah I "scarpered" to the anarchist assembly which we were hosting right after your meeting. 

Again, if enrage email then it would have been put up on the site. Its open! remember that concept? 

Look Zoe et al, I can prove it was for personal reasons that wombles was taken down from the listings. Also that some of the admins didn't know why
and for what reason we were taken down. Very libertarian! There were different reasons given each time it was asked on the boards why that happened. you should really get your stories straight before.

Anyway I really can't give two fucks whether wombles is listed (I think it gives your site/project to much kudos anyway   ). I am merely highlighting a problem, and showing how infactual/revisionist your arguments are.

raw


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## rednblack (Nov 16, 2005)




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## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> yes well do you expect the Libcom collective to put up with your continous digs at them on their own site, not to mention physical threats and still link to youse?
> 
> I mean your not even banned from the forums, raw.



Physical threats? when you and others were spreading rumours that we were a bunch of K hed & undercover cops. What do you think that someone new reading that would think? Would they believe it? To me thats political sabotage, for the reason of destroying and undermining a group - sounds very sinister that you lot were all a part of.


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## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> Physical threats? when you and others were spreading rumours that we were a bunch of K hed & undercover cops. What do you think that someone new reading that would think? Would they believe it? To me thats political sabotage, for the reason of destroying and undermining a group - sounds very sinister that you lot were all a part of.



no one accussed the wombles of being cops, I think they did point out that the nature of your organisation (or lack of) meant it was very easily infiltrated and infact had been in the past.

And don't try and tar me with that brush cos bar a few tongue in cheek jokes I actually tried to have some sort of debate with you on the libcom boards, until you turnt into a spoilt fuckwit who'd got pissed on his daddies wine and started having a go at Icepick over stuff completely irrelevant.


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## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> no one accussed the wombles of being cops, I think they did point out that the nature of your organisation (or lack of) meant it was very easily infiltrated and infact had been in the past.
> 
> And don't try and tar me with that brush cos bar a few tongue in cheek jokes I actually tried to have some sort of debate with you on the libcom boards, until you turnt into a spoilt fuckwit who'd got pissed on his daddies wine and started having a go at Icepick over stuff completely irrelevant.



Oooh a short fuse! "who'd got pissed on his daddies wine" ha ha  
nuff said fuckwit


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## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> no one accussed the wombles of being cops, I think they did point out that the nature of your organisation (or lack of) meant it was very easily infiltrated and infact had been in the past.
> 
> And don't try and tar me with that brush cos bar a few tongue in cheek jokes I actually tried to have some sort of debate with you on the libcom boards, until you turnt into a spoilt fuckwit who'd got pissed on his daddies wine and started having a go at Icepick over stuff completely irrelevant.


you don't sound entirely sober...


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## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> you don't sound entirely sober...



yes but by the mid afternoon i'll be sober and you'll still some fuckwit in Class War defending some cunts in the WOMBLES, as Churchill probably never said.


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## cats hammers (Nov 16, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> I am merely highlighting a problem, and showing how infactual/revisionist your arguments are.



So revisionist that the threads in question are still on our site and can be read by anyone.


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## Rob Ray (Nov 16, 2005)

> Yeah nice editing of my comments!! I also said that if someone where to email us to suggest a link then our webslave will stick it on up!!!
> 
> As for the nat fed links, well if those nat feds saw it as a problem then they'll email us. There is no sectarian reasons why we haven't done, surely if people feel so much about it they'll tell us, like black flag (and also wombles contact in black flag) if we really care that much to email youse about then we would have done it. Its different is a website which attempts to list all non-hierarchical groups from the "circle community squat" to "rhythms of resistance" to "space hijackers", that use to list wombles and then due to personal reasons its taken down.



I don't see the email offer as relevant to my point. The fact is you had/have a notable lack of organisation-based class struggle sites up, particularly ones which disagree with your political position. I'm sure when ppl were originally compiling the list that these names would have occurred, it's difficult to imagine how they wouldn't, they just didn't go up. I don't particularly care about that, nor does anyone else, hence not having a go about it before or indeed emailing, but it seems fairly relevant in a context when you are castigating other people for the same flaw. 

You are complaining that Libcom took your link down for personal reasons. Fair enough, they may well have done (though I'll repeat it has been a year, I would have thought, given that it's _one fucking link_, that the subject would be unworthy of this much attention). But as I'm trying to show, they are not the only ones who have put up a list of links which happen not to include people they don't agree with/like, and they probably won't be the last. 

They have not banned you from the forums, they have not banned your literature from the newswire. They do not try and influence other outlets not to support you. It is not then in any realistic sense censorship. That they have dropped your link is perhaps something that deserved criticism, but that was all said over a year ago now, I don't see why it is deemed necessary to labour the point further.


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## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> yes but by the mid afternoon i'll be sober and you'll still some fuckwit in Class War defending some cunts in the WOMBLES, as Churchill probably never said.


no, by mid-afternoon you'll be passed out on a bench in the sun, surrounded by a pile of empty tommy cooper's.

it's interesting how no one here EVER defends you. you really are revol no-mates, aren't you?


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## rednblack (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> yes but by the mid afternoon i'll be sober and you'll still some fuckwit in Class War defending some cunts in the WOMBLES, as Churchill probably never said.




 ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz


raw is wrong to accuse libcom of censorship however, for the reasons rob ray pointed out.


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## cats hammers (Nov 16, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> it's interesting how no one here EVER defends you. you really are revol no-mates, aren't you?



Perhaps it's because he lacks the required hatred for users of the 73 bus to be accepted within the contemporary anarchist movement.


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## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> no, by mid-afternoon you'll be passed out on a bench in the sun, surrounded by a pile of empty tommy cooper's.
> 
> it's interesting how no one here EVER defends you. you really are revol no-mates, aren't you?



probably because i'm quite capable of dealing with the limescale of anarchism myself.

And would people please make up their minds, one minute im allowed away with murder thanks to my friendships the next im billy no mates.

And sorry that i don't require a retarded mob behind me to stand by my positions.


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## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> And would people please make up their minds, one minute im allowed away with murder thanks to my friendships the next im billy no mates.


please direct me to any post of mine where i said you had mates.



> _And sorry that i don't require a retarded mob behind me to stand by my positions._


any mob that stood by your positions would have to have 'issues'.


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## knopf (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> i don't require a retarded mob behind me to stand by my positions.



Which is lucky.


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## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

To Rob Ray: I think I've said all I can say on it, so no need to say anymore.

To Revol: You seem to be the spoilt brat, you can't have your way and you stamp your feet and scream abuse    

Go to your room!    Ooops forgot you never leave it

 

raw


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## Taxamo Welf (Nov 16, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> To Revol: You seem to be the spoilt brat


a strange choice of words all things considered regarding respective backgrounds.

I wish people would refrain from the personal, but alas it seems an integral part of the caggist mentality.

I do hawever respect the fact that raw seems to have reached some kind of conclusion here: can we consider the issue closed?


----------



## rednblack (Nov 16, 2005)

Taxamo Welf said:
			
		

> I do hawever respect the fact that raw seems to have reached some kind of conclusion here: can we consider the issue closed?


----------



## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> To Rob Ray: I think I've said all I can say on it, so no need to say anymore.
> 
> To Revol: You seem to be the spoilt brat, you can't have your way and you stamp your feet and scream abuse
> 
> ...



funny i'm sitting in work typing this.

And to be honest I couldn't care if your Da owned Ferrari nevermind some poxy wine company, what does bother me is how you seem to look down on us who have jobs and are completely unaware that your political ideas are predecated upon being young, white and having no real responsibilities. 

If you were from a family of billionaires but had a decent analysis it would not be an issue.


----------



## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

Taxamo Welf said:
			
		

> a strange choice of words all things considered regarding respective backgrounds.



meaning?


----------



## Taxamo Welf (Nov 16, 2005)

i think the meaning is pretty obvious friend.

And revol has made an uncharacteristaically balanced point out of it too.
Revol i applaud


----------



## sam/phallocrat (Nov 16, 2005)

Taxamo Welf said:
			
		

> i think the meaning is pretty obvious friend.
> 
> And revol has made an uncharacteristaically balanced point out of it too.
> Revol i applaud



Do your essay . . .


----------



## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

sorry its gone over my head   

Revol, now your changing the subject if there ever was one    

I don't look down at people who work 'cos I end up staring at my feet  
foolish, that'll be too easy won't it. That I think operaismo is a bout living in a squat taking ketamine, that people who work are pig-loving collaboratoring zombies, that I think dancing in tescos on mayday is going to change the world. the politics that you project on me is a fictional/virtual reality. end of


----------



## cats hammers (Nov 16, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> I don't look down at people who work






			
				Raw said:
			
		

> In response to workplace/community bollocks. Well most people in WOMBLES don't work, and hopefully will never work! We're a mixture of precarious, unemployed, unemployable, dole scum that knows that hardwork for any rich bastard is shit (we don't have to read theory books for that). That perhaps why we have so much time to organise the OCCUPIED SOCIAL CENTRE or DUBLIN MAYDAY or BEYOND ESF.
> 
> And yes, unfortunately too many people work and we should try and get people out of work, resisting the work mentality like some of the fucking anarchists in London who I haven't seen for 2 years (due to work commitments!). Com on for fuck sake, it's the year 2004, unless we throw ourselves into creating/facilitating/aiding a movement against the capitalist project then why the fuck call ourselves anarchists!



Hm.


----------



## rednblack (Nov 16, 2005)

jackwupton said:
			
		

> Hm.



to be fair raw that second para is shit, sorry but in what way can you organise against capital if you don't have everyday contact with ordinary working class people, if you don't show people that anarchists are just normal people too - and that you can be an anarchist while having a family and supporting them through work...??? 

to clarify - i've not got a problwm with what the wombles do on the whole, i'm glad there are people out there with the time to do it, they do some useful stuff and do it well - but to elevate it into some sort of ideal of poitical activity is frankly bizare, as bizare as elevating workplace struggles into the be all and end all of social struggle


----------



## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

or as bizarre as organising a EuroMayDay aimed at resurrecting the workers movement from the walking corpses that are union bureacrats, but organising it in such a manner that it will only attract activists and even if it did manage to attract some retail workers they were completely outside the planning process.

One would almost think that the WOMBLES own desires, needs and goals are somewhat more important than the wage slave drones who work.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

Taxamo Welf said:
			
		

> a strange choice of words all things considered regarding respective backgrounds.


i think you need to revisit the meanings of 'spoilt' and 'brat'.


----------



## Taxamo Welf (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> or as bizarre as organising a EuroMayDay aimed at resurrecting the workers movement from the walking corpses that are union bureacrats, but organising it in such a manner that it will only attract activists and even if it did manage to attract some retail workers they were completely outside the planning process.
> 
> One would almost think that the WOMBLES own desires, needs and goals are somewhat more important than the wage slave drones who work.


no it was good for what it was and it was very last minute.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

jackwupton said:
			
		

> Hm.


where's the problem?

to my mind, the problem isn't the people that work, but work itself: a difference highlighted by raw sslac. in this society, people are effectively forced to work to survive, forced to work to raise a family, forced to work so they can have any resources. people who don't work are provided with a subsistence-level handout - more to stop unrest than out of the goodness of the government's heart.

in societies where the vast majority of people see work as natural, where they see capitalism as the natural way of things, core capitalist ideas like the naturalness of work and of hierarchical society need to be attacked. yes, there is labour which needs to be done. but there's a fuck of a lot of useless toil which in any society except a capitalist one would be seen for what it is: a total waste of time. 

any self-respecting anarchist should be repulsed at the thought of doing what the people who work in the city do. they should be repelled by the thought of people working at jobs which leave them stressed to fuck. the simple fact that many hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of people work themselves into an early grave.

why do you think work's so fucking top?


----------



## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

dickhead the point was that it seemed to suggest that those who worked were less revolutionary, less committed and that if we really wanted a revolution we should be on the dole, living a precariat lifestyle like most of the wombles.

Seem to forget that for the vast majority of working class people that just isn't fucking possible, and more to the point overlooks the need to fight capital at the point of production.

Ever wonder why the anarcho ghetto is generally young, white and male? Cos they generally have more free time and less responsibilities. 

I'm young, white and have no responsibilities to speak of, but atleast I recognise the rather previleged position I enjoy compared to say a young single mother of my age.


----------



## cats hammers (Nov 16, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> why do you think work's so fucking top?



 

Yea, I love work, me.  It's fucking ace.

Oh no, wait, I didn't actually say that, did I?

I just quoted up something where raw expressed his attitude towards us mindless drones who have to work.


----------



## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

rednblack said:
			
		

> to be fair raw that second para is shit, sorry but in what way can you organise against capital if you don't have everyday contact with ordinary working class people, if you don't show people that anarchists are just normal people too - and that you can be an anarchist while having a family and supporting them through work...???
> 
> to clarify - i've not got a problwm with what the wombles do on the whole, i'm glad there are people out there with the time to do it, they do some useful stuff and do it well - but to elevate it into some sort of ideal of poitical activity is frankly bizare, as bizare as elevating workplace struggles into the be all and end all of social struggle



Perhaps not very coherently argued but I don't think its shit. Especially when it was written in a certain context (i.e. a discussion FFS!) you can't just copy and past stuff like that with out what was being said AND by whom.

Secondly, there is as you know a festishing of work and the workplace that poses it self as hierarchy of struggles, like the community wotsits! (again if community "activism" , "class-struggle anarchist" and "ordinary working people" has been defined and your working with a different set of deffinitions then it'll ultimately lead to confusion when discussing/critiquing. I don't think that I need to accept what libcom'ers say in their definitions especially when they don't seem to me as thought out ones.

Needless to say there is and has been a diverging view on anarchist "activity" from the "do-nothing" brigades and "do-something" action monkeys, not saying that there is no middle ground but there does seem to be two distinct points that people are arguing from.

Lastly, my point regarding the last paragraph that I wrote was trying to explain that work is used as a tool to occupy all our time (as we all know!) so we struggle against that, individually and collectively how we can. If people find a way out of work, and then use that time to initiate political/social projects then fair play (something which the Libcom'ers look down on as it mean distancing your self from "ordinary people"). as anarchists surely our intention is to free ourselves and support others IN AND OUTSIDE work resist the impositions of work i.e. discipline. That was basically my point. 

raw


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

jackwupton said:
			
		

> Yea, I love work, me.  It's fucking ace.
> 
> Oh no, wait, I didn't actually say that, did I?
> 
> I just quoted up something where raw expressed his attitude towards us mindless drones who have to work.


and what's the problem you've got with what raw sslac said?


----------



## rednblack (Nov 16, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> Perhaps not very coherently argued but I don't think its shit.
> 
> raw



ok fair enough - i agree with most of that...

and yes it is pointless to quote people like that out of context, unfortunately jack is quite fond of it as a tactic


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

jackwupton...

what IS the problem you've got with what raw sslac said?


----------



## cats hammers (Nov 16, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> and what's the problem you've got with what raw sslac said?



Well, lets look again at what he said, shall we?




			
				Raw said:
			
		

> In response to workplace/community bollocks. Well *most people in WOMBLES don't work, and hopefully will never work!* We're a mixture of precarious, unemployed, unemployable, dole scum that knows that hardwork for any rich bastard is shit (we don't have to read theory books for that). *That perhaps why we have so much time to organise the OCCUPIED SOCIAL CENTRE or DUBLIN MAYDAY or BEYOND ESF*.
> 
> And yes, unfortunately *too many people work and we should try and get people out of work*, resisting the work mentality like *some of the fucking anarchists in London who I haven't seen for 2 years (due to work commitments!)*. Com on for fuck sake, it's the year 2004, *unless we throw ourselves into creating/facilitating/aiding a movement against the capitalist project then why the fuck call ourselves anarchists!*



The clear implication being, that unless we throw ourselves wholesale into 'creating/facilitation/aiding a movement', then we have no right to call ourselves anarchists ("then why the fuck call ourselves anarchists").  And what leads to people not doing this?  "Work commitments".  The clear implication is, therefore, that to be an anarchist, you shouldn't work.

Which, is balls.

(oh, and for context, where these statements were originally made - http://www.libcom.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2743 )


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

jackwupton said:
			
		

> Well, lets look again at what he said, shall we?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


no, it isn't. let's look again at it, shall we?


----------



## cats hammers (Nov 16, 2005)

So the sentence:

"Com on for fuck sake, it's the year 2004, unless we throw ourselves into creating/facilitating/aiding a movement against the capitalist project then why the fuck call ourselves anarchists!"

flowing directly on from 

"some of the fucking anarchists in London who I haven't seen for 2 years (due to work commitments!)"

Doesn't imply a THING does it?


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

rew sslac said:
			
		

> In response to workplace/community bollocks. Well most people in WOMBLES don't work, and hopefully will never work! We're a mixture of precarious, unemployed, unemployable, dole scum that knows that hardwork for any rich bastard is shit (we don't have to read theory books for that). That perhaps why we have so much time to organise the OCCUPIED SOCIAL CENTRE or DUBLIN MAYDAY or BEYOND ESF.
> 
> And yes, unfortunately too many people work and we should try and get people out of work, resisting the work mentality like some of the fucking anarchists in London who I haven't seen for 2 years (due to work commitments!). Com on for fuck sake, it's the year 2004, unless we throw ourselves into creating/facilitating/aiding a movement against the capitalist project then why the fuck call ourselves anarchists!


a) the wombles are mainly composed of people who don't to work - true, true...

b) too many people work - well, that's true enough.

c) we should try to get people out of work - again, fair comment.

d) the work mentality should be resisted - can't fault that.

e) work commitments - not a problem with that - a lot of people treat work like it was some sort of holy sacrament, when it's just a load of wank.

f) we should throw ourselves into making a movement - where's the problem there? 

jackwupton, are you seriously saying that working people should just work and not worry about politics?


----------



## cats hammers (Nov 16, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> are you seriously saying that working people should just work and not worry about politics?



Well, I'm not sure where I'm supposed to have said that, so could you first of all show me so I can respond?


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

jackwupton said:
			
		

> Well, I'm not sure where I'm supposed to have said that, so could you first of all show me so I can respond?


it's the clear implication from your recent posts on the subject.


----------



## rednblack (Nov 16, 2005)

aaarrrrggghhhh!  you're all obtuse fuckers

*withdraws from thread*


----------



## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> it's the clear implication from your recent posts on the subject.



no you daft cunt he is merely saying that anarchism is not about rescuing people from the work but rather is about working people resisting work themselves.

This isn't the fucking Matrix, Neo!

And don't you see how easy it is for a bunch of young white people with fuck all responsibilties to resist the imposition of work, whilst it's considerably harder for other working class people, and as such they probably would prefer not to be patronised by a bunch of middle class wankers playing activist A teams!


----------



## cats hammers (Nov 16, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> it's the clear implication from your recent posts on the subject.



Please show me where this implication comes from.

I don't give a fuck whether someone has a job or not.  I do give a fuck about someone making a fetish out of not working, and acts as if it's somehow 'more revolutionary' to not work and concentrate on doing 'political action', or looks down on those who have to work, or choose to work and have a bit of cash rather than existing on the dole.


----------



## gurrier (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> or as bizarre as organising a EuroMayDay aimed at resurrecting the workers movement from the walking corpses that are union bureacrats, but organising it in such a manner that it will only attract activists and even if it did manage to attract some retail workers they were completely outside the planning process.
> 
> One would almost think that the WOMBLES own desires, needs and goals are somewhat more important than the wage slave drones who work.


Sorry, but this criticism is just total and utter shite.  

1. Criticising something for not involving non-politicos in the planning process is a circular argument (if they were involved in the planning process, they'd be politicos).

2. Criticising something in such a dismissive manner for failing to be perfect (it only managed to attract "some" retail workers - how shit!!!) implies both that it is easy and that you have done it yourself - it's not easy and I'm fairly confident that you have never pulled off such a perfect mayday.  Which just makes it sideline sniping from an armchair revolutionary.  

3. The "desires, needs and goals" of any individual are almost always more important to them than the "desires, needs and goals" of everybody else, and so they should be.  Revolutionary minorities, by definition, think their goals are more important than the goals of non-revolutionaries.  Or do you think that we should place libertarian socialism as equally important as getting promoted, owning a BMW or "getting the blacks out" or any of the other goals and desires that exist within the diverse membership of the working class?  In short, this is a criticism from a position that is completely contradictory and impossible.


----------



## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

Just to note:

1) Most people in wombles work (builders, painters, mechanics, barmaids, retail workers, students, web-designers)

2) Average age of wombles about 35 we just have very good skin   

3) I've made my point so I'm retiring with rednblack   

raw

p.s. interesting re-reading that thread, very interesting  

p.p.s. well said pickman and gurrier


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> no you daft cunt he is merely saying that anarchism is not about rescuing people from the work but rather is about working people resisting work themselves.


  

no he isn't.


----------



## cats hammers (Nov 16, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> no he isn't.



 

Yes I am.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

jackwupton said:
			
		

> Please show me where this implication comes from.


your posts on this thread _passim_.



> _I don't give a fuck whether someone has a job or not.  I do give a fuck about someone making a fetish out of not working, and acts as if it's somehow 'more revolutionary' to not work and concentrate on doing 'political action', or looks down on those who have to work, or choose to work and have a bit of cash rather than existing on the dole._


but you haven't shown anyone is looking down on people who work!


----------



## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> Just to note:
> 
> 1) Most people in wombles work (builders, painters, mechanics, barmaids, retail workers, students, web-designers)
> 
> ...




So what has changed so much in the last year, and are you now disappointed that so many WOMBLES work?


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

jackwupton said:
			
		

> Yes I am.


you are _now_...


----------



## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

TO Revol:

Not as disappointing as the people working   

and like I said, you fight with the means you have around you. Whether working or not-working, in work and outside work. And I'm sure if people felt the NEED to involve themselves in something which they are passionate about that they will find away around work (sickies, quitting, stealing).

I'm awwooff


----------



## Emma Herself (Nov 16, 2005)

Oh wow, does being a student now mean that you "work"? Cool.

*dons flatcap*


----------



## cats hammers (Nov 16, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> but you haven't shown anyone is looking down on people who work!



Yes I have, and I'm happy to leave it as is, confident that I've proven my point on that subject to anyone who may need it.

Not that I really needed to prove it; never since the Middlesex Declaration has there been a better example of auto-critique.


----------



## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

gurrier said:
			
		

> Sorry, but this criticism is just total and utter shite.
> 
> 1. Criticising something for not involving non-politicos in the planning process is a circular argument (if they were involved in the planning process, they'd be politicos).
> 
> ...




sorry but do you actually have a fucking clue as to how this was organised?

The action was planned in secret between some WOMRADES, posters were then posted up telling the canon fodder to txt a number a certain time and they'd be given a location.

The action which was a pathetic attempt to mass shoplift from a Tesco's seemed to me to have next to fuck all relevance to Retail workers, and just seemed like more lifestylist hi jinxs from everyones favourite knock down Italian political fashion Outlet group. They ended up being penned in by the police and looking like a fuckwits.

And if the WOMBLES wish to act on their own desires may I suggest they do so as themselves instead of pretending it had fuck all to do with the struggles of retail workers.


----------



## Top Dog (Nov 16, 2005)

Zoë Herself said:
			
		

> Oh wow, does being a student now mean that you "work"?


more often that not these days... yes





<oh ffs, why have i posted to this thread...?>


----------



## Top Dog (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> The action was planned in secret between some WOMRADES, posters were then posted up telling the canon fodder to txt a number a certain time and they'd be given a location.
> 
> The action which was a pathetic attempt to mass shoplift from a Tesco's seemed to me to have next to fuck all relevance to Retail workers, and just seemed like more lifestylist hi jinxs from everyones favourite knock down Italian political fashion Outlet group. They ended up being penned in by the police and looking like a fuckwits.
> 
> And if the WOMBLES wish to act on their own desires may I suggest they do so as themselves instead of pretending it had fuck all to do with the struggles of retail workers.




<!!!... ultra leftist cul-de-sac fast approaching ...!!!>


----------



## gurrier (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> no you daft cunt he is merely saying that anarchism is not about rescuing people from the work but rather is about working people resisting work themselves.


That sounds like a completely inaccurate straw man of the wombles intentions.  Who has said, anywhere, that the wombles want to 'rescue people from work'?  Is it even possible to do such a thing?  Once again, I think your argument is shite. If propaganda and stunts which are intended to make people question the 'work ethic' are to be denounced as attempts to "rescue" people from work, all revolutionary activity is similarly denouncable and we are left with a perfect recipe for complete inactivity - which is why I think you find these types of arguments so attractive by the way.  




			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> And don't you see how easy it is for a bunch of young white people with fuck all responsibilties to resist the imposition of work, whilst it's considerably harder for other working class people, and as such they probably would prefer not to be patronised by a bunch of middle class wankers playing activist A teams!


How easy you seem to find it to heap abuse on a bunch of people who you clearly know next to nothing about.  I mean I don't know that many wombles, but from the ones I met at Dublin 04 and the ESF, I can't think of any group of anarchists who fit less well into the standard "patronising middle class" smear.  I think they do have some fairly serious problems, but being middle class or patronising aren't among them - not even nearly.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

jackwupton said:
			
		

> Yes I have, and I'm happy to leave it as is, confident that I've proven my point on that subject to anyone who may need it.
> 
> Not that I really needed to prove it; never since the Middlesex Declaration has there been a better example of auto-critique.


i'd have said your posts provide a good example of autoeroticism - or, in english, wankery - unequalled here for many months past...


----------



## cats hammers (Nov 16, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> i'd have said your posts provide a good example of autoeroticism - or, in english, wankery - unequalled here for many months past...



Well I'm glad they excited you like that.

Home time now!


----------



## Col_Buendia (Nov 16, 2005)

888 said:
			
		

> Do you all realise how pathetic this looks from the outside?



No, 888, I don't think they do. 

Jack, you seem to be congratulating yourself on proving your point, but from what I've read I can't see that at all. Raw's posts might get mixed up with an occasional dash of sarcasm or irony, but it certainly doesn't read to me the way you are interpreting it. FWIW.

Fredy Perlman once said something like 'free men didn't just queue up outside factories asking for jobs'... work, something to be avoided at all costs!


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2005)

jackwupton said:
			
		

> Well I'm glad they excited you like that.
> 
> Home time now!


that you misunderstood raw sslac's clear posts should have warned me that your grasp on the english language is slight. my *clear* meaning was that your posts are, for you, so obviously a form  of mental onanism.


----------



## gurrier (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> sorry but do you actually have a fucking clue as to how this was organised?


Yes, and I also have a fairly good clue about the problems of trying to organise events that the police are keen on not taking place.  I don't think that you have a similar clue.




			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> The action was planned in secret between some WOMRADES, posters were then posted up telling the canon fodder to txt a number a certain time and they'd be given a location.


What's your problem with that??  Was anybody forced to turn up?  

In organising all of the successful* RTS's in Dublin, only a small group of people ever knew the plan (the most recent one was been organised by a largely new and less experienced crew).  Dublin Mayday was similar.  It's simply not possible to organise things that the police want to stop without some level of secrecy about the details of the event.  What you can do is explain the politics of the event and make sure that people have a fairly good idea of the type of thing that they're getting themselves in to (particularly how risky it is likely to be).  People who support the politics and trust the organisers sufficently will show up, those who don't won't.  No problem. 




			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> The action which was a pathetic attempt to mass shoplift from a Tesco's seemed to me to have next to fuck all relevance to Retail workers, and just seemed like more lifestylist hi jinxs from everyones favourite knock down Italian political fashion Outlet group. They ended up being penned in by the police and looking like a fuckwits.


Firstly, many worthwhile political acts have nothing to do with retail workers - it's not a prerequisite of anarchist political acts.

Secondly, you simply don't know that the act would have had fuck all relevance to retail workers.  For example, I have worked as a shelf-stacker, a trolley boy and a security guard in various supermarkets in my time.  In all of these jobs I attempted to promote general disobediance, 'leakage' and so on among my co-workers as well as promoting general hatred of the bosses and (particularly when I was a security guard) non-performance of one's duties / getting stoned on the job / etc.  I would have loved for the wombles to invade any of the supermarkets that I worked in and it would have been a most useful aid to my propaganda - I could point at people who had the bottle to do these things en masse and get away with it. At the very least it would have been useful evidence of the existance of large numbers of people who are willing to say 'fuck you' to the bosses and the state.  I'd also guess that almost all of my co-workers would have been fairly impressed by such an attempt.  



* successful in that they gave anarchism a massive profile-boost, they drew many non-politicos into active anarchist politics, they had a long lasting impact on what the police could get away with on demonstrations, they were crucial to indymedia's growth into the hugely trafficed site that it is today among other things.


----------



## Larry O'Hara (Nov 16, 2005)

*In all sincerity...*

..your posts on this thread are top class Gurrier


----------



## Col_Buendia (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> you just posted some Dissent shite on it about an hour ago you daft fuck.






			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> So you don't think anarchists should disown themselves from fuckwits?






			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> ... i just don't see the point in being so fucking stupid as to continously walk into police pens, have a pathetic bit of argy bargy, some people get scooped and on we go again...






			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> ... until you turnt into a spoilt fuckwit who'd got pissed on his daddies wine and started having a go at Icepick over stuff completely irrelevant.






			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> yes but by the mid afternoon i'll be sober and you'll still some fuckwit in Class War defending some cunts in the WOMBLES, as Churchill probably never said.






			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> ...I couldn't care if your Da owned Ferrari nevermind some poxy wine company...






			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> dickhead the point was that ...






			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> no you daft cunt he is merely saying...






			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> sorry but do you actually have a fucking clue as to how this was organised?...



Revol, do you have any idea as to what you sound like? Do you serious expect _anyone_ to feel welcomed into a meeting or a movement (or even a bulletin board) when you present yourself like this?

IIRC, it was Gurrier who mentioned on the Bookfair thread about the lack of self-discipline in the A movement at the mo. And you seem to be doing your dammedest to provide a textual example of it with every single FUCKING post.


----------



## montevideo (Nov 16, 2005)

gurrier said:
			
		

> Firstly, many worthwhile political acts have nothing to do with retail workers - it's not a prerequisite of anarchist political acts.
> 
> Secondly, you simply don't know that the act would have had fuck all relevance to retail workers.  For example, I have worked as a shelf-stacker, a trolley boy and a security guard in various supermarkets in my time.  In all of these jobs I attempted to promote general disobediance, 'leakage' and so on among my co-workers as well as promoting general hatred of the bosses and (particularly when I was a security guard) non-performance of one's duties / getting stoned on the job / etc.  I would have loved for the wombles to invade any of the supermarkets that I worked in and it would have been a most useful aid to my propaganda - I could point at people who had the bottle to do these things en masse and get away with it. At the very least it would have been useful evidence of the existance of large numbers of people who are willing to say 'fuck you' to the bosses and the state.  I'd also guess that almost all of my co-workers would have been fairly impressed by such an attempt.




& this seems to be our general understanding. 'Ordinary working class people' don't have a problem with us at all, negative responses to the group come almost exclusively from other politicos (who will still insist on telling us what 'ordinary working class people' think, how they behave & what's best for them).

Needless to say some wombles went to that same hackney tesco's a few months later to show support for the irish tesco workers, made a banner,  handed out leaflets & talked to the shoppers. Neither particularly glamorous or sexy.

Be genuinely interested to know what 'fairly serious problems' you think the wombles have.


----------



## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

take the hint i don't give a fuck how the anarchist movement looks to the activist left ghetto.

it's a fucking joke.

Gurrier seems to think RTS is somehow useful, all i see is another hobby horse for professional activists.

Likewise the Euro May Day was billed as being aimed at retail workers but there was absolutely no attempt to help articulate the needs and struggles of retai workers, just a bunch of prats doing a tribute act to some Italians.

Of course Gurriers arguments don't come as much as suprise as the WSM seem to have given up serious analysis for riding on the coat tales of the activisto millieu, bit like how they sought to ride the coat tales of left republicanism in the 80's despite the intellectual gynmastics this must have involved, anyother anarchists up for a 32 county workers republic?


----------



## Col_Buendia (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> take the hint i don't give a fuck how the anarchist movement looks to the activist left ghetto.
> 
> it's a fucking joke.



Well, here it is in words of one syllable so you can get the message. Your incredible levels of bile and spleen spluttered in a seemingly unending paroxysm of rage at a computer screen makes you look like one mightily unappetising cunt. Based solely on the evidence of this thread, if I had to choose between being stuck in a pen with you or with the Wombles, at least I know I'd get the time of day from the Wombles.

Oh, yeah, of course, we're stuck in an "activist ghetto", cos of course "activists" aren't real people, and anything they do is unworthy of respect when judged against the daily sacrifice and toil of the labouring masses. You being one, of course, cos otherwise you wouldn't have the temerity to offer those self-same masses your fucking sanctioned route to liberation.

Get a fucking life, Revol. How many of your work "comrades" actually enjoy their employment? How come nearly every single place I've ever had a job, people dream about winning the lottery, escaping wage-slavery, going on holiday, just getting out from under the heel of the boss.

Stop fetishing work, and look at a world of humans where you don't need to be an exploited proletarian to be of value.

PS - sorry, I didn't use words of one syllable at all


----------



## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

Col_Buendia said:
			
		

> Well, here it is in words of one syllable so you can get the message. Your incredible levels of bile and spleen spluttered in a seemingly unending paroxysm of rage at a computer screen makes you look like one mightily unappetising cunt. Based solely on the evidence of this thread, if I had to choose between being stuck in a pen with you or with the Wombles, at least I know I'd get the time of day from the Wombles.
> 
> Oh, yeah, of course, we're stuck in an "activist ghetto", cos of course "activists" aren't real people, and anything they do is unworthy of respect when judged against the daily sacrifice and toil of the labouring masses. You being one, of course, cos otherwise you wouldn't have the temerity to offer those self-same masses your fucking sanctioned route to liberation.
> 
> ...



that would be a good point except where in the name of christ have I ever fetishised work?


----------



## catch (Nov 16, 2005)

Just to clear up accusations of censorship once and for all.

Pages on libcom with links to the wombles:

http://libcom.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3676
http://www.libcom.org/newswire/stories.php?story=05/05/12/8484519
http://libcom.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=7469
http://www.libcom.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4787&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&
www.libcom.org/hosted/sag/links.htm

(there are actually two pages of them in google results)


pages on wombles.org.uk that mention libcom:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:wombles.org.uk+libcom


----------



## montevideo (Nov 16, 2005)

http://www.wombles.org.uk/search/search.php?q=enrager&r=0

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=site:wombles.org.uk+enrager&btnG=Search&meta=

we could play this game for hours


----------



## catch (Nov 16, 2005)

I'd rather not thanks. Hadn't thought about searching for enrager so fair enough. This further proves that continuing to bitch about it is very silly, but the fact remains that accusations of censorship have come from only one side in this whole torrid affair, and I don't think you're doing yourselves any favours continuing to make them.

btw, since I see the past few pages have been a bit more constructive:

I just read a bit in prol-position #1 about the Laing/CTRL stuff. And saw them mention that you'd been invited to other sites but declined. They only paraphrased your reasons for this in one sentence (the reasons prol gave were reasonable enough, but also clashed with, for example, the EuroMayDay action), so was wondering if you'd elaborate on it.


----------



## montevideo (Nov 16, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> I'd rather not thanks. Hadn't thought about searching for enrager so fair enough. This further proves that continuing to bitch about it is very silly, but the fact remains that accusations of censorship have come from only one side in this whole torrid affair, and I don't think you're doing yourselves any favours continuing to make them.
> 
> btw, since I see the past few pages have been a bit more constructive:
> 
> I just read a bit in prol-position #1 about the Laing/CTRL stuff. And saw them mention that you'd been invited to other sites but declined. They only paraphrased your reasons for this in one sentence (the reasons prol gave were reasonable enough, but also clashed with, for example, the EuroMayDay action), so was wondering if you'd elaborate on it.



prol position pretty much spot on. (Can't see where they mention euromayday but that had nothing to do with anything). We had several meetings with heathrow workers, mutual respect all round, but they just wanted us to repeat the kings cross action in the hope of creating some sort of tension. We provisonally agreed to do only if would compliment worker self activity already going on on the site. 

To test the water we organised a public workers meeting (couple of us & a couple of workers from kings cross) to see what the level of support would be. It was obvious from that there wasn't the same level of militancy or self-organisation at heathrow. Plus some reckoned the unions had a word, we leafleted the newham hospital site as well, excellent response on the ground, but little or no workers willing to self organise. Shame really. Exchanged contact details so if things do start looking up.

The four on the crane got convicted of aggravated trespass. Laing o'rourke were demanding £18,000 compensation, the judge refused that & set he compensation £300 each plus 100hrs community service each. They represented themselves in court.


----------



## Col_Buendia (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> that would be a good point except where in the name of christ have I ever fetishised work?



Fuck me pink, a chink of light... an entire post without one cuss word! 

From the OED:





> Fetishize:
> To make a fetish of; to pay undue respect to, to overvalue.



I think your constant sneering at (among others) the Wombles, for the heinous crime of choosing to look for personal alternatives to being exploited within the capitalist system, smacks of fetishizing. Look at what you wrote here:



			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> dickhead the point was that it seemed to suggest that those who worked were less revolutionary, less committed and that if we really wanted a revolution we should be on the dole, living a precariat lifestyle like most of the wombles.
> 
> Seem to forget that for the vast majority of working class people that just isn't fucking possible, and more to the point overlooks the need to fight capital at the point of production.
> 
> ...



The entire tenor of this post dismisses the Wombles p.o.v., even though P'sM has eloquently demonstrated to Jack that Raw's posts never made the suggestion that you refer to. Hence my conclusion that you are devaluing their p.o.v., and thus overvaluing the position of employed labour.

My point is that if you construct this ideal notion of a proletariat, and then ignore anyone who fails to fit your template, you are consigning yourself to the margins of history as every "activity" becomes the fruit of "activists". FFS, being a trade union rep is being an activist, being a community organiser is being an activist. You certainly seem to have plenty of energy, why don't you direct it to more important targets?


----------



## gurrier (Nov 16, 2005)

montevideo said:
			
		

> Be genuinely interested to know what 'fairly serious problems' you think the wombles have.


I don't really know enough about ye to say too much, but one thing that does strike me as a fairly serious problem is your isolation.  Although it's not necessarily your fault, it seems to me that you are very isolated from other anarchists and politicos.  This has allowed the police to act the bollox with you to a considerably annoying extent.  



			
				revol said:
			
		

> Gurrier seems to think RTS is somehow useful, all i see is another hobby horse for professional activists.


You slander the people involved in RTS using the language of the right wing tabloids, nice.  For a start there are no "professional" activists, particularly not in Ireland, it's just a standard and oft-repeated right wing smear.  Secondly you clearly don't know anything at all about the composition of RTS Dublin as your description of it as a "hobby horse for professional activists" is enormously wide of the mark. For almost every single one of the people involved, it was their first major practical political involvement for fucks sake and the first big one was done with almost no involvement from experienced politicos.  It was, quite literaly, a bunch of mostly young folk from a wide variety of backgrounds (both social and political) who saw these things going on in London and went out and organised one themselves.  The big theoretical problem with your critiques is that as soon as a bunch of workers try to put some anarchist ideas into practice, they become 'wankers'.

I'd also like to know why on earth do you go around repeating inaccurate right-wing smears about anarchist groups which you are so woefully and completely ignorant of?  




			
				revol said:
			
		

> Of course Gurriers arguments don't come as much as suprise as the WSM seem to have given up serious analysis for riding on the coat tales of the activisto millieu, bit like how they sought to ride the coat tales of left republicanism in the 80's despite the intellectual gynmastics this must have involved, anyother anarchists up for a 32 county workers republic?


Your obsession with this is pathetic.  Your understanding of the functioning of the WSM is also massively wrong. We ride on nobody's coat tails. We also generally think that it is always a better idea to work with people and encourage the aspects that we think are good while raising the idea of the limitations of protest and the need for communist revolution rather than sitting on the sidelines and sniping at those aspects which we disagree with.


----------



## Col_Buendia (Nov 16, 2005)

gurrier said:
			
		

> <snip>We also generally think that it is always a better idea to work with people and encourage the aspects that we think are good while raising the idea of the limitations of protest and the need for communist revolution rather than sitting on the sidelines and sniping at those aspects which we disagree with.



Aye, but that'd make yous _activists_, and hence unworthy of serious contemplation from Revol, no?


----------



## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

I think you'll find that post merely points out that the WOMBLES who so value their ability to resist the imposition of work should remember the paticularities of their situation, and how it is a rather previleged position within the proletariat.

I do not fetish work, rather I detest it, I just recognise that it will not be overthrown by people dropping out to organise social centres.

And I have spent alot of time trying to avoid work, I just recognise that my ability to resist the imposition of work was largely down to having access to further education, no responsibilities and my youth. 

Rather i would hold that it is the WOMBLES who fetishise their suppoused autonomy and fail to grasp that their so called social centres are no more autonomous than a workers tea room, and probably alot less radical.


----------



## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> I just read a bit in prol-position #1 about the Laing/CTRL stuff. And saw them mention that you'd been invited to other sites but declined. They only paraphrased your reasons for this in one sentence (the reasons prol gave were reasonable enough, but also clashed with, for example, the EuroMayDay action), so was wondering if you'd elaborate on it.



Euromayday was NOT a wombles action but came out of people involved in the precarity group, there was about 40 people involved before the action as we could only include people that we knew in the logistics due to possible police intervention. In terms of comparisons with Laings there is none. We weren't their to support a specific workers struggle but a general anti-work/solidarity to people resisting work...etc. As you would have read the follow up statement www.precarity.info it explains it a bitmore what happened. The important thing about actions like that is that they are only as succesful as what it inspires afterwards and the activity which follows. Saying that we leafletted about 400 people a week later including all the workers in Tescos and had an amazing response with people. 

Again, it is a shame that boards like these (or even libcom) doesn't allow ANY debate on a comradely level, that 6 months later, that action is still being explained....very sad as only thru debate can ideas develop..but anyhow

raw


----------



## Col_Buendia (Nov 16, 2005)

Well, Revol, y'see if you'd just let go of the bile, you'd have a half decent point in there. I don't think the Wombles (imo) fetishize their autonomy. And I think that they are more than aware of the particularities of their situation, but perhaps from Belfast you have had more experience of dealing with them than I have had.

It's not a competition, Revol, we're supposed to be fighting the same thing, aren't we? Can we not allow a variety of tactics and struggles to be employed without sneering at those who think differently than us?


----------



## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> I think you'll find that post merely points out that the WOMBLES who so value their ability to resist the imposition of work should remember the paticularities of their situation, and how it is a rather previleged position within the proletariat.



What are you on about? No not JUST the WOMBLES but NORMAL people aswell resist the imposition of work, everyday, even whilst working!!! And I have never said that it is somehow "privileged"!!??!



> I do not fetish work, rather I detest it, I just recognise that it will not be overthrown by people dropping out to organise social centres.



No one has said that is how work will be overthrown. we have never suggested that it will.



> Rather i would hold that it is the WOMBLES who fetishise their suppoused autonomy and fail to grasp that their so called social centres are no more autonomous than a workers tea room, and probably alot less radical.



There is a degree of autonomy that is created within self-management/self-organisation whether it is in the work place or in the "community".


----------



## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

Col_Buendia said:
			
		

> Well, Revol, y'see if you'd just let go of the bile, you'd have a half decent point in there. I don't think the Wombles (imo) fetishize their autonomy. And I think that they are more than aware of the particularities of their situation, but perhaps from Belfast you have had more experience of dealing with them than I have had.
> 
> It's not a competition, Revol, we're supposed to be fighting the same thing, aren't we? Can we not allow a variety of tactics and struggles to be employed without sneering at those who think differently than us?



The sneering at the wombles is based on my own personal experiances of similar hair brained muppets in Belfast. I'm just extremely fed up with the activist mentality which is continously fighting another cause after another cause. The activism becomes an end in itself. 

I think people should basically start fighting back against their own particular issues, issues they can actually effect before running off to the next batch of summits or networking some other fucking grassroots gathering which has fuck all basis in the class and seem to multiply quicker than Ecoli.

Which is what really pissed me off about the Euro May Day thing, it was such a good issue, but yet the WOMBLES only model of organising was for an abstracted activist action, such a wasted oppurtunity. I mean a serious May Day programme aimed at retail work would have been good, people sharing experiances, surveys of retail workers, and organising meetings by and for retail workers.

What is not good is a bunch of headhuncho WOMBLES organising it all from some sordid lil squat and then getting the canon fodder to come later.

Tell me why did they bill it as about retail workers, when it was actually to do with making a piss poor cover of some Italian autoreducionaze?


----------



## Col_Buendia (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> The sneering at the wombles is based on my own personal experiances of similar hair brained muppets in Belfast.<snip>



Well, we're back on the bile, and I'm not here to defend the Wombles, Raw and the rest can do that much better than I could, so I'm not going to answer your sneerings at them. But I would just ask you to reflect on the sentence above. Speaks for itself, really.

And when you write "I think people should basically start fighting back against their own particular issues", is yours the Wombles, for I wonder where you direct the rest of your energy?


----------



## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

Col_Buendia said:
			
		

> Well, we're back on the bile, and I'm not here to defend the Wombles, Raw and the rest can do that much better than I could, so I'm not going to answer your sneerings at them. But I would just ask you to reflect on the sentence above. Speaks for itself, really.
> 
> And when you write "I think people should basically start fighting back against their own particular issues", is yours the Wombles, for I wonder where you direct the rest of your energy?



your quite correct the WOMBLES are one of mine but only as a sub section of activist muppets, for 5 years i bit my tongue and even tried lying to myselg that it was going somewhere. The retarded anti work politics that seem to imagine people work cos they can't see through the propaganda, the cause junkies running after another fix, the meeting freaks chasing another fucking networking  group. 

People who think a squat is actual an autonomous zone, those who think anything DIY or Direct Action represents positive autonomy in itself, overlooking the fact that capital is not a homogenous mass that demands complete hierarchy, but rather a process that can accomdate and assimilate such non threatening actions, or marginalise them to the point of uselessness. 

People who can't see that the role of the activist is really the reproduction of  more hierarchies within the proletariat, the activists arise not from particular struggles of the working class, they do not engage in struggle in order to further the particular goals of the working class but rather to further their activism. They organise around abstract issues and then approach the particular.


----------



## Nigel Irritable (Nov 16, 2005)

I quite like revol's posting, although I'm not sure that Socialist Party members are the audience he's really aiming for. He wildly overstates his points and sometimes his style of argument seems a bit like he's trying to shoot someone in a crowded lift with a sawn off shotgun - blood and gore and screaming everywhere - but at it's core I think he's saying some pretty sensible things.

Some random thoughts about this thread:

1) Activist subcultures are at best a mixed blessing. They do provide an entry point for some people to more useful forms of politics but they also exclude far more people. It's in the nature of any kind of subculture to define itelf against what is perceived to be the mainstream.

2) Stunt actions have their uses, but exactly what people are trying to achieve has to be thought through.

3) Rebel Clowns and the like make my teeth hurt almost as much the kind of ageing hippies with hair down to their waists and long flowing skirts who want to recite their poems at anti-war meetings.

4) Lifestyle dropout stuff is not a political strategy and leads not inevitably but very often to backwards and elitist ideas about the vast majority of the working class.

5) All this "respect everyone else's tactics" stuff is just another way of arguing for a dictatorship of the stupidest. Everyone's actions effect everyone else in a struggle, on a demonstration or wherever.


----------



## Col_Buendia (Nov 16, 2005)

Nice analogy, tho I don't want to be in the lift. And it feels a bit like it reading his posts.

My problem with this is that when one person takes up a position of struggle, it is a "drop-out". When 100 do it, it is an "action". But when 10,000 do it, then the number crunching leftists final admit that their revolutionary threshold has been passed and loftily bestow the honour of ideologically acceptable behaviour on that struggle.

The numbers vary but the threshold remains in the hands of those who hold the ideological stone tablets.

And my question is how do you get to the moment where the 10,000 decide upon resistance if you haven't passed a point where ten thousand individuals have taken that decision? Doesn't it start with an individual?

Therefore who has the right to draw the line between "lifestyle dropout stuff" and acceptable struggle?


----------



## Col_Buendia (Nov 16, 2005)

Nigel Irritable said:
			
		

> 5) All this "respect everyone else's tactics" stuff is just another way of arguing for a dictatorship of the stupidest. Everyone's actions effect everyone else in a struggle, on a demonstration or wherever.



Ya tacked that bit on as I was answering you, ya git!

FWIW, I didn't say "respect" everyone's tactics, I said allow. "Allowing" might only be as minimal as not shooting one's mouth off everytime another activist cropped up on the radar... discretion, valour, etc etc. Surely we are too few and too weak to waste our energies on endlessly sniping (as Gurrier said) and on demonstrating others' (perceived) failures?


----------



## Nigel Irritable (Nov 16, 2005)

It depends what kind of activity you are talking about. For instance if there were 10,000 people willing to spend significant amounts of time planning and executing a mass shoplift, the first question that would spring to my mind is "couldn't you do something a bit more useful with that energy?". It's like a smaller scale version of the socialist argument about the Tobin Tax - if we were in a position to push through and enforce a worldwide tax on such financial dealings, we would be too busy doing much more drastic things to the world.

More generally, I don't think that movements build through a gradual agglomeration of people dropping out or making certain lifestyle decisions.

[edited to add - this is a response not to your post directly above but to your next one up from that.]


----------



## revol68 (Nov 16, 2005)

the issue isn't numbers it's about the sphere of organising. 

If you live in an area and their is a real problem with underfunding of some social service or other you organise around it, even if it's just you and two mates to start with.

However activists seem incredibly apt at picking issues they have no hope of mobilising anyone outside the activist ghetto for, mostly cause the issues are quite abstract and have no foreseeable goal other than keeping some pricks social calendar busy.

Activists travel all over the world to fight issues that have real resistable results locally.

Activists get pissed off that not everyone has the time or inclination saving the world like they do, which is what leads to posts like RAWS about anarchists and work commitments.


----------



## Col_Buendia (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> the issue isn't numbers it's about the sphere of organising.
> 
> If you live in an area and their is a real problem with underfunding of some social service or other you organise around it, even if it's just you and two mates to start with.



Quite. So the Wombles are based in London and seem to focus much of their activity in London. Perhaps you'd like to look again at posts 109, 116 and 121. I haven't got any reason to suppose Monte & Raw are making this up, so from what I see there you have Tesco workers, Heathrow workers and also Gate Gourmet (not mentioned in those posts). Not exactly what you would describe as an "activist ghetto", is it? But fuck it, you've got me defending the Wombles, and I'm not interested in that. I just still don't see why you've got such spleen for them, given that you already admitted that you don't know them and your anger was based on "similar muppets" that you'd met in Belfast. That's ludicrous.


----------



## gurrier (Nov 16, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> The sneering at the wombles is based on my own personal experiances of similar hair brained muppets in Belfast. I'm just extremely fed up with the activist mentality which is continously fighting another cause after another cause. The activism becomes an end in itself.


So, let's get this straight.  You are writing right-wing, slanderous lies for public consumption about a group of anarchists who you know nothing about based on your experiences with a completely different group of people in a different country.  That's fair.  





			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> I think people should basically start fighting back against their own particular issues,


Unless that issue is how shit work is, or environmentalism, or opening up disused space for public use, or pretty much anything that involves doing something.




			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> issues they can actually effect before running off to the next batch of summits or networking some other fucking grassroots gathering which has fuck all basis in the class and seem to multiply quicker than Ecoli.


The last grassroots gathering was in rossport due to the fact that many of the people involved were heavily involved in the amazingly successful campaign among the rural working class and small farmers which faced down shell and completely halted their construction for a whole year and then succeeded in getting the 5 farmers released from prison after a huge nationwide campaign.  I think it's harder to find an issue where people have had a real and measurable effect.  

The comment about 'multiplying like e-coli' is particularly strange.  Doesn't this say a teensie little bit about the types of thing that motivate people?


----------



## sovietpop (Nov 16, 2005)

Col_Buendia said:
			
		

> Nice analogy, tho I don't want to be in the lift. And it feels a bit like it reading his posts.
> 
> My problem with this is that when one person takes up a position of struggle, it is a "drop-out". When 100 do it, it is an "action". But when 10,000 do it, then the number crunching leftists final admit that their revolutionary threshold has been passed and loftily bestow the honour of ideologically acceptable behaviour on that struggle.
> 
> ...



good point. Revols problem is that he is tired of the activist stuff, but the sort of mass politics he'd prefer doesn't exist. And we have to suffer his frustration. I'd agree with him that there is limits to activism, but sometimes (maybe these times?) that's all that is possible - and you are faced with the choice of doing something or nothing. Revol has chosen nothing, but I don't see it making him particularily happy, and I don't think see it as a choice that is coming up with any solutions to the problem. For instance, the approach to May Day he outlines is interesting, but it is also a straw man to suggest that it is an approach that other groups wouldn't be interested in or would be  hostile too. Revol loves his straw men so he does.

btw, here's an article written by a chilean comrade, in which he suggests an alternative strategy to activism. I found it quite thought provoking (btw, English is not his first language, so some of the phrasing is a bit arkward, but I hope that doesn't stop people looking at the ideas)  
link


----------



## Taxamo Welf (Nov 16, 2005)

gurrier said:
			
		

> The last grassroots gathering was in rossport due to the fact that many of the people involved were heavily involved in the amazingly successful campaign among the rural working class and small farmers which faced down shell and completely halted their construction for a whole year and then succeeded in getting the 5 farmers released from prison after a huge nationwide campaign.


A friend of mine was involved - a WSMer


----------



## Raw SslaC (Nov 16, 2005)

Revol: you want to believe that we're that because accepting that we're not is gonna destroy your opposition. The EuroMayday thing is very interesting since you slagged it off before it actually happened, you and the libcom-ites closed down the debate. We wanted to do so much more for mayday but didn't have the people, so we settled for an action/stunt as well as the 10,000 leaflets distributed to get the ball rolling. from small things...etc


----------



## Col_Buendia (Nov 16, 2005)

sovietpop said:
			
		

> btw, here's an article written by a chilean comrade, in which he suggests an alternative strategy to activism. I found it quite thought provoking (btw, English is not his first language, so some of the phrasing is a bit arkward, but I hope that doesn't stop people looking at the ideas)
> link



LOL, well when he wrote 





> nothing can be discarded in the mad zoo of Anarchy


 he obviously hadn't read Revol's posts!


----------



## gurrier (Nov 16, 2005)

Nigel Irritable said:
			
		

> Some random thoughts about this thread:
> 
> 1) Activist subcultures are at best a mixed blessing. They do provide an entry point for some people to more useful forms of politics but they also exclude far more people. It's in the nature of any kind of subculture to define itelf against what is perceived to be the mainstream.


But I don't think anybody here is at all interested in creating a sub-culture as such.  As soon as any group of people with a strong common interest that is not widely shared within the working class come together, they create a sub-culture of sorts - whether they like it or not and whether they want to define themselves against the mainstream or not.  For example, I have heard several people describe socialist youth social events as "the weirdest thing I was ever at".  




			
				Nigel Irritable said:
			
		

> 2) Stunt actions have their uses, but exactly what people are trying to achieve has to be thought through.


I doubt whether anybody anywhere would disagree with this (and I certainly don't get the idea that the wombles for example don't put thought into things). 




			
				Nigel Irritable said:
			
		

> 4) Lifestyle dropout stuff is not a political strategy and leads not inevitably but very often to backwards and elitist ideas about the vast majority of the working class.


Once again, I don't think anybody at all would disagree with this.  




			
				Nigel Irritable said:
			
		

> 5) All this "respect everyone else's tactics" stuff is just another way of arguing for a dictatorship of the stupidest. Everyone's actions effect everyone else in a struggle, on a demonstration or wherever.


I sort of agree, but the problem is when revol uses a fantasy caricature of people's tactics based on total ignorance of their reality in order to smear them.


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## 888 (Nov 16, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> Again, it is a shame that boards like these (or even libcom) doesn't allow ANY debate on a comradely level, that 6 months later, that action is still being explained....very sad as only thru debate can ideas develop..but anyhow



True. Can people please try and fucking grow up? Ever heard of tact or diplomacy? When I first saw this thread I was going to say that the main two problems with libcom were Jack and revol68, but since I'm so tactful I decided not to. Oops.


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## Col_Buendia (Nov 16, 2005)

To Sovietpop: good article, but it seems to me to be saying the same thing as Bakunin, when he argued that (his) anarchists would have to be "the invisible centre" of the revolution.

I've tried my hand in a very small way at this in the local Social Forum, without (obviously!) disguising my own politics, and one of the most rewarding results of it was that the "non-aligned" types, greenies, general misfits etc () seemed very attracted to the processes that the anarchos were proposing (in the face of sternly voiced opposition from more trad lefties). I like the phrase about "leadership of ideas", that works for me. Ta for the link.


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## montevideo (Nov 16, 2005)

always fond of _"everyone who has anything to say, come forward & shut up"_ myself.


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## rednblack (Nov 17, 2005)

gurrier said:
			
		

> I don't really know enough about ye to say too much, but one thing that does strike me as a fairly serious problem is your isolation.  Although it's not necessarily your fault, it seems to me that you are very isolated from other anarchists and politicos.  This has allowed the police to act the bollox with you to a considerably annoying extent.



right - because of gurrier's largely excellent posts i've returned to the thread - just to say, i don't think the wombles are that isolated from other anarchists far from it - the two that post here just happen to have a number of personal and political differences with others who post here...
sure i've got plenty of political problems with them myself, although not ones i'd discuss on a public message board - but i would and do work with them where possible, and so do most other anarchos in london


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## catch (Nov 17, 2005)

montevideo said:
			
		

> Can't see where they mention euromayday but that had nothing to do with anything



No they don't, I did. And it should.




			
				raw said:
			
		

> In terms of comparisons with Laings there is none.



In both situations activists entered high profile (in different ways) workplaces, and did things that would have caused serious problems for staff if they'd done the same thing. I think there's plenty of comparison, however most of them are unfavourable in terms of Euromayday.




			
				raw said:
			
		

> Euromayday was NOT a wombles action


Monte has posted here about the Laing action, you advertised EuroMayDay on both forums around the time and defended it at length iirc. Let's deal with rawslacc and montevideo's views - since it's you two who are on this thread. I'm not interested in a long discussion about which group owns what action, although I suspect that will be used to deflect any criticism of either.




			
				monte said:
			
		

> To test the water we organised a public workers meeting (couple of us & a couple of workers from kings cross) to see what the level of support would be. It was obvious from that there wasn't the same level of militancy or self-organisation at heathrow. Plus some reckoned the unions had a word, we leafleted the newham hospital site as well, excellent response on the ground, but little or no workers willing to self organise. Shame really. Exchanged contact details so if things do start looking up.



In this case, people were sounded out, and despite the requests to intervene, because "there wasn't the same level of militancy or self-organisation at heathrow" they were turned down, same with Newham.




			
				raw said:
			
		

> We weren't their to support a specific workers struggle but a general anti-work/solidarity to people resisting work...etc.


Yep and that's my problem with it. You're prepared to intervene in someone's workplace uninvited and unnanounced because you're "anti-work" but not prepared to intervene in workers' struggles who've invited you because they're not "self-organised enough". Those are contradictory perspectives, and unless you see each 'action' as isolated from everything else, they're irreconcilable.

There's a hint on the precarity site as to what euromayday was really about:




			
				precarity.info said:
			
		

> *The police* will always attempt to stop Mayday and any other action we do, and continually attempt to destroy the movements we try to create. *What is important is how we react and resist their repression*, and to never give up. Mayday this year was a great example of people acting together in solidarity in the face of police aggression, and of our continued determination to take our struggle to the streets and communicate with people.


So another set-piece confrontation with the police, but in an area which you hoped might give you a few more minutes before they turned up.

On the precarity page about that action, at the end there's a list of links/statements including "*Keep posted for future flexmob actions." but nothing about Tesco workers in struggle at all. Since that's on the front page I see no reason why information on the TESCO strikes in Ireland aren't linked to for example, unless they're simply considered much less important than 'actions. What it confirms is that the primary focus of that event was on reinventing set piece confrontations, and had fuck all to do with precarious workers. I'm amazed you refer to it to back up the action since it confirms just about every criticism that's been made.

There's nothing on that site about the leafletting, but doing it a week later almost guarantees that the same people won't read the leaflets - TESCO workers do shifts ffs, wasn't that one of the reasons for choosing it in the first place?




> Again, it is a shame that boards like these (or even libcom) doesn't allow ANY debate on a comradely level


yeah I know,                     ...runt litter...




> very sad as only thru debate can ideas develop..



Look forward to a comradely one about these two actions then. And a retraction of your censorship smears.


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## montevideo (Nov 17, 2005)

a


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## Raw SslaC (Nov 17, 2005)

To Catch:



> In both situations activists entered high profile (in different ways) workplaces, and did things that would have caused serious problems for staff if they'd done the same thing. I think there's plenty of comparison, however most of them are unfavourable in terms of Euromayday.



With the Laing stuff we held meetings with people working on the site, followed their meetings for weeks, met with loads of people working their and were asked to do the banner drop from the cranes. It was impossible to consult ALL 700 workers, mainly because NOT all 700 workers were actually in a collective struggle though they were all equally facing this new contract. I'm sure if it was a united work force then other forms of resistance would have emmerged, indeed that was the aim. 

With Euromayday, Tesco's was picked because of various reasons. 1) It was symbollic of an industry which is at the forefront of work/exploitation in post-fordist capitalism. It is also a place were 10,000 of people gravatate and spend their money (1 in 8 pounds are spent at Tescos). It is also a public place, its open 24 hours and therefore presents a place were people go on masse - like the pub, cinema, gym...etc. For this it is as much OUR space, OUR workplace, as it is the workplace for the workers (in a collective sense).
So to do such an action, which was to OPEN the place up, to realise certain social tensions that EXIST whenever any pin-stripped bully boy sticks a price tag on a product, and to rupture it so new experiences can be developed and shared i.e. if the place was looted, it will be a glimpse of an experience/emotion that IS revolutionary for what it is, in an impure/contrictadory way but more importantly having a social characteristic that has a communicative value, that has a dynamic to resonate with many proletariats in the locality it was held. 

So big aims, we tried, and considering the people involved were very new (that again encompassed the people, the "ordinary people" of au pairs, shops workers, barmaids, unemployed, students, community workers...etc) it was an action that was successful, not interms of realising its aims, but of having a collective intention, communicated to people who ARE NOT politicos that go on Urban or Libcom, with dozen of conversations, arguments, discussions over THIS issue of NEW working conditions. These experiences can only be conveyed if you were actually there and involved and speaking to people.

Also in relation to the leafletting and Tesco Dublin thing, well considering people work (and shop!) on shifts we came back EXACTLY a week later at the same time and WE DID WHAT WE COULD DO. The precarity group is going thru a re-analysing period and things have gone very quite, website hasn' been updated (it was last updated after Mayday for the purpose of communicating what happened). Now some of us are involved in doing surveys (enquiries) with cleaners on the underground and canary wharf, there is plans for a re-design of the website (and hopefully a name change...BTW the "p" word is useful to discuss things as it defines a certain situation/category that relates much more to modern capitalism, we however do not fetishise it like some peope on these boards do).

Raw

p.s. catch: "the censorship smears?" well I like libcom admins to retract the smears put on WOMBLES over the past 1 year and half including the allegations spread about certain individuals via private emails (available on demand to whoever wanted to read then!!)


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## flickerx (Nov 17, 2005)

888 said:
			
		

> Do you all realise how pathetic this looks from the outside?



I am on the outside of all this - and yes it looks pathetic.

As I said in some previous post a couple of months ago (something to do with the Clowns, maybe), all this extremely bitter internecine flaming between micro-left groups makes me wholeheartedly disbelieve in the possibility of anarchism or libertarianism "working" in a long-term, real-life, mass situation. If the people on this board are claiming that society or the "masses" etc are capable of self-organisation and autonomy, it doesnt really set any sort of positive example or working model to look up to seeing you all at each others throats.

But that post was ignored... I imagine this one will be too.


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## JoeBlack (Nov 17, 2005)

flickerx said:
			
		

> As I said in some previous post a couple of months ago (something to do with the Clowns, maybe), all this extremely bitter internecine flaming between micro-left groups makes me wholeheartedly disbelieve in the possibility of anarchism or libertarianism "working" in a long-term, real-life, mass situation. If the people on this board are claiming that society or the "masses" etc are capable of self-organisation and autonomy, it doesnt really set any sort of positive example or working model to look up to seeing you all at each others throats.



I'd actually draw an opposite conclusion and I've been through more than a few nasty spats.

Basically this sort of stupidity happens when you have a weak movement that isn't acheiving very much - particularly if it had ambitions and they were defeated or have stagnated.  In that context individual big mouths whose only role is to give out about everyone else can look important and can get an audience.  And because there are no significant achievements to point to (which would expose them for what they are) even the sensible people are forced to waste time refuting them.

If you have a large movement that is going somewhere the individual nuts will be unimportant and ignored.  Often they will simply be embarrassed into silence - the sort of behaviour some are exhibiting here almost never crops up from the same people at a 'real life' meeting because of the instant feedback of a crowd of people looking at you like you were a nut. Even activists with serious mental health problems would not behave in such a fashion at a union meeting or a residents meeting.

In other words I neither expect not have I found in my experience that the sort of behavour you find here occurs in (even tiny) mass movements.  

BTW a thought that has passed through my mind a lot lately.  It's ironic that those who go on most about how embarrassing parts of the anarchist 'movement' are  themselves the MOST embarrassing feature of the movement 'online'.  I don't like the clown thing (for example) but I'd much sooner my neighboors associated me with that stupidity that with people who can't conduct a political discussion without throwing a constant and unending tantrum.  One at least is explanable as what a group reckons is a clever strategy - the other looks, sounds and often has the content of a four year old who has drank too much coke.

ps - Nigel it's probably helpful to realise that what you are seeing here is a childish equivalent of what the Sparts are to trotskyism.  Like a stopped clock they may also be right twice a day but taken as a whole their influence is totally negative and damaging to the movement.  And so its often worse when they appear to be saying something similar to what you might say yourself because you really do not want to be associated with their method in other peoples eyes.


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## revol68 (Nov 17, 2005)

Haven't the leadership of ideas got any Union Executive elections to be supporting, I mean it's not quite as sexy as the ole national liberation but even the Shinners have given up on that ole bollox.

Seriously Joe I don't go to shit like the Grassroots anymore because I find it very hard to bite my tongue at some of the utter shit that is said, nevermind the very nature of these networks which are nothing more than a rounding of the troops.

I've got better things to be doing with my free time.


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## JoeBlack (Nov 17, 2005)

Col_Buendia said:
			
		

> To Sovietpop: good article, but it seems to me to be saying the same thing as Bakunin, when he argued that (his) anarchists would have to be "the invisible centre" of the revolution.



I think modern western anarchist has gone very soft on just this question.  If the revolution is not guided by 'anarchist'* ideas then what sort of ideas do we expect it to be guided by.  We've seen enough revolutions to know that the idea that no ideas will be of influence is nonsense - social democracy, leninism, nationalism are all ideas that have been 'accepted'** in revolutions as offering the best way forward.

The issue is not whether we think a succesful revolution needs to be influenced by anarchist ideas - at this point in history we know that has to be the case.  The question is how we can achieve this.

Actually I think Bakunin was surprizingly close to the right answers on this - see http://www.struggle.ws/rbr/rbr6/bakunin.html

The older articles by the same author  Workers Without Bosses - Workers' Self-Management in Argentina
http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=627
and
 Anarcho-Communist Organization & the Needs of the Present 
http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=382

are also very relevant

* I mean anarchist ideas here in the broad sense of libertarian communism (incl some marxists)  rather than necessarly the ideas held by any one anarchist organisation.
** accepted always included suppression of other ideas but this was only possible because - at leat for a brief period - most of the working class accepted these ideas.


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## Pickman's model (Nov 17, 2005)

revol68 said:
			
		

> If you live in an area and their is a real problem with underfunding of some social service or other you organise around it, even if it's just you and two mates to start with.


of course, you'd have to make two friends first...


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## flickerx (Nov 17, 2005)

JoeBlack said:
			
		

> the sort of behaviour some are exhibiting here almost never crops up from the same people at a 'real life' meeting



Maybe, but its exhibited pretty much everywhere by anarchists, trots, etc on the internet, which is a place where many new people stumble into this world first these days, and it is the space where most discussion and debate happens. I dont remember much seeing public pasted posters around the city for stuff up on the Indymedia calendar like talks, meetings and so on - most stuff is publicised these days on the web. This is where new people see it first, and get turned off it just as quick.

With regard to mass movements being more united in real life, in a european context I'm not sure that this holds up either. France 1968 was torn apart at the end by factionalism, as was Spain 1936 (I dont want to start a history blame game here), I cant help think that its a mirror image of whats happening now on the internet, just on a bigger scale. Anarchism or libertarian communism are specific political ideals that have been around for more than a hundred years now. Can you show me a present positive large working example of such? If its a good answer to problems in society, why has it failed to capture the imagination or inspiration of the public? Of even just one country or region?

Just my €0.02. I dont want to get sucked into a thread like this! Time to evacuate...


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## JoeBlack (Nov 17, 2005)

flickerx said:
			
		

> Maybe, but its exhibited pretty much everywhere by anarchists, trots, etc on the internet, which is a place where many new people stumble into this world first these days, and it is the space where most discussion and debate happens. I dont remember much seeing public pasted posters around the city for stuff up on the Indymedia calendar like talks, meetings and so on - most stuff is publicised these days on the web. This is where new people see it first, and get turned off it just as quick.



Sure and to an extent I agree with you but three points
1. You can witness behaviour that is almost as bad if you go along to the meeting of one small trot group that another small trot group turns up at.  Before you know where you are a meeting on a strike in London will turn into a row about the exact nature of cuba and who said what to whom in east Germany in 1989 (real world example).  The internet magnifies the problem because you can throw a tantrum in your bedroom without any apparent audience but which will be witnessed by a few hundred (or more) people.  So people lack the 'they think I'm a nut' feedback that normally stops you repeating such behaviour.
2. The internet doesn't replicate a public meeting where everyone will have had to make an effort to turn up.  On the net a good percentage of the posts are from people stuck in offices etc for whom a row is a form of entertainment.
3. Although generally anarchist culture worked very well online (lots of intiative, no fear of horizontal communication holding organisations back) it also magnifies some serious problems.  Not least the fear of any form of collectively agreed discipline which means an amazing hesitancy to create forums where the sort of behaviour we see here would simply result in the posts being deleted.  This is an expression of a general weakness of political organisational culture within a movement that confuses 'anything goes' with 'freedom'.





			
				flickerx said:
			
		

> With regard to mass movements being more united in real life, in a european context I'm not sure that this holds up either. France 1968 was torn apart at the end by factionalism, as was Spain 1936 (I dont want to start a history blame game here),



Your comparing apples and oranges.  The problem in '68 or '36 was not a few individuals throwing a tantrum and making everyone look bad.  I'm sure those individuals existed but at those times they really didn't matter.  The problem was that there were real political differences over what way to go forward that needed to be resolved.  And in Spain they existed to the level that people were prepared to kill or die for them - in hindsight it is hard to say they were wrong to take the political disagreements that seriously.  

It's a mistake to confuse the method of debate with the need for debate.


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## montevideo (Nov 17, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> Monte has posted here about the Laing action, you advertised EuroMayDay on both forums around the time and defended it at length iirc. Let's deal with rawslacc and montevideo's views - since it's you two who are on this thread. I'm not interested in a long discussion about which group owns what action, although I suspect that will be used to deflect any criticism of either.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Some more background that'll maybe illuminate things a little more. At kings cross there was some level of activity & militancy ongoing & we were invited to get involved. We had meetings with other workers, including the shop steward who'd been involved in the sit-ins, on how we could best participate. We also met amongst ourselves to discuss what our role was & how we engage politically with what was going on. All of this was an ongoing process not an event. The crane occupatioon - not our idea but we saw nothing wrong with it - was just part of that ongoing process.

After that some workers from heathrow & joint sites committee got in touch with us to do the same thing at heathrow, we met up to discuss the situation at terminal 5. It ws clear they wanted 'an action' to kick off some form of militancy there. We asked if they were willing to agitate on the site, they weren't, we asked if there was any strong feeling amongst the workforce, they said there wasn't. Very much a catch 22. After further discussions & meetings, it was agreed we'd be happy to get involved to compliment an ongoing conflict at heathrow, wasn't our job to start something on their behalf. They acknowledged this & were happy to leave it there. Each understood reach others position.

The newham hospital leafletting was more to test the water of unrest there. We (us & the more militant workers at kings cross) saw this an an ongoing thing & to be fair it was the kings cross workers, dissappopinted at the lack of response, who decided to kick it on the head.

Again i think you theorizing just a little too hard here. These were all mutal agreements, after many hours discussion between a political group & militant workers both willing to work together. 


Euromayady was somebody else's event. (It would be a bit like me asking why libcom are involved in critical mass - an anti-social mass spectacle!?)


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## Top Dog (Nov 17, 2005)

There's a new seperate thread on precarity, euromayday for y'all to bitch at


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## Taxamo Welf (Nov 17, 2005)

montevideo said:
			
		

> (It would be a bit like me asking why libcom are involved in critical mass - an anti-social mass spectacle!?)


yes i was wondering that myself - you lifestylist zoe!  
PS cool picture actually.


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## catch (Nov 17, 2005)

Raw, I don't really get your post I'm afraid, or at least not how it relates to my questions. And if you could explain this in particular:



> if the place was looted, it will be a glimpse of an experience/emotion that IS revolutionary for what it is, in an impure/contrictadory way but more importantly having a social characteristic that has a communicative value, that has a dynamic to resonate with many proletariats in the locality it was held.


 that'd help. And could you explain what "pin striped bully boy" means? I would have thought the people physically sticking price tags on products in TESCOs would resent that description - or is that just miswording. I've done some private tutoring in the past, and put (figurative) price tags on my own labour, does that make me a pin striped bully boy? 



> p.s. catch: "the censorship smears?" well I like libcom admins to retract the smears put on WOMBLES over the past 1 year and half including the allegations spread about certain individuals via private emails (available on demand to whoever wanted to read then!!)



You made an allegation of censorship that meets no common definition of censorship, nor even the practical application of your own definition. You've done so on this site and in a public meeting. Do you want to back it up or not? I see absolutely no attempt to defend your original statement.

I've got no personal beef with the WOMBLES except for how you conduct yourselves on here and one particular bookfair meeting, I'm sure other admins who do will be happy to address your points but I personally don't have first information on any of it except for the point stated above which you're evading. I've also only been a libcom admin since early this year, so most of this predates my involvement. Removing the link doesn't, and I personally wanted to remove about five or six more links at the same time.

Monte.

The King's Cross stuff sounds fair enough to me - it's a shame you don't write about stuff like that more instead of calling people stupid names (and yes I know it's not just you). Since you're not prepared to associate yourself with the May Day stuff I'll stop discussing it with you since I know you're not keen on criticising, well, anything.

However, although I'm not sure how involved libcom people are with CM, I've never seen any literature about CM make claims like this:



> So to do such an action, which was to OPEN the place up, to realise certain social tensions that EXIST whenever any pin-stripped bully boy sticks a price tag on a product, and to rupture it so new experiences can be developed and shared i.e. if the place was looted, it will be a glimpse of an experience/emotion that IS revolutionary for what it is, in an impure/contrictadory way but more importantly having a social characteristic that has a communicative value, that has a dynamic to resonate with many proletariats in the locality it was held.



As always, my problem isn't with particular forms of activity in themselves (squatting, clowning - my little brother can juggle and ride a unicylce ffs, riding 'round London en masse), it's with pursuing certain lifestyle choices or constantly repeating counterproductive activity and slapping the "revolutionary" (or similar) tag on it. Top Dog started a decent thread about lifestylism which was more productive than most - if I remember I'll dig it up.

flickerx: this thread is particularly bad in terms of bickering. Discussion is really useful for me in terms of developing ideas and considering the potential of various activities - I've learned loads in the past couple of years from this forum and libcom. There are other more constructive discussions happening elsewhere on this board and that most of the time. I've never seen an internet forum on any subject which doesn't have ongoing feuds between posters - any group of people with specialist knowledge on something will find something to disagree about and piss each other off if they spend enough time together.


----------



## Raw SslaC (Nov 17, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> Raw, I don't really get your post I'm afraid, or at least not how it relates to my questions. And if you could explain this in particular:
> 
> that'd help. And could you explain what "pin striped bully boy" means? I would have thought the people physically sticking price tags on products in TESCOs would resent that description - or is that just miswording. I've done some private tutoring in the past, and put (figurative) price tags on my own labour, does that make me a pin striped bully boy?
> 
> ...


----------



## Rob Ray (Nov 17, 2005)

I'm not sure that reckoning you can get away with nicking something having watched other people do it is the same thing as deciding that it's desirable/possible to topple capital overall...


----------



## catch (Nov 17, 2005)

A load of kids near me shoplift from newsagents in gangs of six or seven. I'd be hard pressed to call it revolutionary.

anyone remember this?
http://www.calbaptist.edu/dskubik/priest.htm


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## Raw SslaC (Nov 17, 2005)

Lets not go into the "shoplifting as a revolutionary act" debate. End of the day you see politics in one way, I see it in an other. End of Story.


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## Raw SslaC (Nov 17, 2005)

Rob Ray said:
			
		

> I'm not sure that reckoning you can get away with nicking something having watched other people do it is the same thing as deciding that it's desirable/possible to topple capital overall...



Ahh the big event, "toppling capital", the big day we all pray for. What does that actually mean?


----------



## Rob Ray (Nov 18, 2005)

Um, that we're supposed to be working towards a future point where capital is no longer the dominant form of economic/social relationship in our society? What do _you _ mean, and if you aren't after the toppling of capital, wtf are you doing calling yourself an anarchist?


----------



## knopf (Nov 18, 2005)

Raw SslaC said:
			
		

> Ahh the big event, "toppling capital", the big day we all pray for. What does that actually mean?



Hmmm ....... let me see. Perhaps a revolution of some description?


----------



## cats hammers (Nov 18, 2005)

knopf said:
			
		

> Hmmm ....... let me see. Perhaps a revolution of some description?



Ultra-leftist!


----------



## rednblack (Nov 18, 2005)

i imagine raw is asking a rhetorical question


----------



## Nigel Irritable (Nov 18, 2005)

gurrier said:
			
		

> But I don't think anybody here is at all interested in creating a sub-culture as such.



Hopefully not, but I think that much in the way of sensible criticism has been raised of people who are immersed in a subculture and whose activism is on terms only accessable to / involving / understood by / of interest to others in that subculture. 

This is an argument which anarchists are having now, but that's not because it is specific to the anarchist brand of activist politics. A few decades ago substantial sections of the Trotskyist movement (in say Britain or France) or the Maoist movement (in say France or the US) were heavily into squatting, set piece rucks with the cops and the like. The LCR even managed to get themselves banned after a particularly ferocious outbreak of cop-fighting. Many people in the IMG were "lifestylists" to an extent that would make even your average Womrade do a double take.

It's not that dropout stuff doesn't have its advantages, in terms of attracting a certain pool of people, but it inherently repulses more than it attracts and it tends to develop into nasty and counterproductive elitist attitudes about the general "sheep" of the rest of humanity.




			
				gurrier said:
			
		

> For example, I have heard several people describe socialist youth social events as "the weirdest thing I was ever at".



My limited experience of Socialist Youth social events is that they seem to involve a big group of teenagers getting pissed and making awkward sexual advances at each other, much like any other big bunch of teenagers. Socialist Party social events tend to be more like weddings, with people of all ages drinking and dancing badly. 

But your general point in so far as it is true is a *bad thing*. Any organisation does tend to develop a subculture, although to a much milder degree than that of the lifestylist milieu precisely because it doesn't involve an entire lifestyle. I don't know whether to flinch or laugh when I hear some enthusiastic new member using particular turns of phrase when they talk about politics for instance, turns of phrase which they've clearly picked up from others in the organisation.




			
				gurrier said:
			
		

> I doubt whether anybody anywhere would disagree with this (and I certainly don't get the idea that the wombles for example don't put thought into things).



Yes, but that's my fault for pitching the comment at a level of blandness which makes it seem obvious. What I meant was that too much activism goes on which (a) only appeals to other activists and (b) which even if the plan was to be completely succesful on its own terms would be utterly meaningless in terms of political strategy. What's the point in having a set piece fight with the cops for instance? What's the point in having a bunch of people shoplifting? What's the point in [insert particular favourite here]? I'm not in politics because its the most fun thing I could be doing with time. I don't give a flying fuck if something is "creative" or some similar bollocks. What I want to know is how does some action contribute concretely to my political goals.

The absence of thought I'm talking about isn't a lack of planning as far as carrying out an action is concerned, although that sometimes happens too. It's an absence of thought about what this use of energy, resources and time is meant to achieve.

I have a certain amount of sympathy for some of the sentiments expressed by revol, in so far as they can be disentangled from his amusing but needlessly abusive style. Where I disagree with revol and his co-thinkers is on how to deal with the existence of such activism. 

Take summit protests for instance. Those who said that the G8 stuff in Edinburgh was a bad use of resources and wouldn't accomplish much were at least partially right, but I'd still advocate that people with class based politics go. Why? Because if activists whose politics we don't share want to spend their time and resources on assembling together a large crowd of people who are potentially open to our ideas, we'd be idiots to turn down the opportunity to talk to those people. I think that organisations like the SP in England made much better use of the Edinburgh events than most class struggle anarchist groups - seizing a chance to talk to and engage with large number of people, pre-filtered for left wing attitudes, and recruiting both organisationally and more importantly in terms of ideas. By contrast the kind of anarchists who might make similar arguments about class and useful activism (with the honourable exception of your crew) sat at home and sneered and wrote abusive comments on the internet. And for people who rightly criticise the lack of strategic thinking in some activist group's politics and behaviour, that doesn't reflect well on their own understanding of political strategy.


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