# Are you an anarchist but not a member of an anarchist organisation?



## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

It’s long been clear that there are far more people who call themselves anarchists than are involved in organised anarchism.  This is obviously true of all other political persuasions too.  But it’s the question about anarchism that particularly interests me.  

I have some ideas about why people who share our aims don’t feel they can commit to organisations, but I don’t want to prejudge the conversation, so I’ll not chip any in. There will of course be many different reasons. 

Obviously U75 isn’t representative of the world, but it would be interesting to hear thoughts and views nonetheless, because I suspect that there are a large number of people who fall into that category here.


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## Pickman's model (Nov 10, 2021)

I don't think anarchists don't join eg the ACG on grounds of commitment. I've been a member of several groups, the acf, CW, Whitechapel anarchists among them but I joined because I felt in line with those groups. There's going to be lots of other anarchists who have never seen an anarchist group they might feel in tune with. Or who are happy working locally with friends or on single issue campaigns. It's always inspiring to see the breadth of interests on display at bookfairs, which aren't really reflected by the national groups imo. I've not been a member of an anarchist organisation since the demise of alarm: more because I don't feel a resonance with the groups I'm aware of than anything else.


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## Flavour (Nov 10, 2021)

Does the IWW count? I've been a member of that. The only formally-organised anarchist group around my parts is the FAI (Federazione Anarchica Italiana) but they're not very active beyond holding the occasional talk: but their members are all present regularly in the more informal activities that go on through the various occupied (anarchist) spaces in Turin


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

Yeah, I didn’t mean to suggest “lack of commitment”. I was more suggesting that there might be any number of barriers to joining a particular or any org. (Not committing to join an org isn’t necessarily the same as “lacking commitment”, iyswim).


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

Flavour said:


> Does the IWW count?


Hmm. It’s not specifically or solely anarchist, but yes let’s include them.


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## SpookyFrank (Nov 10, 2021)

I am an anarchist and an unofficial member of several informal associations which exist for a variety of purposes.


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## Shechemite (Nov 10, 2021)

2 barriers for me.

1. I don’t think I live up to anarchist principles (I do some representation based political work for example)

2. I just know that if I joined any sort of organisation I would (whether asked to or not) get far too involved, to the detriment of other responsibilities in my life. More of a personal insight thing than anything else


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

SpookyFrank said:


> I am an anarchist and an unofficial member of several informal associations which exist for a variety of purposes.


Do you see that as affinity group type activity? And do you prefer that to joining, say, a national org? If so, are there any particular reasons?


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## SpookyFrank (Nov 10, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> Do you see that as affinity group type activity? And do you prefer that to joining, say, a national org? If so, are there any particular reasons?



I like working with people I know. That puts a limit on the size of the group. I have worked with national and international groups but they've all been small and ad hoc; or at least made up of small, ad hoc groups.


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## fishfinger (Nov 10, 2021)

I'm too flaky, physically and mentally, to be of much use to any organisation.


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## Thora (Nov 10, 2021)

I am an anarchist but would probably describe myself as a feminist.

Not a member of any political organisation because
1. I live in a (conservative/Conservative) small town and there is nothing local.
2. I have 3 kids and full time job
3. I am a school governor and run a community playgroup and that takes up all my remaining free time and mental space


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## petee (Nov 10, 2021)

I'm not a joiner by nature
but i have hung around, in one case pretty consistently, with a few orgs and was willing to support their work
some of these orgs had excellent people in them but some had arrogant and repugnant people in them and i don't do well with that


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## Gromit (Nov 10, 2021)

Anarchy Organisation.

Surely that's an oxymoron?


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## Thora (Nov 10, 2021)

Gromit said:


> Anarchy Organisation.
> 
> Surely that's an oxymoron?


You're so funny and clever!


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## Flavour (Nov 10, 2021)

The O around the A stands for Order, old bean


Gromit said:


> Anarchy Organisation.
> 
> Surely that's an oxymoron?


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## sojourner (Nov 10, 2021)

I have been pronounced an anarchist by other anarchists several times, after poetry performances. When I've rejected their claims, due to being a Socialist, they have renewed their declarations quite forcefully.

Drink may have been taken on all such occasions.


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## Pickman's model (Nov 10, 2021)

Gromit said:


> Anarchy Organisation.
> 
> Surely that's an oxymoron?


When you organise things with your friends, if such creatures can be imagined, you likely do it without hierarchy.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

sojourner said:


> I have been pronounced an anarchist by other anarchists several times, after poetry performances. When I've rejected their claims, due to being a Socialist, they have renewed their declarations quite forcefully.
> 
> Drink may have been taken on all such occasions.


I accept your declaration, obviously. But there is a Venn diagram to be drawn there.  I describe myself as socialist > communist > anarchist > anarchist communist.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

Gromit said:


> Anarchy Organisation.
> 
> Surely that's an oxymoron?


Hilarious. But you’re assuming that organisation necessitates hierarchy. That’s a political assertion not a law of nature.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

fishfinger said:


> I'm too flaky, physically and mentally, to be of much use to any organisation.


As a person with physical and mental challenges I can attest that many organisations are crying out for people who can, say, write articles or layout leaflets. Not everything involves personing barricades or attending meetings.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

Thora said:


> I am an anarchist but would probably describe myself as a feminist.
> 
> Not a member of any political organisation because
> 1. I live in a (conservative/Conservative) small town and there is nothing local.
> ...


Yeah, I’ve been there with 2 and 3.  Fair enough. There’s only so much you can take on.


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## sojourner (Nov 10, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> I accept your declaration, obviously. But there is a Venn diagram to be drawn there.  I describe myself as socialist > communist > anarchist > anarchist communist.


It's an excellent Venn diagram, tbf. I have leaned heavily towards communism in the past. And I suppose there are elements of the anarchist within.


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## fishfinger (Nov 10, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> As a person with physical and mental challenges I can attest that many organisations are crying out for people who can, say, write articles or layout leaflets. Not everything involves personing barricades or attending meetings.


I wish I _could_ write but struggle with more than a sentence or two.


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## klang (Nov 10, 2021)

thinking about it, I'm ashamed to say that the last anarchist org I've been involved with would have been 'WAR' (west london lot) nearly 20 years ago. I've been involved in lots of community work and other 'international' and 'single issue' bits, but I guess life got too busy to commit myself to something more long term / involved.
Another factor, I guess, would be that since moving to London a lot of my friends / close social circle are more of the a-political variety. Left leaning, but by no means radical enough to organise.


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## Pickman's model (Nov 10, 2021)

fishfinger said:


> I wish I _could_ write but struggle with more than a sentence or two.


Yeh but your sentences are worth reading


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## glitch hiker (Nov 10, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> As a person with physical and mental challenges I can attest that many organisations are crying out for people who can, say, write articles or layout leaflets. Not everything involves personing barricades or attending meetings.


Do you know of any?


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

glitch hiker said:


> Do you know of any?


Yes.


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## fishfinger (Nov 10, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> Yeh but your sentences are worth reading


That's very generous of you.


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## klang (Nov 10, 2021)

.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

fishfinger said:


> I wish I _could_ write but struggle with more than a sentence or two.


You’re a much valued member of this community though.


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## Pickman's model (Nov 10, 2021)

klang said:


> .


Good point well made


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## klang (Nov 10, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> Good point well made


let me expand on it:


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## bellaozzydog (Nov 10, 2021)

I’m not even sure what an anarchist is, but have a feeling I would align with a lot of it.

I’ve got Chomsky’s “On anarchism” on kindle I should really get my thumb out my arse and read it


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## fishfinger (Nov 10, 2021)

.


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## fishfinger (Nov 10, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> You’re a much valued member of this community though.


Thank you


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## klang (Nov 10, 2021)

fishfinger said:


> .


I'm glad we are in agreement.


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## Pickman's model (Nov 10, 2021)

fishfinger said:


> .


An excellent point


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## fishfinger (Nov 10, 2021)

klang said:


> I'm glad we are in agreement.


Solidarity dot!


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## Kevbad the Bad (Nov 10, 2021)

I've been in two local anarchist groups, in Croydon in the 1970's and Oxford in the 1980's, but never lived anywhere else with any significant anarchist presence. I have considered joining the ACG, but I'm at too long a distance away to be of real use. Nowadays too many demands on my time as well. So mostly I've got involved in single issue campaigns.


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## ska invita (Nov 10, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> ... many organisations are crying out for people who can, say, write articles or layout leaflets


Insert joke about knowing how to Save As PDF here


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## petee (Nov 10, 2021)

bellaozzydog said:


> I’m not even sure what an anarchist is, but have a feeling I would align with a lot of it.
> 
> I’ve got Chomsky’s “On anarchism” on kindle I should really get my thumb out my arse and read it











						Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!
					

David Graeber Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!




					theanarchistlibrary.org


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## 8ball (Nov 10, 2021)

fishfinger said:


> I'm too flaky, physically and mentally, to be of much use to any organisation.



I was about to say something pseudy about myself, but I think this sums things up in reality for me too.

Also, I’ve become a lot less certain about a lot of things as I’ve got older. 
And I have a wariness of making sudden changes to complex systems that are embedded into people’s life support systems (eg. I’m not too sure about smashing the system when my pacemaker’s battery is due to run out in a year). 

And I don’t play well with others.


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## BristolEcho (Nov 10, 2021)

I feel that I align as an anarchist. I have been quite involved in one group that we set up around work stuff, but is on the back burner at the moment. It wasn't strictly anarchist, but pretty much was.  I'm loosely (sp) in communication with another group.

I felt myself getting "sucked in" to some of what I saw as a scene around it and didn't really want that so distanced myself from it. Not sure I really fit in with a lot of the social elements that surround Anarchism if that makes sense? Absolutely nothing against it either I just haven't been looking for that.

I'm having a break at the moment from all activity which I think has been good.


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## bellaozzydog (Nov 10, 2021)

petee said:


> Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!
> 
> 
> David Graeber Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!
> ...



I read “On bullshit jobs” and couldn’t argue with any of it


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## Peter Painter (Nov 10, 2021)

I think I am an anarchist. At the very least I am interested and inspired by the aims/ideals/principles of anarchism. 

But I've never been a member of any anarchist organisation. Unless the Cowley Club counts, which I very much doubt it does. I was a member of that (in fact I probably still am) but haven't been in there for quite a few years.

Not sure why I've never joined any organisation. Have been involved in actions in the past but for some reason have always had an aversion to signing up for membership to any organisation.

Has that been a mistake? Perhaps, i'm not sure.


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## 8ball (Nov 10, 2021)

BristolEcho said:


> I felt myself getting "sucked in" to some of what I saw as a scene around it and didn't really want that so distanced myself from it. Not sure I really fit in with a lot of the social elements that surround Anarchism if that makes sense? Absolutely nothing against it either I just haven't been looking for that.



So much this too.  I was having trouble putting this bit into words.  Thanks.

And (and I'm sure I'm not getting this bit across right), I kind of think that the "anarchist tendency" needs to be something embedded into the ethos of a better future society, but I'm not sure it is the only or the dominant thread that should be in there if things are going to be harmonious.

I get a sense from some groups that it's either about an ultimately doomed but worthy fight, or about the world suddenly "flipping" and becoming a reflection of their ideals.  The first feels like romantic teenage stuff and the second seems like dangerous fantasy.  Sometimes ideas look great and logical in isolation but don't survive contact with the world.

I see the best way forward to be in expanding those already existing parts of social life which are free from authoritarian and coercive relationships.  Most notably into the economic and local 'political' realms.  People need to be brought along with this, but there is a tribalism and purity-seeking among some anarchists which can push people away.  That balance of who to work with, who to reach out to, and who to fight is difficult.  Sometimes there is too much "fight everyone".


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## Kevbad the Bad (Nov 10, 2021)

It strikes me that the problem is one of critical mass. Places like London, Bristol, Glasgow etc can rake together enough people (just) to try and make a go of things. Most places can't. It's also difficult to start up, e.g., an anarcho-syndicalist Union with its main aim the overthrow of capitalism with half a dozen members in any one location.


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## belboid (Nov 10, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> As a person with physical and mental challenges I can attest that many organisations are crying out for people who can, say, write articles or layout leaflets.


not to mention editors…


I am in the iww, although it isn’t an anarchist organisation.


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## klang (Nov 10, 2021)

Kevbad the Bad said:


> It strikes me that the problem is one of critical mass. Places like London, Bristol, Glasgow etc can rake together enough people (just) to try and make a go of things


I find it goes both ways though - often smaller places give the opportunity form like minded people to meet and make a go of things. London being as big as it is brings its own issues - eg travel can take long enough for out-of-work-stuff to turn into a too-serious commitment.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

belboid said:


> I am in the iww, although it isn’t an anarchist organisation.


Yeah, me too. And no, it’s not.


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## bellaozzydog (Nov 10, 2021)

It’s all sounding a bit Judean peoples front

When do we start making noise and breaking shit


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## hitmouse (Nov 10, 2021)

klang said:


> I find it goes both ways though - often smaller places give the opportunity form like minded people to meet and make a go of things. London being as big as it is brings its own issues - eg travel can take long enough for out-of-work-stuff to turn into a too-serious commitment.


Probably also something to be said for smaller places forcing people to get along with each other a little bit more and not see each other as disposable? Maybe, dunno. 

Anyway, I was going to say "I'm a member of the urban75 forums, if that counts?" as a joke... but then on reflection, it's not entirely 100% a joke. I think there is a real question there as to what functions formal organisations serve that aren't met by a) informal groupings like SpookyFrank mentioned above, and b) internet-based networking like this very site, now that we can send people PDFs and stuff. 
And to be absolutely clear, I'm definitely not saying "silly nerds, twitter can do anything a formal organisation can do but better, and Malatesta would 100% deffo agree with me on this", just that I think the questions of, firstly, "what is useful anarchist activity anyway?" and secondly "what forms of organisation are best suited to those particular activity?" are always useful to think through, whether you're a member of a formal organisation or not.


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## tim (Nov 10, 2021)

Gromit said:


> Anarchy Organisation.
> 
> Surely that's an oxymoron?


 
Moron


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## Riklet (Nov 10, 2021)

IMO a lot of anarchist organisations appeal to anarchists.. so that's who they attract.

This is obvs different from 20-30s Spain or 60s France or 1917-22 Russia or whatever other period there were significant anarchist movements. It's not as simple as being a failing of anarchist organisations because perhaps there are more alternatives to anarchist movements nowadays for those in need or looking to provide mutual solidarity. Ot arguably perhaps there are fewer people/groups in dire need and keen to do something about it. But yeah, in the UK ive never seen anarchist groups out there much or in unexpected places... unlike in Spain for example (big anarcho syndicalist union protest outside a Seville themepark on the edge of town at like 10am for example or shutting down a whole train station one afternoon in the week).


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## ska invita (Nov 10, 2021)

I think most people have very limited time to give, and so if they are going to give that time they want it to be as "effective/affective" as possible....that process of working out how worthwhile it is may or may not lead to joining an anarcho group


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## hitmouse (Nov 10, 2021)

Also, my local mutual aid group is definitely not an anarchist organisation, cos it's not explicitly anti-capitalist or anti-state, but I do reckon that up until 2020, being part of a self-organised, non-hierarchical, local mutual aid group with my neighbours is something that would've seemed like a wildly ambitious pipe dream for most/all(?) UK anarchists. So that is something, even if it's not wildly exciting most of the time?


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

BristolEcho said:


> Not sure I really fit in with a lot of the social elements that surround Anarchism if that makes sense?


I mean, I don’t want to get sectarian or anything, but I guess it depends on which organisation. There are some that are more lifestyle-ish than others.  I wouldn’t be interested in a lifestyle type organisation. That sort of “scene” is a bit of a turn off for me. And I suspect for a lot of people.


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## Sue (Nov 10, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Also, my local mutual aid group is definitely not an anarchist organisation, cos it's not explicitly anti-capitalist or anti-state, but I do reckon that up until 2020, being *part of a self-organised, non-hierarchical, local mutual aid group* with my neighbours is something that would've seemed like a wildly ambitious pipe dream for most/all(?) UK anarchists. So that is something, even if it's not wildly exciting most of the time?


It sounds good and most valuable stuff isn't wildly exciting most of the time. But it's the bread and butter of community organising (whatever that community looks like/you're trying to achieve).


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

8ball said:


> So much this too.  I was having trouble putting this bit into words.  Thanks.
> 
> And (and I'm sure I'm not getting this bit across right), I kind of think that the "anarchist tendency" needs to be something embedded into the ethos of a better future society, but I'm not sure it is the only or the dominant thread that should be in there if things are going to be harmonious.
> 
> ...


Yeah, it does make me wonder whether anarchist-communism just needs another name. There is certainly a lot of baggage to live down in both of the words.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> being part of a self-organised, non-hierarchical, local mutual aid group with my neighbours


Whether one labels that anarchist or not, that’s precisely what I feel we need to be about supporting. Almost like we could rename the movement “direct action” and achieve the same goals.


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## belboid (Nov 10, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> Almost like we could rename the movement “direct action” and achieve the same goals.


Can’t see SolFed having any issues with that


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

belboid said:


> Can’t see SolFed having any issues with that


They don’t have a TM out on the term or the concept. (And their definition would probably differ slightly from mine too, since I’m not strictly a syndicalist - although I see its value and recognise its contribution).


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## brogdale (Nov 10, 2021)

A really great thread danny la rouge with some quality responses, many of which accord with my present feelings.

The long and short of it is that, as a lifelong socialist, over the last decade I am more drawn to anarchism than any other ideology; I'm late to the 'party'!

At present my caring responsibilities make proper organised engagement pretty much impossible but, being completely honest, I'm really not sure that I would anyway. I suppose, looking back, I've had so many frustrating experiences with Union involvement & activism and spells with the LP that I'm a bit jaded by organised politics. But who knows...one day...maybe?


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## bellaozzydog (Nov 10, 2021)

How does anarchism fit in when I have a cynical misanthropic streak a mile wide (developed knocking doors in 2019 and realising the country is actually full of ignorant selfish arseholes)


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## Shechemite (Nov 10, 2021)

People are alright


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## 8ball (Nov 10, 2021)

bellaozzydog said:


> How does anarchism fit in when I have a cynical misanthropic streak a mile wide (developed knocking doors in 2019 and realising the country is actually full of ignorant selfish arseholes)



Good point.  Keeping the faith is tough.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

bellaozzydog said:


> How does anarchism fit in when I have a cynical misanthropic streak a mile wide (developed knocking doors in 2019 and realising the country is actually full of ignorant selfish arseholes)


What were you knocking doors for? I mean, if you were just running away, and it was during one of my programmes, I think I’d be telling you to fuck off too.


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## bellaozzydog (Nov 10, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> What were you knocking doors for? I mean, if you were just running away, and it was during one of my programmes, I think I’d be telling you to fuck off too.



It felt like six weeks of trick or treating, negative sweets


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

bellaozzydog said:


> It felt like six weeks of trick or treating, negative sweets


I mean, even when our kids were the age for guising, six weeks of it would have felt excessive. One night is all, and even then we’d turn the lights off and pretend not to be in after a set time of night.


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## SpookyFrank (Nov 10, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> And to be absolutely clear, I'm definitely not saying "silly nerds, twitter can do anything a formal organisation can do but better, and Malatesta would 100% deffo agree with me on this", just that I think the questions of, firstly, "what is useful anarchist activity anyway?" and secondly "what forms of organisation are best suited to those particular activity?" are always useful to think through, whether you're a member of a formal organisation or not.



Can't think of a time I've done any 'anarchist' activity. I have done many things which were motivated by anarchist ideas, and which were done in broadly anarchistic ways, but there was never a day when I woke up and decided to do an anarchy. The work itself was always antifascist, direct action, community support, environmental, solidarity, or some combination of those things.


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## Peter Painter (Nov 10, 2021)

SpookyFrank said:


> Can't think of a time I've done any 'anarchist' activity. I have done many things which were motivated by anarchist ideas, and which were done in broadly anarchistic ways, but there was never a day when I woke up and decided to do an anarchy. The work itself was always antifascist, direct action, community support, environmental, solidarity, or some combination of those things.



I think, when I said earlier that I'd been involved in actions, this is what I meant.


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## Pickman's model (Nov 10, 2021)

bellaozzydog said:


> How does anarchism fit in when I have a cynical misanthropic streak a mile wide (developed knocking doors in 2019 and realising the country is actually full of ignorant selfish arseholes)


You were knocking on the wrong doors then


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## LDC (Nov 10, 2021)

_"I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of any anarchist organization."_

I got involved through ecological direct action stuff in the '90s, and in that there was a strong anti-formal organizational tendency (for lots of good reasons around fair criticisms of the Left and established NGOs etc.) that overlapped with some of those tendencies that exist in the anarchist movement. Stuff came from similar roots as the animal rights/anti-nuclear/etc. stuff and like them was based on broad based campaigns, 'single issue' groups based around ecology/environment (like XR), or affinity groups working on specific projects and actions, and then also action camps living on sites of projects (road building etc.).

The more anarchist/communist end of the movement did congregate together and form a 'block' within a wider scene though (and engage with the more 'official' anarchist organizations back then) and as well as that much of the movement would have said it was influenced by anarchist ideas, although there was a very wide interpretation of what that meant to people.

And I guess that's one of things that's changed in the last decades; anarchism has moved away from workplace and neighborhood organizations packed with 'normal' people and with clear political ideas, and moved more into youth and cultural and social stuff, with of course all the 'lifestyle' and sub-cultural baggage that goes along with that - punk fucked things up a bit if you ask me!

Alongside a massive collapse in the appeal of mass organizations has been then the corresponding fall in the ability of who's left in them to wield any actual power to improve people's lives, and much of anarchism has ended up tail-ending other struggles and issues, just with black clothes and more aggressive slogans and actions. Much of which is off-putting to 'normal' people, and also seems pointless as it can't really achieve much. (Not to say that nothing has been achieved, but it's usually been done by broader groups and coalitions than solely by anarchists.) That and the fact that the left was beaten to a bloody pulp by capital in the '70s and '80s has left most organizations pretty dismal tbh, even if their politics are good.


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## TopCat (Nov 10, 2021)

I was a member of Class War in the 1980's. That was interesting. I was an AFA supporter. Non aligned anti fash since then. That's about it. I have never liked joining much, don't like feeling responsible for other peoples behaviour.


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## LDC (Nov 10, 2021)

This calls for one of those 'anarchists as they see themselves and anarchists as everyone else sees them' memes.


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## SpookyFrank (Nov 10, 2021)

I've had nothing to do with Class War as an organisation but I've met a few of their figureheads. All utterly dreadful people.


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## The39thStep (Nov 10, 2021)

Nope deffo not an anarchist. Have worked in political campaigns and in unions with some. Some were good , many were shite politically . Personally I always think it’s what people do in action that’s important rather than what they describe themselves as.


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## planetgeli (Nov 10, 2021)

The39thStep said:


> Personally I always think it’s what people do in action that’s important rather than what they describe themselves as.



Largely agree with that though remember people still do the 'right thing' sometimes for the wrong reasons. Ideology is important.

Anarchist sympathies but I've only ever really described myself as a Communist, if anything. So I probably don't even need to be in the thread. Gfs parents strong anarchist background, WRI, conscientious objection, CND types.


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## The39thStep (Nov 10, 2021)

planetgeli said:


> Largely agree with that though remember people still do the 'right thing' sometimes for the wrong reasons. Ideology is important.
> 
> Anarchist sympathies but I've only ever really described myself as a Communist, if anything. So I probably don't even need to be in the thread. Gfs parents strong anarchist background, WRI, conscientious objection, CND types.


Yes agreed . We can leave the ideological chats till after the action though and have them in the pub or whatever later.


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## lefteri (Nov 10, 2021)

i'm a member of the coop, does that count?

in all seriousness i am pretty ignorant of what organisations, national or otherwise, exist and have been put off joining any because of the sorts of people that advertise themselves as being anarchtits - i'm pretty handy at laying out leaflets


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

planetgeli said:


> strong anarchist background, WRI, conscientious objection, CND types.


Is WRI the Women’s Rural Institute? If so, I’ve no idea what a “strong anarchist background, WRI, conscientious objection, CND type” is. But I’d like to.


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## Sue (Nov 10, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> Is WRI the Women’s Rural Institute? If so, I’ve no idea what a “strong anarchist background, WRI, conscientious objection, CND type” is. But I’d like to.


Youre just on the hunt for decent jam. So transparent.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

Sue said:


> Youre just on the hunt for decent jam. So transparent.


I’ve told the story of my granny on here before, but here it is again:


danny la rouge said:


> My granny once announced to a roomful of people in the local shop “I’m just off to join the IRA. I said I never would but they finally won me round with scones”.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 10, 2021)

Dead good thread this. 

I've always been a member of anarchist communist organisations since I started calling myself an anarchist communist (1981). I started off in the Careless Talk Collective which merged with the old Wildcat group (to be fair, it was a mix of anarchists and council communists). Joined the ACF in 1986 (later the AF) and when the AF started to go down the pan, helped set up the ACG.

I never really understood why people who call themselves anarchists often don't join anarchist organisations. This thread gives me some insight though and I get people's reservations. To be honest, I've no time for "scene" anarchists, you know, all that bohemian claptrap. Anarchism needs to start getting established away from the alternative scene bollocks and needs to be rooted in the class, and that includes your small towns and villages far away from trendy right on subcultures.

This means it needs to have a hard as steel, clear as crystal political side, and be highly organised from below. It also needs to have social aspirations; engaged in community and workplace struggles and rooted in the class.

However, low numbers in organised anarchist groups will always hamper that kind of activity.


----------



## Sue (Nov 10, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> I’ve told the story of my granny on here before, but here it is again:





Spoiler



Or it was a double bluff and it was indeed the IRA (Baked Goods Wing).


----------



## DaveCinzano (Nov 10, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> Is WRI the Women’s Rural Institute? If so, I’ve no idea what a “strong anarchist background, WRI, conscientious objection, CND type” is. But I’d like to.


War Resisters' International, Milan Rai et al I think?


----------



## planetgeli (Nov 10, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> Is WRI the Women’s Rural Institute? If so, I’ve no idea what a “strong anarchist background, WRI, conscientious objection, CND type” is. But I’d like to.



War resisters international


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

DaveCinzano said:


> War Resisters' International, Milan Rai et al I think?


That does make more sense.


----------



## DaveCinzano (Nov 10, 2021)

planetgeli said:


> War resisters international


APOSTROPHE, APOSTROPHE, THEY'VE ALL GOT IT APOSTROPHE


----------



## planetgeli (Nov 10, 2021)

DaveCinzano said:


> War Resisters' International, Milan Rai et al I think?



In their case, and well before him.


----------



## Magnus McGinty (Nov 10, 2021)

I used to identify with anarchism. I think I’m more at the libertarian end of Marxism though. Never been a member of an org but been a fellow traveller with some. Being fully signed up to an org probably requires more commitment than I’m able to give. I’m fucking lazy tbh.


----------



## kabbes (Nov 10, 2021)

I have a really strong aversion to the kind of categorisation and labelling of people that results in being able to say, “yes, I am an anarchist“.  Not because I dislike categories in and of themselves (quite the reverse — they can be really useful).  But because once somebody attaches a label to _themself_ (and a label to somebody else), all debate seems to devolve into arguing about the _labels_ rather than the ideas. 

I don’t think I really quite know what an anarchist is and I don’t think anarchists do either — at least in a way that is coherent and reliable.  I have a good idea of what anarchist _ideas_ are.  And anarchism as a pure political philosophy.  I believe many of these ideas and philosophical concepts are good ones, and could form the basis of a pretty solid alternative to the dreadful state we’re currently in.  But I don’t think that makes me “an anarchist”.

What this kind of thinking goes along with is also a deep distrust of groups that cohere around being a label.  My impression of it is _exactly_ what I saw in the London Bookfair thread — lots of political posturing and power dynamics to control the label.  I don’t want to spend my time with people who think like that, frankly.

It might also surprise people on this message board to know that I’m also too “live and let live” to spend my time trying to organise other people to change their lives.  Like 8ball said — I don’t have sufficient certainty about what is right to do that.  I wish I did, really.  Instead, I end up in a kind of default despairing nihilism, where I feel it‘s all hopeless.  Or rather, I feel that societies find ways to adapt and alter, and this process is way more powerful than individuals with predetermined theories about the best way to sort stuff out.

I’m going to stop there, because I could end up writing 1000 words on this.  I don’t know that I’ve really explained myself, but there is some braindump for you anyway.


----------



## LDC (Nov 10, 2021)

kabbes said:


> What this kind of thinking goes along with is also a deep distrust of groups that cohere around being a label.  My impression of it is _exactly_ what I saw in the London Bookfair thread — lots of political posturing and power dynamics to control the label.  I don’t want to spend my time with people who think like that, frankly.



Yeah, I've been thinking about commenting on the type of dysfunctional people small (e2a: not just small actually!) political groups attract, anarchist ones especially seem to have more than their fair share of people that are complete nightmare.


----------



## teuchter (Nov 10, 2021)

kabbes said:


> I have a really strong aversion to the kind of categorisation and labelling of people that results in being able to say, “yes, I am an anarchist“.  Not because I dislike categories in and of themselves (quite the reverse — they can be really useful).  But because once somebody attaches a label to _themself_ (and a label to somebody else), all debate seems to devolve into arguing about the _labels_ rather than the ideas.
> 
> I don’t think I really quite know what an anarchist is and I don’t think anarchists do either — at least in a way that is coherent and reliable.  I have a good idea of what anarchist _ideas_ are.  And anarchism as a pure political philosophy.  I believe many of these ideas and philosophical concepts are good ones, and could form the basis of a pretty solid alternative to the dreadful state we’re currently in.  But I don’t think that makes me “an anarchist”.
> 
> ...


This is almost exactly what I'd say for myself so if I have to join a stupid group I'll join the Kabbes Front. It seems a good bet that there'd never be any meetings to go to.


----------



## Peter Painter (Nov 10, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> I mean, I don’t want to get sectarian or anything, but I guess it depends on which organisation. There are some that are more lifestyle-ish than others.  I wouldn’t be interested in a lifestyle type organisation. That sort of “scene” is a bit of a turn off for me. And I suspect for a lot of people.



Can you explain a little more what you mean by, a "lifestyle type organisation", please?

I like to think that my lifestyle, which includes living off grid on squatted land and being part of an extended community loosely based upon anarchist principles (co-operation, direct action, diy ethos, no hierarchy, etc, etc), is a reflection and/or expression of my politics. But as far as I know there's no organisation, so to speak of, which represents my lifestyle. (And even if there were, I still probably wouldn't join it!).

The only anarchist organisations that I am aware of appear to me to be more about the politics than about any particular type of lifestyle.

But perhaps I'm missing something obvious or am being naive...?


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

Peter Painter said:


> Can you explain a little more what you mean by, a "lifestyle type organisation", please?


I can’t give an example of a lifestyle organisation particularly, because I have no firsthand experience of such. But by lifestyle anarchism, I mean people who express their anarchism through lifestyle choices, perhaps withdrawing from mainstream society culturally or even physically, and believing that individualist bohemianism is in itself rebellion. The subcultural end of the scene, if you will. 

I’ve met some here in Glasgow during the COP, and they’re fine people, but it’s neither the type of thing I mean by anarchism, nor, frankly, is it something I think will ever gain mass appeal.  

Rather, the direct action I’m interested in is in and by existing working class communities and workplaces, and involves building and amplifying working class self-confidence and so on.  

I’m not meaning this to be sectarian, it’s just that I think the two tendencies are quite different politically.


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 10, 2021)

LynnDoyleCooper said:


> Yeah, I've been thinking about commenting on the type of dysfunctional people small (e2a: not just small actually!) political groups attract, anarchist ones especially seem to have more than their fair share of people that are complete nightmare.


I’d say there aren’t any particularly dysfunctional people that I’ve noticed in my current organisation, but that does probably mean it’s me.


----------



## BristolEcho (Nov 11, 2021)

Any modern anarchist books people would recommend? I was going to start a new thread recently, but think it's okay to ask here.


----------



## DaveCinzano (Nov 11, 2021)

BristolEcho said:


> Any modern anarchist books people would recommend? I was going to start a new thread recently, but think it's okay to ask here.


That one by Russell Brand maybe?


----------



## 8ball (Nov 11, 2021)

Peter Painter said:


> Can you explain a little more what you mean by, a "lifestyle type organisation", please?
> 
> I like to think that my lifestyle, which includes living off grid on squatted land and being part of an extended community loosely based upon anarchist principles (co-operation, direct action, diy ethos, no hierarchy, etc, etc), is a reflection and/or expression of my politics. But as far as I know there's no organisation, so to speak of, which represents my lifestyle. (And even if there were, I still probably wouldn't join it!).
> 
> ...



Well done on posting from off the grid fwiw.  I can barely even manage an AND gate using twigs and leaves.


----------



## campanula (Nov 11, 2021)

Um, I am too shy to join anything which involves meeting people for contentious chat, so no, have never been any sort of anarchist. (or anything else since I was in my 20s). However, I think I have done a fantastic job of raising 3 quite furious, informed and activist-y anarcho offspring... and, in a very small and local way, I think my understanding of anarchist theories of mutual support has definitely enabled me to maintain an optimistic and non-cynical position within my neighbourhood. I  always feel slightly awkward about situating myself anywhere on the political spectrum because I am a bit thick when it comes down to actual political theory and shit and rely on fairly vague emotional positions which prioritise empathy and, I fear, woolly ideas of social justice and such. A bit hopeless but means well. Probably the most anarchisty thing I do is filling in some of my neighbour's benefit claims. Word has got out that I have a good turn of phrase or something. That and a decent success rate in blagging the govt. has made my services quite popular.
I am a horticultural anarchist, too.


----------



## Raheem (Nov 11, 2021)

Nothing I've ever been involved in has been explicitly anarchist. I think I subscribe to much of what could be termed an anarchist reading of history and society. But I think it's a tough moment in history to be a philosophical anarchist. Specifically, it seems like there's no practical way to deal with climate change without calling on the power of governments. None of us chose to be where we are, but anarchism would deny us a way out, it seems to me.


----------



## Shechemite (Nov 11, 2021)

how much of this conversation gets fed back to special branch?


----------



## Raheem (Nov 11, 2021)

MadeInBedlam said:


> how much of this conversation gets fed back to special branch?


Just your posts and anything about baked potato toppings.


----------



## Shechemite (Nov 11, 2021)

I don’t envy them


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 11, 2021)

MadeInBedlam said:


> how much of this conversation gets fed back to special branch?


If they don't know this shit already, then what the fuck are we paying our taxes for?!?!


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 11, 2021)

BristolEcho said:


> Any modern anarchist books people would recommend? I was going to start a new thread recently, but think it's okay to ask here.


Some good stuff here


----------



## Peter Painter (Nov 11, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> I can’t give an example of a lifestyle organisation particularly, because I have no firsthand experience of such. But by lifestyle anarchism, I mean people who express their anarchism through lifestyle choices, perhaps withdrawing from mainstream society culturally or even physically, and believing that individualist bohemianism is in itself rebellion. The subcultural end of the scene, if you will.
> 
> I’ve met some here in Glasgow during the COP, and they’re fine people, but it’s neither the type of thing I mean by anarchism, nor, frankly, is it something I think will ever gain mass appeal.
> 
> ...



Thanks.

I probably fall into the category of lifestyle anarchist then because in some ways I have deliberately chosen to reject much, and remove myself from, mainstream society.

I agree with you that such a lifestyle will almost certainly never have mass appeal, though for me that's not really the point. I do see it as a form of rebellion, but not one which really has any importance or significance to anyone but myself. It's certainly not revolutionary!

The direct action you're interested in is the important stuff. The building of class confidence and class consciousness, the provision of examples of alternative ways of thinking and of doing things, the fights and campaigns for better working and living conditions; all these things and more are things that anarchist organisations (formal and/or informal) can help with.

I do think though, that as others have said above, location is a huge factor. I've spent very little time in Scotland (I did visit for the G8 in 2005) and have never been to Glasgow (though I'm keen to sometime). Nevertheless, I do have a sense that there is far more class solidarity and general left-wing sentiment where you are than in my home town in the South East of England. 

One of the first books I ever read about anarchism was Stuart Christie's, 'Granny made me...', and that had a big impact on me. I'm aware of the history and tradition of left-wing politics in Glasgow, and I am full of respect and admiration for activists such as yourself. That video I saw on here a while back of the people in Kenmure Street forcing the Border Control people to release those two men, that really warmed my heart. But at the same time I was thinking, "that might be able to happen in Glasgow but it'd never happen in Kent." 

Perhaps if there had been more class consciousness and class solidarity in the community I was brought up in, I might have been less inclined to want to 'escape' society and find an alternative ("lifestyle anarchist", if you like) community to become a part of. 

And I suppose really that that's as good an argument as any for trying to set something up or get something going in the places where there isn't much or any anarchist presence.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 11, 2021)

Raheem said:


> Nothing I've ever been involved in has been explicitly anarchist. I think I subscribe to much of what could be termed an anarchist reading of history and society. But I think it's a tough moment in history to be a philosophical anarchist. Specifically, it seems like there's no practical way to deal with climate change without calling on the power of governments. None of us chose to be where we are, but anarchism would deny us a way out, it seems to me.


i'm not seeing much in the way of practical dealing with climate change from governments and their unenviable record over the past 30 odd years shows that despite warning after warning after warning they would see us all roasted alive or drowned if they were left to their own devices. as numerous reports of the cop26 summit have made plain the only way this gets sorted by governments is if we fuck shit up and keep the pressure on. 

it's like the auld story of a lost traveller in the countryside asking directions from a farmer who thinks for a moment and then prefixes his directions with 'i wouldn't start from here' but here we are. unless we abandon capitalism and move to a more equitable mode of production for need rather than er greed then we're all fucked. if we lived in an anarchist society now, we wouldn't be in this situation anyway.


----------



## seeformiles (Nov 11, 2021)

I like to quietly plough my own furrow but have been involved in a lot of unofficial stuff. In my last long term job I used to give advice to groups on issues and internal battles with management as well as local government, public transport, etc. I also provided an informal document/letter-writing/template service for staff less than confident in their abilities when dealing with “authority” (e.g. parking fines, insurance companies, line managers, etc.) on a word-of-mouth confidential basis. It was a very gratifying thing to get a result for someone who management thought would be a pushover. Taking an official paid position for these sorts of things has never appealed to me at all as being under the radar suits my personality much more.


----------



## teuchter (Nov 11, 2021)

All the useful bits of stuff that can be practicably done and also can be claimed to be "anarchism" don't need to be done under that label anyway. 99% of informal organising to get things done at a local level, outside of official processes isn't done by people who write the A symbol in toilet cubicles or type out waffly essays on urban75 or fantasise about sending politicians to prison camps in the Antarctic. It's more likely to be done by retired people who vote liberal democrat.


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## Pickman's model (Nov 11, 2021)

teuchter said:


> if I have to join a stupid group I'll join the Kabbes Front.


seems to me you're in a stupid group all of your own


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## 8ball (Nov 11, 2021)

4 pages in and factions are forming!


----------



## DaveCinzano (Nov 11, 2021)

You can keep your factions - fraktion 4 life!


----------



## petee (Nov 11, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> Some good stuff here



including this, which may be of benefit to a poster above









						Errico Malatesta, <em>Anarchism and Organisation</em> - Anarchist Communist Group
					

Written over a century ago, Malatesta’s arguments for the importance of organisation are as relevant today as ever. However for many in the anarchist movement the idea of ‘organisation’ is a dirty word. Malatesta, by stressing the importance of organisation for anarchists confirms an important...




					www.anarchistcommunism.org


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 11, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> Some good stuff here


a rather idiosyncratic price for the platform


----------



## Fedayn (Nov 11, 2021)

I am an ex Trot and not in any organisation bar PCS. Just thought i'd pop my head in.


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## Magnus McGinty (Nov 11, 2021)

petee said:


> including this, which may be of benefit to a poster above
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I was going to suggest Malatesta, but it can hardly be described as ‘modern’…


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 11, 2021)

Magnus McGinty said:


> I was going to suggest Malatesta, but it can hardly be described as ‘modern’…


modern as in post-1789


----------



## Fozzie Bear (Nov 11, 2021)

I had a go at this yesterday with a raging hangover, so apologies for the slightly defeatist tone to it:

Labels - I vacillate between anarchism, communism and thinking that labels just aren't all that helpful, given where we are. Partly that is wishy washiness on my part or maybe not thinking things through enough (or the lack of the iron discipline of being in a national org with a sensible political education pathway, lol). But I generally have more success talking to people about ideas than using labels as shorthand, as both communism and anarchism are pretty tarnished for most people. That sense of them being tarnished probably does put me off nailing my colours to the mast of an organisaiton that is explicitly anarchist/communist too.

Cynicism - the revolution seems further away every day and whilst I have a great appreciation for what the ACG does and the people who are in it, I can't help feeling that the difference it makes is pretty marginal. And I also don't think me being involved would make much difference to that small difference. This isn't because the ACG is doing anything wrong, it's more that the balance of forces is completely nuts. I think probably if I was going to get involved with anything it would be quite local, where I could make more of a difference, but I don't do much of that either because of...

Time/energy - 8 hours work, 8 hours sleep, leaves 8 hours for the other stuff. That does sometimes include going to the odd political meeting or demo. But not in a sustained way really. I'm pretty sure that the ACG doesn't demand 24/7 militancy, but I guess it does need people to contribute and turn up to things and that probably isn't me at the moment.

Openly middle class - I have acted in accordance with my material interests and accepted a couple of promotions in recent years. I now have an objectively middle class job with senior management responsibilities. So quite handily I can use my purist stance on revolutionary organisations needing to be composed of working class people to opt out of having to join one.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 11, 2021)

Fozzie Bear said:


> I'm pretty sure that the ACG doesn't demand 24/7 militancy


i hear you have to be stakhanovite in the acg, and comrades who are only militant 24/7 probably get short shrift


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 11, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> i hear you have to be stakhanovite in the acg, and comrades who are only militant 24/7 probably get short shrift


We’re steely hard cadre, mate. Only allowed to post on here while on a tea break.


----------



## Fozzie Bear (Nov 11, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> We’re steely hard cadre, mate. Only allowed to post on here while on a tea break.


Lots of tea breaks then?


----------



## Magnus McGinty (Nov 11, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> modern as in post-1789



So all of them then.


----------



## petee (Nov 11, 2021)

Fozzie Bear said:


> Openly middle class - I have acted in accordance with my material interests and accepted a couple of promotions in recent years. I now have an objectively middle class job with senior management responsibilities.



do you have the power to fire?


----------



## LDC (Nov 11, 2021)

petee said:


> do you have the power to fire?



Members of worker's co-ops do (albeit collectively) as do sometimes quite low level management in the NHS, some NGOs, or some small organisations, for example. So it's a bit out-dated and also not quite so clear cut as it seems, although appreciate it's not a bad starting point.

Might put you in a dodgy position, but it isn't inconsistent with being an anarchist.


----------



## JimW (Nov 11, 2021)

petee said:


> do you have the power to fire?


No, but he has the fire power


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 11, 2021)

JimW said:


> No, but he has the fire power
> View attachment 296334


more recently of course the space hijackers had an armoured vehicle


----------



## Fozzie Bear (Nov 11, 2021)

petee said:


> do you have the power to fire?


Kinda. I've not actually had to explore that. AFAIK there'd need to be an investigation and then firing would be done by consensus with the other senior managers.

I have interviewed people for jobs and chosen who is employed with the other interviewer.

I had to stop being the union rep too. 

I'm still not sure what I think of all this and I don't want to be one of those wankers who moans about how all this makes them terribly uncomfortable and they long for the simpler times in their youth of van driving and stacking shelves.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 11, 2021)

Fozzie Bear said:


> Kinda. I've not actually had to explore that. AFAIK there'd need to be an investigation and then firing would be done by consensus with the other senior managers.
> 
> I have interviewed people for jobs and chosen who is employed with the other interviewer.
> 
> ...


firing by consensus eh

🤔


----------



## LDC (Nov 11, 2021)

Sometimes people need sacking tbh, that's not incompatible with being against the State and capital.


----------



## JimW (Nov 11, 2021)

LynnDoyleCooper said:


> Sometimes people need sacking tbh, that's not incompatible with being against the State and capital.


Re-assigning to the commune piggery on bucket duty, you mean. Same work points!


----------



## LDC (Nov 11, 2021)

TBH some people need feeding to the pigs more than they should be trusted to actually feed the pigs.


----------



## petee (Nov 11, 2021)

LynnDoyleCooper said:


> Members of worker's co-ops do (albeit collectively) as do sometimes quite low level management in the NHS, some NGOs, or some small organisations, for example. So it's a bit out-dated and also not quite so clear cut as it seems, although appreciate it's not a bad starting point.
> 
> Might put you in a dodgy position, but it isn't inconsistent with being an anarchist.



agree, and i was in fact using it as a (classic) starting point. 

fire someone because another can be gotten to do the same job at a lower wage and thereby increase profits = resign before doing that.

fire someone because they're undermining the work of the rest and the rest are fed up with it = okay as long as there's been broad input (my ex had a situation like this, and recommended removal as she didn't have the power to fire and the miscreant got moved sideways anyway, to undermine others )


----------



## LDC (Nov 11, 2021)

petee said:


> agree, and i was in fact using it as a (classic) starting point.
> 
> fire someone because another can be gotten to do the same job at a lower wage and thereby increase profits = resign before doing that.
> 
> fire someone because they're undermining the work of the rest and the rest are fed up with it = okay as long as there's been broad input (my ex had a situation like this, and recommended removal as she didn't have the power to fire and the miscreant got moved sideways anyway, to undermine others )



Yeah, also depends on the area of work a bit; incompetent in the NHS or normal skiver in massive corporation.


----------



## Fozzie Bear (Nov 11, 2021)

LynnDoyleCooper said:


> Yeah, also depends on the area of work a bit; incompetent in the NHS or normal skiver in massive corporation.



Yeah it is a health related charity and not some mega-death-corp. Still a capitalist enterprise, I'm not under any illusions about that.

As part of the restructure that led to one of my promotions a bunch of high earning bullying/sexist shitbags were made redundant and a lot of people who remained seem much happier now.


----------



## Fozzie Bear (Nov 11, 2021)

So anyway, changing the subject cough cough cough, danny la rouge has any of this been helpful for you? 

(Aside from another entry in the black book of class enemies)


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 11, 2021)

Fozzie Bear said:


> So anyway, changing the subject cough cough cough, danny la rouge has any of this been helpful for you?
> 
> (Aside from another entry in the black book of class enemies)


It’s a very useful discussion I think.  As for your own class position, it says in the IWW rules that you can only join if you’re a worker not an employer. I’d say it was a stretch to call you an employer. In the ACG rules, you can’t join if your primary role in the workplace is hiring and firing. Yours isn’t. 

Basically, you’re not a capitalist or HR so you’re OK.


----------



## kabbes (Nov 11, 2021)

It’s an interesting discussion to me too, because I find myself very much in empathy with everything Fozzie says, tip to taint, so to speak.

At what point does one become an employer, would you say danny la rouge ?  A modern corporation is owned by shareholders, but is hard to claim that the CEO is not an employer, even if he or she owns no shares. At what point does that line get drawn?


----------



## brogdale (Nov 11, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> It’s a very useful discussion I think.  As for your own class position, it says in the IWW rules that you can only join if you’re a worker not an employer. I’d say it was a stretch to call you an employer. In the ACG rules, you can’t join if your primary role in the workplace is hiring and firing. Yours isn’t.
> 
> Basically, you’re not a capitalist or HR so you’re OK.


I like that bastard headteachers can't join; the cunts.


----------



## belboid (Nov 11, 2021)

The wobbly rules seem to have been slightly amended.  They certainly used to explicitly say no employers.  Now it is the distinctly vaguer:

17.2 Membership can be denied to those workers whose employment is incompatible with the aims of this union.


----------



## kabbes (Nov 11, 2021)

belboid said:


> The wobbly rules seem to have been slightly amended.  They certainly used to explicitly say no employers.  Now it is the distinctly vaguer:
> 
> 17.2 Membership can be denied to those workers whose employment is incompatible with the aims of this union.


Isn’t that essentially the case for anybody who works for an organisation that props up capitalism?


----------



## belboid (Nov 11, 2021)

kabbes said:


> Isn’t that essentially the case for anybody who works for an organisation that props up capitalism?


It certainly is a bit vague, which is never really good. Most employers, other than revolutionary organisations, will prop up capitalism in some way, so it does leave open a risk that they could expel someone just cos they didnt like them and were looking for an excuse (not unlike 'bringing the organisation into disrepute' you see in various bodies)


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 11, 2021)

LynnDoyleCooper said:


> _"I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of any anarchist organization."_


Am I right in thinking that you're involved with the AWW? Who don't describe themselves as anarchists but I reckon should probably grow the fuck up and accept that they're anarchists, although I say that about everyone.


lefteri said:


> in all seriousness i am pretty ignorant of what organisations, national or otherwise, exist and have been put off joining any because of the sorts of people that advertise themselves as being anarchtits


Now there's a good freudian slip. Unless it's intentional.


BristolEcho said:


> Any modern anarchist books people would recommend? I was going to start a new thread recently, but think it's okay to ask here.


Depends what subject? Most anarchist books worth reading are on particular subjects, there's a time and a place for "this is what anarchy is" books but you've probably encountered some of them? Uh, I remember being impressed by Fighting For Ourselves when it came out but haven't gone back to it yet, The Housing Monster is the longest prole.info text and they're all great, Class Power On Zero Hours is imo a pretty important book by a certain group that wouldn't describe themselves as anarchists but I reckon are? Hinterland by Phil Neel is similarly like "doesn't have a circle A on the cover but is a great book by someone who's not overly fond of capitalism or the state"?


Peter Painter said:


> I do think though, that as others have said above, location is a huge factor. I've spent very little time in Scotland (I did visit for the G8 in 2005) and have never been to Glasgow (though I'm keen to sometime). Nevertheless, I do have a sense that there is far more class solidarity and general left-wing sentiment where you are than in my home town in the South East of England.
> 
> One of the first books I ever read about anarchism was Stuart Christie's, 'Granny made me...', and that had a big impact on me. I'm aware of the history and tradition of left-wing politics in Glasgow, and I am full of respect and admiration for activists such as yourself. That video I saw on here a while back of the people in Kenmure Street forcing the Border Control people to release those two men, that really warmed my heart. But at the same time I was thinking, "that might be able to happen in Glasgow but it'd never happen in Kent."
> 
> ...


This is an interesting post, there's a lot to respond to there.


teuchter said:


> All the useful bits of stuff that can be practicably done and also can be claimed to be "anarchism" don't need to be done under that label anyway. 99% of informal organising to get things done at a local level, outside of official processes isn't done by people who write the A symbol in toilet cubicles or type out waffly essays on urban75 or fantasise about sending politicians to prison camps in the Antarctic. It's more likely to be done by retired people who vote liberal democrat.


Bugger, that's me told, I'd really thought that no-one ever did acts of solidarity, mutual aid or direct action unless they had a PhD in Kropotkin first. So what you're saying is that our ideas are in everyone's heads?


Fozzie Bear said:


> I had to stop being the union rep too.


Wow, either you're pretty senior or your union branch is more hardline than mine, we definitely have some managers on our branch committee (not me, I hasten to add). Our former chair, who I never really got to know cos he stepped down around the same time as I started getting involved, had to stop being chair cos he got promoted too high up, but he was definitely pretty lofty by that point.


danny la rouge said:


> It’s a very useful discussion I think.  As for your own class position, it says in the IWW rules that you can only join if you’re a worker not an employer. I’d say it was a stretch to call you an employer. In the ACG rules, you can’t join if your primary role in the workplace is hiring and firing. Yours isn’t.
> 
> Basically, you’re not a capitalist or HR so you’re OK.


Does this mean Fozzie's union branch is more hardline than the ACG and IWW?


----------



## Fozzie Bear (Nov 11, 2021)

To be clear - the Union was ok with me carrying on being the rep. Wrongly in my view. 

It was my fellow senior managers and HR who said I needed to step down. 

I am on good terms with my successor but will not say more than that


----------



## BristolEcho (Nov 11, 2021)

teuchter said:


> All the useful bits of stuff that can be practicably done and also can be claimed to be "anarchism" don't need to be done under that label anyway. 99% of informal organising to get things done at a local level, outside of official processes isn't done by people who write the A symbol in toilet cubicles or type out waffly essays on urban75 or fantasise about sending politicians to prison camps in the Antarctic. *It's more likely to be done by retired people who vote liberal democrat*.


That's part of the issue though. Why is most activism/organising done by this particular group of people? If that's actually true and not just a perception. Lots of people don't have the opportunity, comfort or time to play an active role in their local community. Often they are excluded due to various reasons. That's something that needs to be changed. 

Thanks Hitmouse. Have read the solfed one. I will check out those recommendations. The last book I've read along those lines was DP hunters - I need to go back and read the follow up again, but it resonated a fair amount. I meant ones along the lines of those you've mentioned rather than heavy theory books so that's helpful thank you. I tried an audio book of conquest and it was a bit much!


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 11, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Does this mean Fozzie's union branch is more hardline than the ACG and IWW?


I would doubt it. Mainstream, reformist trades unions have all grades in them. That’s one of the problems.


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 12, 2021)

kabbes said:


> It’s an interesting discussion to me too, because I find myself very much in empathy with everything Fozzie says, tip to taint, so to speak.
> 
> At what point does one become an employer, would you say danny la rouge ?  A modern corporation is owned by shareholders, but is hard to claim that the CEO is not an employer, even if he or she owns no shares. At what point does that line get drawn?


I’ve been out at band practice, so just coming to this now. For me, the distinction is around owning capital. Do you _have to_ work (sell your labour of hand or brain) for a living, or can you live on the proceeds of your capital?  There is a somewhat longer discussion to be had about the managing/coordinating class, which I’ve gone into at length on here before, but that’s the basic division: ownership.

This is where someone comes along and says “ah, but what is the means of production really? Could it be a shovel?” And so on. But everyone knows very well how control and power is divided.

Does that mean that people in the capital owning class are automatically bad people, or can’t be sympathetic to the social revolution? No, not necessarily. But their material interests are necessarily for the way things are. 

It’s true that the IWW rule is unnuanced.  (That’s a word, right?). But that’s the way of one sentence rules. Their (our) rule book goes into more detail.


----------



## Dom Traynor (Nov 12, 2021)

I am an anarcho communist but my day job as a senior manager in a trade union and my voluntary role as an office holder in the Labour Party mean I just don't have the time to give to an anarchist organisation.


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 12, 2021)

You wouldn't get through the door at the ACG   


> *Now check you’re NOT one of the following people who cannot join the ACG:*
> 
> 
> police and prison officers
> ...


Join - Anarchist Communist Group


----------



## ska invita (Nov 12, 2021)

belboid said:


> The wobbly rules seem to have been slightly amended.  They certainly used to explicitly say no employers.  Now it is the distinctly vaguer:
> 
> 17.2 Membership can be denied to those workers whose employment is incompatible with the aims of this union.



good rule of thumb, to be judged against your own conscience:


----------



## ska invita (Nov 12, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> You wouldn't get through the door at the ACG
> 
> Join - Anarchist Communist Group


*though in a true co-op everyone has the " ultimate power to hire and fire " - in a co-op everyone becomes boss class!


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 12, 2021)

Down with hip capitalism! Smash the co-ops!!!  

I think we'd probably make an exception for someone being part of a workers' cooperative that collectively decides to boot a ne're-do-well.


----------



## quimcunx (Nov 12, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> I’ve told the story of my granny on here before, but here it is again:



Interesting as a number of Irish Catholic posters on mumsnet deliberately took their kids to protestant play groups because of their fondness for  protestant traybakes.


----------



## Sue (Nov 12, 2021)

quimcunx said:


> Interesting as a number of Irish Catholic posters on mumsnet deliberately took their kids to protestant play groups because of their fondness for  protestant traybakes.


I have to ask...Protestant traybakes...?


----------



## Monkeygrinder's Organ (Nov 12, 2021)

quimcunx said:


> Interesting as a number of Irish Catholic posters on mumsnet deliberately took their kids to protestant play groups because of their fondness for  protestant traybakes.



Chocolate Orange ones?


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 12, 2021)

Sue said:


> I have to ask...Protestant traybakes...?


Rocky Shankhill Road.


----------



## quimcunx (Nov 12, 2021)

Sue said:


> I have to ask...Protestant traybakes...?



Iirc it was things like tiffin and caramel slice and something called fifteens. Fridge cakes.

"To this day I sneak into proddy church halls to get at their cakes. Only this morning I had a wonderful streusel traybake up at the Methodists, while they also entertained DS.

I bet they get into heaven first - I couldn't even really argue against it."









						Which is the tastiest Protestant traybake? - Mumsnet
					

NI Protestants are famed for their tray bakes but which is the ^best^ traybake of all?  I’m thinking something crunchy and chocolatey, a tiffin like t...




					www.mumsnet.com
				




Apologies Danny for diverting your thread.


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 12, 2021)

A worthy diversion though


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 12, 2021)

quimcunx said:


> Interesting as a number of Irish Catholic posters on mumsnet deliberately took their kids to protestant play groups because of their fondness for  protestant traybakes.


They are the orangies' greatest recruiting tool


----------



## quimcunx (Nov 12, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> They are the orangies' greatest recruiting tool



Better than IRA scones anyway.


----------



## kabbes (Nov 12, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> I’ve been out at band practice, so just coming to this now. For me, the distinction is around owning capital. Do you _have to_ work (sell your labour of hand or brain) for a living, or can you live on the proceeds of your capital?  There is a somewhat longer discussion to be had about the managing/coordinating class, which I’ve gone into at length on here before, but that’s the basic division: ownership.
> 
> This is where someone comes along and says “ah, but what is the means of production really? Could it be a shovel?” And so on. But everyone knows very well how control and power is divided.
> 
> ...


OK, I see.  Well, I can see the idea of what you are trying to do and also agree that the praxis is important.

It’s extraordinarily difficult within a modern neoliberal capitalist society, though, to disentangle one’s life from things like capital ownership.  For a start, every single person that is retired is living on the proceeds of their capital.  This is primarily financial capital, because most people have some degree of private pension.  But even a state pension is a form of social capital.

Then we have people who have some savings _towards_ their retirement.  At what point does this become ownership of capital that can be lived off?  Long before people get to the point that they are _happy_ to live off that capital, they theoretically _could_ live off it.  They would be poor for the rest of their life, but if you are being absolutist about “have to work” then the strict answer is, “no, they could not work”.  The same applies to any kind of accumulation of wealth — owned property, any kind of savings.  And since money is created through debt in modern capitalism, the ability to borrow and convert that borrowing to equity becomes part of this equation of whether you could live off your capital ownership.  Suddenly, your net is actually capturing a really large number of people.

This isn’t a gotcha, it’s a recognition that the nature of a capitalist society is that it forces those within it to collaborate with the system (or starve).  It was a really deliberate strategy — I’m sure you remember Blair’s speech about a “stakeholder economy”.  Once people are reliant on capital ownership to be able to retire, you make it difficult for them to work against the system.  I don’t think the answer to that is to shut them out further, though.  You just end up with a small number of people talking to each other.

Now, I think you’re going to say here that this is just unnecessary sophistry and of _course_ you aren’t intending to exclude retired people and homeowners and people who are 50 but have already saved a reasonable proportion of their ultimate retirement savings.  But they’re your rules, not mine, written in the way you intend them.  If you don’t want to blanket-exclude a large minority if not a majority of the population, it is worth at least a bit of thought about what comprises the difference between those who actively create and maintain the capitalist society versus those who are just trying to survive within it.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 12, 2021)

quimcunx said:


> Better than IRA scones anyway.


i've heard inla's pannetone and stollen were to die for


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 12, 2021)

quimcunx said:


> Better than IRA scones anyway.


As opposed to the armoured cars and tanks and scones.

ETA: buns would have fit better than scones


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 12, 2021)

kabbes said:


> OK, I see.  Well, I can see the idea of what you are trying to do and also agree that the praxis is important.
> 
> It’s extraordinarily difficult within a modern neoliberal capitalist society, though, to disentangle one’s life from things like capital ownership.  For a start, every single person that is retired is living on the proceeds of their capital.  This is primarily financial capital, because most people have some degree of private pension.  But even a state pension is a form of social capital.
> 
> ...


We’re all part of capital. Labour (as in small l) is part of capital. It produces surplus value. It’s also itself a commodity. Strathclyde Pensions (Glasgow City Council’s pension fund) invests in fossil fuels. I don’t have an occupational pension, but my partner does through her previous employer. It’s probably invested in no end of dodgy things: arms, property speculation, all sorts. That’s capital. That’s the system we’re in.  It’s definitely not a “gotcha” to point that out: Marx does so explicitly. 

Is there a point at which people start identifying their interests more with the owning class than the working class? Yes, of course there is.  And the dominant culture in society wants us to start identifying our interests with those even before that point. That’s what nationalism is for. That’s that “aspiration” is for. That’s what the cultural identity morass these discussions always get stuck in is for.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 12, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> As opposed to the armoured cars and tanks and scones.
> 
> ETA: buns would have fit better than scones


The verse outs those who rhyme scone with bone


----------



## kabbes (Nov 12, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> We’re all part of capital. Labour (as in small l) is part of capital. It produces surplus value. It’s also itself a commodity. Strathclyde Pensions (Glasgow City Council’s pension fund) invests in fossil fuels. I don’t have an occupational pension, but my partner does through her previous employer. It’s probably invested in no end of dodgy things: arms, property speculation, all sorts. That’s capital. That’s the system we’re in.  It’s definitely not a “gotcha” to point that out: Marx does so explicitly.
> 
> Is there a point at which people start identifying their interests more with the owning class than the working class? Yes, of course there is.  And the dominant culture in society wants us to start identifying our interests with those even before that point. That’s what nationalism is for. That’s that “aspiration” is for. That’s what the cultural identity morass these discussions always get stuck in is for.


Well, quite. That’s kind of my point. So writing rules that excludes people for needing to exist within this system seems a bit counterproductive, no?


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 12, 2021)

kabbes said:


> Well, quite. That’s kind of my point. So writing rules that excludes people for needing to exist within this system seems a bit counterproductive, no?


No one needs to be a policeman or a bailiff or a boss. They are conscious choices and decisions which come with a range of consequences for your place in society.


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 12, 2021)

kabbes said:


> Well, quite. That’s kind of my point. So writing rules that excludes people for needing to exist within this system seems a bit counterproductive, no?


If we have people in revolutionary organisations who see their interests as lying with the capitalist class then that’s a conflict of interests. So that’s why they’re excluded.


----------



## Shechemite (Nov 12, 2021)

Does all of those who have “the power to restrain or imprison in detention centres of all varieties” also have their material interests aligned with capaitalism?


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 12, 2021)

MadeInBedlam said:


> Does all of those who have “the power to restrain or imprison in detention centres of all varieties” also have their material interests aligned with capaitalism?


What do you mean by material interests?


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 12, 2021)

MadeInBedlam said:


> Does all of those who have “the power to restrain or imprison in detention centres of all varieties” also have their material interests aligned with capaitalism?


Yes.


----------



## BristolEcho (Nov 12, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> No one needs to be a policeman or a bailiff or a *boss*. They are conscious choices and decisions which come with a range of consequences for your place in society.


I do agree with this point, and it's why I've avoided any management roles beyond mid line keyworking stuff. However, I do think there is an economic reality for most people especially in low paid sectors such as health and social care where the manager role is the only one that pays anything towards a "normal" salary. I wouldn't organise with bosses, but I do empathise with their reasons for taking that role in a system that is really fucked. 

Policeman, bailiffs and fucking prison guards can all fuck off though.v


----------



## BristolEcho (Nov 12, 2021)

MadeInBedlam said:


> Does all of those who have “the power to restrain or imprison in detention centres of all varieties” also have their material interests aligned with capaitalism?


 Been thinking a lot about this recently and talking about the role of CMHT in this. Really we should be striving for a system that does away with ourselves.


----------



## Shechemite (Nov 12, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> Yes.



Health and social care staff?


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 12, 2021)

BristolEcho said:


> I do agree with this point, and it's why I've avoided any management roles beyond mid line keyworking stuff. However, I do think there is an economic reality for most people especially in low paid sectors such as health and social care where the manager role is the only one that pays anything towards a "normal" salary. I wouldn't organise with bosses, but I do empathise with their reasons for taking that role in a system that is really fucked.
> 
> Policeman, bailiffs and fucking prison guards can all fuck off though.v


Yeh. For me it's where does supervision stop and the power to hire and fire begin. To take a military analogy I don't suppose people here would have a massive problem with sergeants or warrant officers. But much more likely to have one with commissioned officers.


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 12, 2021)

MadeInBedlam said:


> Health and social care staff?


I’m thinking of immigration detention, rather than mental health sectioning.  I think the latter is a more complicated relationship to capital. But I do think I it’s an important one. I personally wouldn’t exclude health and social care staff on that basis.


----------



## kabbes (Nov 12, 2021)

I think I’m beginning to see the shape of the answer to your original question, danny


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 12, 2021)

kabbes said:


> I think I’m beginning to see the shape of the answer to your original question, danny


Is it “a lot of people don’t join revolutionary organisations because they think they’re middle class”? 🤣


----------



## kabbes (Nov 12, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> Is it “a lot of people don’t join revolutionary organisations because they think they’re middle class”? 🤣


According to the definition of middle class you have essentially created there then yes.  As I’ve tried to explain, you’ve applied the label on an incredibly wide basis. You think that spent our people off?  You’re othering them! Rather than laughing, too, you might want to at least consider the outsider perspective.  If you’re genuinely mystified why membership remains low, anyway.


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 12, 2021)

kabbes said:


> According to the definition of middle class you have essentially created there then yes.  As I’ve tried to explain, you’ve applied the label on an incredibly wide basis. You think that spent our people off?  You’re othering them! Rather than laughing, too, you might want to at least consider the outsider perspective.  If you’re genuinely mystified why membership remains low, anyway.


Do you think you’re middle class?


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 12, 2021)

I suspect that people who find this difficult aren’t working class and are looking for reassurance that they’re nice people. 

Here’s the definition the Glasgow ACG tweeted yesterday:


----------



## kabbes (Nov 12, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> Do you think you’re middle class?


Me personally?  Very much so. I personally have no place in an organised anarchist group. I’m not just management, I’m executive.  I also, for reasons explained earlier, have always been deeply uncomfortable with groups that cohere around labels.  But I’m not talking about me, and it shouldn’t be me you’re interested in. 

Since we _are_ talking about me, though, here’s a data point for you. 

Three things in your favour:

1) I already am well-read politically, and find myself well persuaded by Marx 
2) I already believe that much of the anarchist political philosophy is well founded
3) I like you personally, find you erudite and thoughtful.

And yet the engagement we’ve had about your involvement with your own and other anarchist groups has made me want to stay as far away from it as possible.

If you can’t even attract somebody (in theory, at least) who _already supports your cause_ and _already thinks you personally are worthwhile_ then honestly what chance have you got with those who don’t have those preconditions?

Now, you can dismiss this. You probably will. You don’t want me anyway, after all. But there’s a point in there that is at least worth mulling on.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 12, 2021)

kabbes said:


> According to the definition of middle class you have essentially created there then yes.  As I’ve tried to explain, you’ve applied the label on an incredibly wide basis. You think that spent our people off?  You’re othering them! Rather than laughing, too, you might want to at least consider the outsider perspective.  If you’re genuinely mystified why membership remains low, anyway.


i remember dave morris talking to a comrade out of dam in the tottenham unwaged centre about 30 years ago telling him he'd join dam when they had 100,000 members. i was so naive then i thought it might be possible


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 12, 2021)

kabbes said:


> Me personally?  Very much so. I personally have no place in an organised anarchist group. I’m not just management, I’m executive.  I also, for reasons explained earlier, have always been deeply uncomfortable with groups that cohere around labels.  But I’m not talking about me, and it shouldn’t be me you’re interested in.
> 
> Since we _are_ talking about me, though, here’s a data point for you.
> 
> ...


I think - I may be wrong, and if so that’s my failing (of which there are many) - that I’ve already made caveats describing people in your position: good people with the right political impulses who are nonetheless best off staying out of revolutionary organisations.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 12, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> I think - I may be wrong, and if so that’s my failing (of which there are many) - that I’ve already made caveats describing people in your position: good people with the right political impulses who are nonetheless best off staying out of revolutionary organisations.


but who will be on the right side of the barricades


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 12, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> but who will be on the right side of the barricades


Correct.


----------



## 8ball (Nov 12, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> I suspect that people who find this difficult aren’t working class and are looking for reassurance that they’re nice people.
> 
> Here’s the definition the Glasgow ACG tweeted yesterday:




Yeah, we'll see how well that definition flies when someone turns up with a homemade sourdough foccacia.


----------



## Flavour (Nov 12, 2021)

8ball said:


> Yeah, we'll see how well that definition flies when someone turns up with a homemade sourdough foccacia.


are working class people not allowed to make sourdough focaccia at home?   (the double c is the second one, not the first)


----------



## 8ball (Nov 12, 2021)

Flavour said:


> are working class people not allowed to make sourdough focaccia at home?   (the double c is the second one, not the first)


Straight into my spelling trap! 

<writes in little book>


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 12, 2021)

8ball said:


> Yeah, we'll see how well that definition flies when someone turns up with a homemade sourdough foccacia.


That’s the cultural identity thing that always happens on these threads.

Cards on the table: I like avocados on sourdough toast, balsamic vinegar, classical music, jazz, I grind coffee beans to make stovetop espresso, and I read literary fiction. I listen to BBC radio 3 on occasion, if I listen to the radio at all. I like Schubert’s leider, and Hayden’s string quartets. And I like foreign films.

I work as a classroom assistant in an FE college on a zero hours contract, earning far less than the average wage. I have no private pension. I do have an ISA but it wouldn’t last me very long if I tried to live on it. My mortgage is paid off. I live in a flat in Glasgow G20. 

I am working class by a communist definition. The media would want me to identify as middle class. But that’s bollocks.


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 12, 2021)

Yep, it reminds me of the old "we need more working class members of parliament" nonsense. I seem to remember John Prescott being portrayed as working class, even though he was in the fucking government and was part of the ruling class... yeah, but accent, and he could swing a punch


----------



## Kevbad the Bad (Nov 12, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> Yep, it reminds me of the old "we need more working class members of parliament" nonsense. I seem to remember John Prescott being portrayed as working class, even though he was in the fucking government and was part of the ruling class... yeah, but accent, and he could swing a punch


And he was quite a mover on the dance floor.


----------



## 8ball (Nov 12, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> That’s the cultural identity thing that always happens on these threads.
> 
> Cards on the table: I like avocados on sourdough toast, balsamic vinegar, classical music, jazz, I grind coffee beans to make stovetop espresso, and I read literary fiction. I listen to BBC radio 3 on occasion, if I listen to the radio at all. I like Schubert’s leider, and Hayden’s string quartets. And I like foreign films.
> 
> ...


----------



## Shechemite (Nov 12, 2021)

Does the ACG allow doctors to be members?


----------



## platinumsage (Nov 12, 2021)

The only anarchist organisation I have been a member of is my local Indymedia collective. Well, I wasn’t formally a member but I‘m not sure if anyone was. I went to meetings and held the talking stick sometimes. I’m pretty sure it was an anarchist organisation, because we did local actions and participated in national actions - the media/reporting bit was more of a sideline, especially as there was no evidence anyone read our articles apart from ourselves.

I am not currently a member of an anarchist organisation because I’m pretty sure I’m not currently an anarchist.


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 12, 2021)

MadeInBedlam said:


> Does the ACG allow doctors to be members?


If they're a doctor who isn't in one of these categories

those who have the power to restrain or imprison in detention centres of all varieties
full-time paid trade union officials
members of political parties
strike breakers
those who have ultimate power to hire and fire or those whose primary role in the workplace is to hire and fire
those who have the ultimate power to remove benefits
those who make a living out of the exploitation of others
Then why not? Though I suspect many quacks may well fall into at least one of those.


----------



## 8ball (Nov 12, 2021)

platinumsage said:


> The only anarchist organisation I have been a member of is my local Indymedia collective. Well, I wasn’t formally a member but I‘m not sure if anyone was. I went to meetings and held the talking stick sometimes. I’m pretty sure it was an anarchist organisation, because we did local actions and participated in national actions - the media/reporting bit was more of a sideline, especially as there was no evidence anyone read our articles apart from ourselves.
> 
> I am not currently a member of an anarchist organisation because I’m pretty sure I’m not currently an anarchist.



You had a talking stick?


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 12, 2021)

Surely not one of these


----------



## platinumsage (Nov 12, 2021)

8ball said:


> You had a talking stick?



Yes! It was introduced solely due to one supposedly disruptive member, about whom more discussions were had than about any external issue.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 12, 2021)

platinumsage said:


> Yes! It was introduced solely due to one supposedly disruptive member, about whom more discussions were had than about any external issue.


you, no doubt


----------



## 8ball (Nov 12, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> If they're a doctor who isn't in one of these categories
> 
> those who have the power to restrain or imprison in detention centres of all varieties
> full-time paid trade union officials
> ...



That last one seems a little tricky and possibly vague.


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 12, 2021)

8ball said:


> View attachment 296447


----------



## Magnus McGinty (Nov 12, 2021)

What are the subs for the ACG? Fairly sure I was put off joining the AF as based on what I earn it started looking pretty eye watering. I agree with the principle that those who earn more should pay more. I am a high earner. I pay slightly over £20 a month to the RMT but was looking at a much greater sum for the AF iirc.


----------



## LDC (Nov 12, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> If they're a doctor who isn't in one of these categories
> 
> those who have the power to restrain or imprison in detention centres of all varieties
> full-time paid trade union officials
> ...


 I suspect he's hinting that as some (very few) doctors can detain people under a mental health section they fall into the first category.

It's not a good argument imo, very few can or ever do it, it's done as a last resort, and for the good and also usually the safety of the patient and sometimes others. They're also hospitals not detention centres.


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 12, 2021)

Magnus McGinty said:


> What are the subs for the ACG? Fairly sure I was put off joining the AF as based on what I earn it started looking pretty eye watering. I agree with the principle that those who earn more should pay more. I am a high earner. I pay slightly over £20 a month to the RMT but was looking at a much greater sum for the AF iirc.


Sliding scale starting from a quid a month to "loadsa monay!!!" for those who are more flush (but if push comes to shove, what you can reasonably afford).


----------



## Magnus McGinty (Nov 12, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> Sliding scale starting from a quid a month to "loadsa monay!!!" for those who are more flush (but if push comes to shove, what you can reasonably afford).



So like an honesty box or do I hand you my last 3 months bank statements and I’m basically paying you what I pay in child maintenance (which is an astonishing sum, I’m basically paying off her house whilst I live in a room lol, but then I’m lucky to be in that position I guess) 
Makes me think of my mate’s parents who are Mormon and give a percentage of their income to the church. Easier for them I suppose as they aren’t drinking themselves to death (fun is forbidden! Lol)


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## danny la rouge (Nov 12, 2021)

Magnus McGinty said:


> So like an honesty box


Yes, but you’re required to hold the treasurer’s gaze each time you pay your subs.


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## Pickman's model (Nov 12, 2021)

Magnus McGinty said:


> What are the subs for the ACG? Fairly sure I was put off joining the AF as based on what I earn it started looking pretty eye watering. I agree with the principle that those who earn more should pay more. I am a high earner. I pay slightly over £20 a month to the RMT but was looking at a much greater sum for the AF iirc.


You pay for quality tho


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## Serge Forward (Nov 12, 2021)

Magnus McGinty said:


> So like an honesty box or do I hand you my last 3 months bank statements and I’m basically paying you what I pay in child maintenance (which is an astonishing sum, I’m basically paying off her house whilst I live in a room lol, but then I’m lucky to be in that position I guess)
> Makes me think of my mate’s parents who are Mormon and give a percentage of their income to the church. Easier for them I suppose as they aren’t drinking themselves to death (fun is forbidden! Lol)


We need to see the last three payslips and bank statements and a note from your employer...   

Nahhhh... it's like an honesty box. Like I say, you see what banding you're in, see how it fits in with your own real circumstances, then you pay what you can really afford.


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## Magnus McGinty (Nov 12, 2021)

I may join. On the basis of it being the best of what’s available. I can lay out leaflets.


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## Pickman's model (Nov 12, 2021)

Magnus McGinty said:


> I may join. On the basis of it being the best of what’s available. I can lay out leaflets.


I bet you'd run a good-looking stall


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## Serge Forward (Nov 12, 2021)

Oi, you need to be a bit more positive than "better than the other dross"  

Come to think of it, that could be our recruitment slogan for 2022:
Join the ACG! The best of the fair to middling _  _


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## Magnus McGinty (Nov 12, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> Oi, you need to be a bit more positive than "better than the other dross"
> 
> Come to think of it, that could be our recruitment slogan for 2022:
> Join the ACG! The best of the fair to middling _  _



But don’t you think it’s like that sometimes?
I did try setting up a group with others but they were so lazy (as was I) it never occurred. So then you have to go window shopping. I can’t do the ML groups. it leaves very little. Was in the orbit of the IWCA at one point but that has drifted away. A crying shame. Their kind of direct action is what is needed IMO. 
And obvs the ICG split with the AF (I think) over the latter’s focus on identity politics. I can agree with that position.


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 12, 2021)

Fozzie Bear said:


> To be clear - the Union was ok with me carrying on being the rep. Wrongly in my view.
> 
> It was my fellow senior managers and HR who said I needed to step down.


If the union was alright with you being a rep, but HR took a harder line on the union needing to be independent from management, then does that mean that we also need to get a second opinion from your HR department about whether you should be able to join the ACG?


platinumsage said:


> I’m pretty sure it was an anarchist organisation, because we did local actions and participated in national actions


As opposed to participating in national action, which is a bit less desirable from an anarchist point of view.


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## Fozzie Bear (Nov 12, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> If the union was alright with you being a rep, but HR took a harder line on the union needing to be independent from management, then does that mean that we also need to get a second opinion from your HR department about whether you should be able to join the ACG?


Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.


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## Magnus McGinty (Nov 12, 2021)

Is Count Cuckula London ACG then? I think I’ve worked out that everyone else on here isn’t.


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## AmateurAgitator (Nov 12, 2021)

Magnus McGinty said:


> Is Count Cuckula London ACG then?


No. I'm in Kent. Charlie Mowbray is in London though.


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## Magnus McGinty (Nov 12, 2021)

Count Cuckula said:


> No. I'm in Kent. Charlie Mowbray is in London though.



Ok I’ll contact him.


----------



## Shechemite (Nov 12, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> If they're a doctor who isn't in one of these categories
> 
> those who have the power to restrain or imprison in detention centres of all varieties
> full-time paid trade union officials
> ...



The anti-quackness is an attractive quality of the more ‘critical’ parts of anarchism


LynnDoyleCooper said:


> I suspect he's hinting that as some (very few) doctors can detain people under a mental health section they fall into the first category.
> 
> It's not a good argument imo, very few can or ever do it, it's done as a last resort, and for the good and also usually the safety of the patient and sometimes others. They're also hospitals not detention centres.



It was a question not an argument (believe that or not is up to you). Is an ‘Assessment and Treatment Unit’ less of a detention centre because of its nice sounding name?


----------



## Shechemite (Nov 12, 2021)

The role of the mental health system is to manage labour on behalf of state and capital.

The alternatives (eg quackery) are often both more dangerous and more controlling, and yes, there are plenty of people who work in the (mainstream) mental health system that would be on the right side of the barricades.

The ‘policing’ of unproductive labour by the medical profession isn’t limited to the MHA btw, a lot of it is enforcing austerity and conditioning patients not to want to access services


----------



## planetgeli (Nov 12, 2021)

LynnDoyleCooper said:


> They're also hospitals not detention centres.



With some experience I do have a problem with this line. My son was locked up in St Annes Tottenham a while back and he received an appalling level of 'treatment' (next to nothing) while those who knew him were ignored. He was left to fester and let out 4 days early with a follow up that lasted one visit. It definitely felt like a detention centre, to him and to me.


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## purenarcotic (Nov 12, 2021)

I don’t think there is anything local to me. I wish there was, as broadly I think I align with a lot of the principles, but I’m not very well versed on the deeper theory (and if I’m honest I struggle with what I’ve read in that I find it sense and hard to get through) and I’m not sure on how some things would work practically and that makes me a bit hesitant. I’d like to talk it through with people who know more than me, but worry partly that I would look silly and partly that people would be irritated by it and think my questions were daft.  And although my job isn’t middle class, my background is about as middle class as you can get, so I’m not even sure I’m right for something like that. I like to think I would be on the right side of the barricade when it came to it though.


----------



## Dom Traynor (Nov 12, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> If they're a doctor who isn't in one of these categories
> 
> those who have the power to restrain or imprison in detention centres of all varieties
> full-time paid trade union officials
> ...


I actually rejected a group of debt collectors who wanted to join our union. Told them we didn't want to get involved in that. We do organise some privatised corrections officers though. Who are sound and quite militant as well as being entirely indigenous or Pasifika.


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## LDC (Nov 12, 2021)

planetgeli said:


> With some experience I do have a problem with this line. My son was locked up in St Annes Tottenham a while back and he received an appalling level of 'treatment' (next to nothing) while those who knew him were ignored. He was left to fester and let out 4 days early with a follow up that lasted one visit. It definitely felt like a detention centre, to him and to me.



Sorry you both had that. Shit experiences of the NHS are far from uncommon. But maybe largely related to the oft talked about problems with the NHS; funding, poor staffing, stress, etc.?

Don't agree that's it's as simple that the role of the NHS is to manage labour on behalf of the state and capital.

But totally agree there's a huge issue with what health under capitalism means. A good discussion to have and one I'd like to have on another thread...


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 12, 2021)

purenarcotic said:


> I don’t think there is anything local to me. I wish there was, as broadly I think I align with a lot of the principles, but I’m not very well versed on the deeper theory (and if I’m honest I struggle with what I’ve read in that I find it sense and hard to get through) and I’m not sure on how some things would work practically and that makes me a bit hesitant. I’d like to talk it through with people who know more than me, but worry partly that I would look silly and partly that people would be irritated by it and think my questions were daft.  And although my job isn’t middle class, my background is about as middle class as you can get, so I’m not even sure I’m right for something like that. I like to think I would be on the right side of the barricade when it came to it though.


Background is unimportant. If the story is true, Alan Sugar started off a horny-handed son of toil. Fuck that cunt and those like him. What's important is who and what you are now, and which side you're on.


----------



## Fozzie Bear (Nov 12, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> Background is unimportant. If the story is true, Alan Sugar started off a horny-handed son of toil. Fuck that cunt and those like him. What's important is who and what you are now, and which side you're on.


At least he’s honest, though.


----------



## 8ball (Nov 13, 2021)

purenarcotic said:


> I don’t think there is anything local to me.



There are anarchist communes _everywhere_!


----------



## rich! (Nov 13, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> I’ve been out at band practice, so just coming to this now. For me, the distinction is around owning capital. Do you _have to_ work (sell your labour of hand or brain) for a living, or can you live on the proceeds of your capital?  There is a somewhat longer discussion to be had about the managing/coordinating class, which I’ve gone into at length on here before, but that’s the basic division: ownership.
> 
> This is where someone comes along and says “ah, but what is the means of production really? Could it be a shovel?” And so on. But everyone knows very well how control and power is divided.
> 
> ...


Probably picking up the wrong part of this discussion to join, but where do IWW/ACG/other orgs stand on employee owned companies?

(Let's be clear - that means >50% of the shares are owned by people you will meet if you turn up in the office, and there is no "special class" of shares that someone else has)


----------



## rich! (Nov 13, 2021)

oh, and backtracking to Danny's original ask:
Post-Trump I started direct debits to a lot of people, but I didn't join any "recruiting organisations"
The COVID wave of mutual aid meant I was involved in setting up what I would describe as an anarchist veg box scheme (2/3 of our veg boxes are given away to people in need...) and several of the regulars have got that it's an anarchist organisation... so I might have set one up.
But in terms of the things that are formal "anarchist political organisations" - I can't imagine doing so.
(And my most local such organisation - on their mailing list, support their activities, have given them money when they have needed  - went full TERF a couple of years ago...)
On the other hand, we have a wave of copwatch organisations appearing across London, and I can't think of anything more anarchist than grassroots community intervention against the police...


----------



## redsquirrel (Nov 13, 2021)

BristolEcho said:


> Any modern anarchist books people would recommend? I was going to start a new thread recently, but think it's okay to ask here.


Coming a bit late and it's not that modern but I'd recommend the Platform. Whether you agree with it in total or not it does lay out the arguments for the usefulness of organisation.


purenarcotic said:


> I don’t think there is anything local to me. I wish there was, as broadly I think I align with a lot of the principles, but I’m not very well versed on the deeper theory (and if I’m honest I struggle with what I’ve read in that I find it sense and hard to get through) and I’m not sure on how some things would work practically and that makes me a bit hesitant. I’d like to talk it through with people who know more than me, but worry partly that I would look silly and partly that people would be irritated by it and think my questions were daft.  And although my job isn’t middle class, my background is about as middle class as you can get, so I’m not even sure I’m right for something like that. I like to think I would be on the right side of the barricade when it came to it though.


Don't know where you are but I really would not be worried about people being irritated about questions/not knowing theory.
There were people at the Manchester book fair that just dropped by to see what things were about, generally people are eager to talk. And if there are no physical events then there are virtual ones.

There may be a few dicks but generally people are pretty welcoming


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 13, 2021)

rich! said:


> Probably picking up the wrong part of this discussion to join, but where do IWW/ACG/other orgs stand on employee owned companies?
> 
> (Let's be clear - that means >50% of the shares are owned by people you will meet if you turn up in the office, and there is no "special class" of shares that someone else has)


I’m not aware of an official position of either organisation about such an arrangement.


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## locomotive (Nov 13, 2021)

I was in the AF when I was a student. I left because I was fed up with the lifestyle aspects of the Anarchist scene and the cycle of 'prepare for a protest, have a protest, prepare for a protest'. The student protests and anti-austerity stuff was a lot of fun but seemed utterly detached from the real world in the end. 

I've come round to a more syndicalist / council-communist way of thinking but am pretty despondent. I don't know how you can build industrial power like the CNT/FAI managed in the deindustrialised and fragmented world we live in.

I'd like to join an org again but I don't know if I'd be anything more than a name on a membership list.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 13, 2021)

locomotive said:


> I'd like to join an org again but I don't know if I'd be anything more than a name on a membership list.


That's how I felt for a long time, and even at the start of when I was in the ACG. I also felt very hopeless and nihilistic about everything, like there was just no point and that I couldn't do anything. So I think I can relate to that. But it turned out, for me, that it was good to be in an org. I found I did have something to offer, and stuff I could do. I think we all have something we can offer - wether it's shifting freesheets, or writing the odd article, participating in meetings etc. I started making my anarchist YouTube videos and writing articles, so that gave me some confidence and a bit of a sense of purpose to be honest. And during the summer I had the confidence to go onto the street on my own and distribute freesheets.

But yeah, I understand. I also used to be in the AF years ago.


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 13, 2021)

locomotive said:


> I was in the AF when I was a student. I left because I was fed up with the lifestyle aspects of the Anarchist scene and the cycle of 'prepare for a protest, have a protest, prepare for a protest'. The student protests and anti-austerity stuff was a lot of fun but seemed utterly detached from the real world in the end.
> 
> I've come round to a more syndicalist / council-communist way of thinking but am pretty despondent. I don't know how you can build industrial power like the CNT/FAI managed in the deindustrialised and fragmented world we live in.
> 
> I'd like to join an org again but I don't know if I'd be anything more than a name on a membership list.


You sound like you’re politically more suited to the ACG.  But you’re right: current working class organisation is at a very, very, very low ebb. There’s no point in sugar coating that fact.

However, if you only want to be a paper member of something, maybe the ACG isn’t your thing. We’re not intended as an anarchist communist fan club. We do actually do stuff.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 13, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> But you’re right: current working class organisation is at a very, very, very low ebb. There’s no point in sugar coating that fact.


This is undeniably true. It's why I still wonder what the point is sometimes, to be honest, together with the very bleak situation we are in atm. But we have to keep going and do our thing, so I keep at it. And our group in Kent does seem to be gradually growing somewhat and being more active, so there's definitely something to aim for and build on.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 13, 2021)

I feel I should also just say that we do understand that not everyone has the time to be actively involved. People are often busy with work, and sometimes family stuff, these days. That's just the reality of modern life under capitalism unfortunately.


----------



## locomotive (Nov 13, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> However, if you only want to be a paper member of something, maybe the ACG isn’t your thing. We’re not intended as an anarchist communist fan club. We do actually do stuff.



I totally get that, which is why I'll probably just sit around reading books and pdfs for the foreseeable future 😫

When you say you 'actually do stuff', what do you do? It would be good to get a sense of what different orgs are up to.


----------



## lefteri (Nov 13, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Now there's a good freudian slip. Unless it's intentional.



it was a mistype, but i overrode autocorrect


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 13, 2021)

locomotive said:


> I totally get that, which is why I'll probably just sit around reading books and pdfs for the foreseeable future 😫
> 
> When you say you 'actually do stuff', what do you do? It would be good to get a sense of what different orgs are up to.


We use the especifismo model to get involved in social movements and community activity. Especifismo: The anarchist praxis of building popular movements and revolutionary organization in South America - Adam Weaver


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 13, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> We use the especifismo model to get involved in social movements and community activity. Especifismo: The anarchist praxis of building popular movements and revolutionary organization in South America - Adam Weaver


As an example of this, I'll be out today with a new local "reinstate the £20 universal credit" group a few locals have set up.


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 13, 2021)

Count Cuckula said:


> This is undeniably true. It's why I still wonder what the point is sometimes, to be honest, together with the very bleak situation we are in atm. But we have to keep going and do our thing, so I keep at it. And our group in Kent does seem to be gradually growing somewhat and being more active, so there's definitely something to aim for and build on.


Would be interested in your take on what Peter Painter was saying about Kent earlier in the thread, since that was a thought-provoking post and local context is often really important.


danny la rouge said:


> We use the especifismo model to get involved in social movements and community activity. Especifismo: The anarchist praxis of building popular movements and revolutionary organization in South America - Adam Weaver


I have to admit, whenever I've seen people (especially in the anglo world) talking about especifismo, it has always left me wondering "yes, but what is it that you actually _do_?"


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 13, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> As an example of this, I'll be out today with a new local "reinstate the £20 universal credit" group a few locals have set up.


Oop, hadn't seen this reply, I stand corrected. Sort of. Although I could stand to know more about what being involved in a universal credit group in an especifismo way means compared to being involved in a non-especifismo way?


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 13, 2021)

Think of it as something like social/action/building in the community. But yes, especif.... a word I can barely say... needs something better in the anglophone world.


----------



## locomotive (Nov 13, 2021)

On my very shallow reading of it, does it leave you open to accusations of entryism?


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 13, 2021)

locomotive said:


> On my very shallow reading of it, does it leave you open to accusations of entryism?


It shouldn’t, because it’s not our intention to use it to recruit or even to entice people to call themselves anarchist communists, but to encourage self management; nor is it the idea that we set ourselves up as a vanguard or as being “the freedom specialists”, but in order to give strength to activity that recognises that the seed of the future revolutionary transformation of society already exists in working class communities. The job of activists is to amplify those voices and support their self-confidence and self-activity.  Not to promote the revolutionary organisation.

To quote Pannekoek "To be liberated by others, whose leadership is the essential part of the liberation, means the getting of new masters instead of the old ones."

Our aim is to nourish and strengthen the habit of direct action.


----------



## redsquirrel (Nov 13, 2021)

Wot DLR said - and I'd add that it should be a two way process. 
So the idea is not just people from anarchist/communist organisations trying to support working class self activity within some sort of local group, but also to then  communicate back that activity into the organisation.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 13, 2021)

Serge Forward said:


> Think of it as something like social/action/building in the community. But yes, especif.... a word I can barely say... needs something better in the anglophone world.


To put it in a phrase I think charlie mowbray coined, it seems to me to encourage the leadership of ideas rather than a leadership of people, to defend organising non-hierarchically and resist the creation of formal or informal stratification within the movement - passing on what 'we' have learnt in struggle while also learning from the new interactions in struggle - not too well put but I hope you see what I'm driving at


----------



## purenarcotic (Nov 13, 2021)

8ball said:


> There are anarchist communes _everywhere_!



Well they keep themselves well hidden in Birmingham…


----------



## purenarcotic (Nov 13, 2021)

danny la rouge / redsquirrel / Fozzie Bear - do you know of or listen to any good podcasts that talk about anarchism, anarchist ideas etc?


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 13, 2021)

locomotive said:


> On my very shallow reading of it, does it leave you open to accusations of entryism?


Only if you were involved in stuff with the sole aim of making your organisation the big cheese or using it just as a means to recruit then disappearing when the well is dry (see SWP for more on this). We're not.


----------



## Fozzie Bear (Nov 13, 2021)

purenarcotic said:


> danny la rouge / redsquirrel / Fozzie Bear - do you know of or listen to any good podcasts that talk about anarchism, anarchist ideas etc?


Hey purenarcotic 

I think the commies and marxists edge it on the podcasts front for me.

There are some episodes of the "Working Class History" that are relevant. I'm sure others might recommend some stuff though!


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 13, 2021)

purenarcotic said:


> danny la rouge / redsquirrel / Fozzie Bear - do you know of or listen to any good podcasts that talk about anarchism, anarchist ideas etc?


Anchor FM At the Cafe ACG podcasts


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 13, 2021)

purenarcotic said:


> danny la rouge / redsquirrel / Fozzie Bear - do you know of or listen to any good podcasts that talk about anarchism, anarchist ideas etc?


Again, depends what you're looking for, any specific topics or what? The Channel Zero Network is the largest network, it's a bit of a mixed bag:








						Co-Conspirators | Channel Zero
					

Laborwave RadioLaborwave Radio is a podcast focusing on work and labor organizing from an anti-capitalist perspective. New episodes are produced bi-weekly, and workers involved in organizing campaigns are encouraged to reach out at laborwavenews@gmail.comMKE Lit Supply PodcastThis anarchist...




					channelzeronetwork.com
				



The Final Straw is often very good for international coverage, and Labor Wave is a decent sort of @-synd-leaning US podcast. The Antifada can be good too? The UK has Dissident Island Radio, and I've never really got around to listening to that much of ABC with Danny and Jim but that might be good if you want people talking about books?


----------



## brogdale (Nov 13, 2021)

Count Cuckula said:


> I feel I should also just say that we do understand that not everyone has the time to be actively involved. People are often busy with work, and sometimes family stuff, these days. That's just the reality of modern life under capitalism unfortunately.


Understand if you're not comfortable saying...but as a MoK originally...whereabouts in Kent are you/is your group?


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 13, 2021)

brogdale said:


> Understand if you're not comfortable saying...but as a MoK originally...whereabouts in Kent are you/is your group?


I'm not really comfortable saying which part of Kent I'm in. But the group in general is in a few different parts of the county. We are pretty much spread out around the county. There are not a large number of us and most of us are busy with work and family commitments. But we do intend to start having proper, more regular meetings and being more active (including in other parts of Kent), atleast those of us that are not too busy to do so.


----------



## brogdale (Nov 13, 2021)

Count Cuckula said:


> I'm not really comfortable saying which part of Kent I'm in. But the group in general is in a few different parts of the county. There are not a large number of us and most of us are busy with work and family commitments. But we do intend to start having proper, more regular meetings and being more active (including in other parts of Kent), atleast those of us that are not too busy to do so.


Fairy nuff.
My fam are all in and around Fav and I'd be both surprised and delighted to learn that there were active anarchists in North, East Kent. Few people who are ready to bad-mouth Kent realise what a proud radical tradition it has.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 13, 2021)

brogdale said:


> Fairy nuff.
> My fam are all in and around Fav and I'd be both surprised and delighted to learn that there were active anarchists in North, East Kent.


We do have a couple of members in the North area - only one of whom is not too busy with work etc, and is currently an active member.  He wants us to put on regular meetings and do more stuff. He's a good comrade who joined recently.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 13, 2021)

brogdale said:


> Few people who are ready to bad-mouth Kent realise what a proud radical tradition it has.


Yes. I have read the Making of the English Working Class, about the riots that occurred here long ago. And I am aware of there once being a DAM presence here and some miners too.


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 13, 2021)

brogdale said:


> Fairy nuff.
> My fam are all in and around Fav and I'd be both surprised and delighted to learn that there were active anarchists in North, East Kent. Few people who are ready to bad-mouth Kent realise what a proud radical tradition it has.


I know it had miners (oops, crossposted with CC there), what else should I know about? May have mentioned this before but All the Devils are Here is an interesting book about Kent, doesn't really tell much about the proud radical tradition though.


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## AmateurAgitator (Nov 13, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> I know it had miners (oops, crossposted with CC there), what else should I know about? May have mentioned this before but All the Devils are Here is an interesting book about Kent, doesn't really tell much about the proud radical tradition though.


Well historically, I know there were food riots here. And there was an armed uprising hundreds of years ago where the Archbishop of Canterbury (I think) was beheaded.  I believe the Diggers had a commune down here aswell. The Luddites may have also been active down here. And then you've got the Peasant's Revolt too.

I have actually wondered before if it would be a good idea to try to produce some leaflets and posters about this history of rebellion.

In more recent years there was  DAM and the miners. Have also bumped into the odd Class Warrior down here in my time. There was no doubt Anti-Poll Tax groups down here aswell, they were everywhere. There was the Kent Anarchist Group (which I was involved with) but it became defunct about 10 years ago.


----------



## inva (Nov 13, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> I know it had miners (oops, crossposted with CC there), what else should I know about? May have mentioned this before but All the Devils are Here is an interesting book about Kent, doesn't really tell much about the proud radical tradition though.


Think the Swing Riots started around Kent


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 13, 2021)

Peter Painter said:


> Thanks.
> 
> I probably fall into the category of lifestyle anarchist then because in some ways I have deliberately chosen to reject much, and remove myself from, mainstream society.
> 
> ...


I know what you mean about Kent, it can be a reactionary and conservative  place, which is definitely true of where I am. I live in Kent myself. But there is a small Kent ACG. And we intend to be more active and to grow. Maybe we could meet up sometime.


----------



## Fozzie Bear (Nov 13, 2021)

Also Kent:





						Fascism and anti-Fascism in the Medway Towns 1927-1940 - David Turner
					

Booklet published by Kent Anti-Fascist Committee in 1993.




					libcom.org


----------



## HoratioCuthbert (Nov 13, 2021)

I'm an anarchist 
I'm inactive
Im a carer
fuck you
im tired


Thats the anarchist carer poem


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 13, 2021)

HoratioCuthbert said:


> I'm an anarchist
> I'm inactive
> Im a carer
> fuck you
> ...


If you’re a carer you’re far from inactive.


----------



## cozmikbrew (Nov 14, 2021)

Solidarity Comrade,i was musing on what to post,you hit the proverbial ,6 years caring for my mum,would love to be more active but thoroughly exhausted @x


----------



## Peter Painter (Nov 14, 2021)

Count Cuckula said:


> I know what you mean about Kent, it can be a reactionary and conservative  place, which is definitely true of where I am. I live in Kent myself. But there is a small Kent ACG. And we intend to be more active and to grow. Maybe we could meet up sometime.



I wasn't intending to bad mouth Kent! I grew up there and there are so many things I love about the place and very many of the people who live there. Indeed, there are certain parts of the county which will always feel like home whenever I visit.

But much of it does also feel, as you say, reactionary and conservative. This is only an impression mind, the only actual evidence I have is anecdotal and based upon things I've directly experienced.

I'm also aware that Kent has it's own proud history of protest and rebellion stretching all the way back to Wat Tyler. So again, I wasn't meaning to denigrate the county's radical credentials!

I didn't know about the Kent ACG but am pleased to hear it exists and is intending to grow and become more active.

I live on the road so I never know how long I'll be staying in any one area. This makes it difficult to get too involved with any local group. Having said that, I have family and friends in Kent and I often visit. I'm not sure if there is much I could do to help but I'd be interested in meeting. And if I there is anything I can do then there's a good chance I'd be up for doing it. Maybe next time I'm about I'll send you a pm. In the meantime I'll simply offer my best wishes for the Kent ACG and hope that you can have an influential and inspirational effect in the area.


----------



## ska invita (Nov 14, 2021)

BristolEcho said:


> Policeman, bailiffs and fucking prison guards can all fuck off though.v


Soldiers?


----------



## ska invita (Nov 14, 2021)

purenarcotic said:


> danny la rouge / redsquirrel / Fozzie Bear - do you know of or listen to any good podcasts that talk about anarchism, anarchist ideas etc?


little thread here








						podcasts about anarchism
					

Any recommendations for podcasts that are good for getting a handle on the basics/history of anarchism?plz. I found one or two by searching but wondered if there are any that i missed.




					www.urban75.net


----------



## brogdale (Nov 14, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> I know it had miners (oops, crossposted with CC there), what else should I know about? May have mentioned this before but All the Devils are Here is an interesting book about Kent, doesn't really tell much about the proud radical tradition though.


Oooh...sounds like i'm going to have to sketch out the chapter headings of the book I'll never write! 

Much of Kent's radical history is very historical and some of it not really 'indigenous' as it were, but here goes with the stories of resistance:

1. The anti-Roman imperial warfare/'guerrilla resistance' of the Cantiaci to the various invasions of the imperialists culminating in defeat to the imperialists at the Battle of Medway.

2. The Peasants' revolt ( Wat Tyler's rebellion) against the taxes levied to fight war.

3. Jack Cade's rebellion in 1450 in which the "Captain of Kent" led peasants in a revolutionary attempt to take the state from the monarchy who corruptly imposed taxes for war.

4. As Count Cuckula mentioned above, various instances of revolutionary communities that emerged when the 'world was turned upside down' including the Diggers' community at Cox Hall near Dover.

5. The Nore (Chatham) Naval mutiny which, under Richard Parker, transformed from the 'normal' reasons for mutiny into a more explicit, revolutionary, republican action.

6. As iona mentioned above, the1830 Swing Riots protesting mechanisation, the Poor Law and starvation wages were sparked in East Kent in the Elham Valley between Canterbury and Folkestone.

7. The 1838 Battle of Bossenden wood, which I've already wittered about here, in which the rural poor, led by Sir William Courtenay, in villages around Faversham & Canterbury rebelled against their employers and ended up engaged in "the last rising of the agricultural labourers and the last battle fought on English soil."

8. Post WW1 radicalism including the 1920 NFDDSS activism and agitation of the ex-servicemen employed at the Woolwich Arsenal that spooked the authorities into forming the state controlled RBL.

9. The collieries of the Kent coalfield opened and expanded after WW1 and the demand for skilled labour meant that many of the most militant miners from the traditional coalfields who were sacked/black-listed for 1926 action found work in Kent. This tradition of militancy stayed with the Kent miners through to 1984.

and I'm sure that there's far more!


----------



## HoratioCuthbert (Nov 14, 2021)

I'm an anarchist


HoratioCuthbert said:


> I'm inactive
> Im a carer
> fuck you
> im tired
> ...


I dunno how this whisky fuelled nonsense got any likes at all jfc
Yeah more just being all the way up here and with child, hid will come together one day. Although maybe less on the whisky so
I don’t incapacitate masel before then.


----------



## BristolEcho (Nov 14, 2021)

ska invita said:


> Soldiers?


I feel it's a bit more complicated. I felt I was targeted by the army at quite a young age, I didn't join, but I can obviously see how people get sucked into that. You could make the same arguments for the other services, but I don't see it as the same. 

I wouldn't organise with someone who was actively in the army.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 14, 2021)

brogdale said:


> Oooh...sounds like i'm going to have to sketch out the chapter headings of the book I'll never write!
> 
> Much of Kent's radical history is very historical and some of it not really 'indigenous' as it were, but here goes with the stories of resistance:
> 
> ...


This is really interesting stuff. And yes, it was Jack Cades' uprising I was referring to regarding the Archbishop of Canterbury being beheaded I believe.

Thankyou for sharing all this info. That would be a brilliant book aswell.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 14, 2021)

Peter Painter said:


> I wasn't intending to bad mouth Kent! I grew up there and there are so many things I love about the place and very many of the people who live there. Indeed, there are certain parts of the county which will always feel like home whenever I visit.
> 
> But much of it does also feel, as you say, reactionary and conservative. This is only an impression mind, the only actual evidence I have is anecdotal and based upon things I've directly experienced.
> 
> ...


Nice. Thankyou. It would be good to meet up with another likeminded person.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 14, 2021)

There's no mention of the Archbishop of Canterbury being beheaded or executed in the wikipedia article about the Jack Cade rebellion. But I'm sure I heard something like that about Canterbury, might have been lords, or other King's men, who were executed. Certainly, the Bishop of Salisbury was executed, and the Lord High Treasurer was beheaded at Cheapside in London.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 14, 2021)

Count Cuckula said:


> There's no mention of the Archbishop of Canterbury being beheaded or executed in the wikipedia article about the Jack Cade rebellion. But I'm sure I heard something like that about Canterbury, might have been lords, or other King's men, who were executed. Certainly, the Bishop of Salisbury was executed, and the Lord High Treasurer was beheaded at Cheapside in London.


It was in London the archbishop was killed in 1381 iirc


----------



## Monkeygrinder's Organ (Nov 14, 2021)

Simon Sudbury - Wikipedia
					






					en.m.wikipedia.org
				




The Archbishop of Canterbury was beheaded during the 1381 Peasants Revolt so maybe it's that one that's being referred to.


----------



## brogdale (Nov 14, 2021)

Monkeygrinder's Organ said:


> Simon Sudbury - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yep, that's it; 69 years before Jack Cade it was Way Tyler's lot that set about the beheadings...



> rebels entered the Tower of London, killing Simon Sudbury, Lord Chancellor, and Robert Hales, Lord High Treasurer, whom they found inside.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 14, 2021)

Not wanting to derail this thread and make it all about history, but I'd love to know more about that Digger's community at Cox Hall. Don't know if that's possible though.


----------



## brogdale (Nov 14, 2021)

Count Cuckula said:


> Not wanting to derail this thread and make it all about history, but I'd love to know more about that Digger's community at Cox Hall. Don't know if that's possible though.


AFAIK, there's not much certain evidence out there.
Most sources claim that Cox Hall or Hill was NW of Dover, up on the hill near Sheperdswell (i think) or at Linton, Maidstone. which is maybe confusing it with Cox Heath?
I'll try to find out some more...but not had much luck so far.


----------



## klang (Nov 14, 2021)

rich! said:


> anarchist veg box scheme


is that still going?


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 14, 2021)

brogdale said:


> AFAIK, there's not much certain evidence out there.
> Most sources claim that Cox Hall or Hill was NW of Dover, up on the hill near Sheperdswell (i think) or at Linton, Maidstone. which is maybe confusing it with Cox Heath?
> I'll try to find out some more...but not had much luck so far.


Thankyou brogdale. This is very interesting. It was a long time ago, and ofcourse this is hidden history in a sense.


----------



## brogdale (Nov 14, 2021)

Count Cuckula said:


> Thankyou brogdale. It was a long time ago, and ofcourse this is hidden history in a sense.


This is a footnote from Hill's _The World Turned Upside Down:



.._.but you're right, we've probably derailed enough now...maybe you'd like to start a Radical Kent thread over in History? I'd chip in


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 14, 2021)

brogdale said:


> maybe you'd like to start a Radical Kent thread over in History? I'd chip in


Good idea. The thread is up now.


----------



## Rob Ray (Nov 14, 2021)

BristolEcho said:


> Any modern anarchist books people would recommend? I was going to start a new thread recently, but think it's okay to ask here.



Just to cut it down a bit, how modern you meaning, where on the line between intro-knowledgeable and, particularly in the latter case, any particular strand? Eg. for a modern take inquiring about trends in anarchism in the latter part of the 2010s Anarchism is Movement is interesting, but maybe not so easygoing for a newbie. Fighting for Ourselves is fairly accessible and relatively modern, but specific to anarcho-syndicalism. About Anarchism and Anarchy in Action are broadly good for intros, but only modernish (latter 20th century). I'd rate Rebel Alliances for a class struggle anarchism overview (albeit it's a little overly harsh on what actually counts), and maybe Bookchin for ecological stuff though again, ageing somewhat in terms of the word "modern".


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 14, 2021)

Count Cuckula said:


> Not wanting to derail this thread and make it all about history, but I'd love to know more about that Digger's community at Cox Hall. Don't know if that's possible though.


Do we need an "are you a digger but not a member of a digger organisation" thread?


Rob Ray said:


> Just to cut it down a bit, how modern you meaning, where on the line between intro-knowledgeable and, particularly in the latter case, any particular strand? Eg. for a modern take inquiring about trends in anarchism in the latter part of the 2010s Anarchism is Movement is interesting, but maybe not so easygoing for a newbie. Fighting for Ourselves is fairly accessible and relatively modern, but specific to anarcho-syndicalism. About Anarchism and Anarchy in Action are broadly good for intros, but only modernish (latter 20th century)


Has anyone read Milstein's Anarchism and its Aspirations? That sounds like it might fit the description of "decent intro text from the past decade". But then I've not read it so idk. I quite like Milstein but I'm sure people can find things to kvetch about in their work?


----------



## brogdale (Nov 14, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Do we need an "are you a digger but not a member of a digger organisation" thread?


Oh gawd...you'll have the allotment crowd in here, then!


----------



## Sue (Nov 14, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Do we need an "are you a digger but not a member of a digger organisation" thread?


Oh _digger_.


----------



## rich! (Nov 14, 2021)

klang said:


> is that still going?


yeah, week 82 last week 

we're still doing ~80 boxes a week, currently 2/3 of those are solidarity boxes for people in need, and 1/3 are paid for by people who want a veg box.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 14, 2021)

Theres a vegan restaurant place in Canterbury called the Veg Box. I've known them to be atleast sympathetic to anarchism aswell. Funny that.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 14, 2021)

Count Cuckula said:


> Theres a vegan restaurant place in Canterbury called the Veg Box. I've known them to be atleast sympathetic to anarchism aswell. Funny that.


Not all vegan places take the same enlightened attitude - take the fascist cup cake place in Camden for example Are Neo-Nazis Running a Vegan Cupcake Shop in London? - VICE


----------



## petee (Nov 14, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> Are Neo-Nazis Running a Vegan Cupcake Shop in London?



i'll take "sentences i never imagined" for $100, Alex


----------



## A380 (Nov 14, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> It was in London the archbishop was killed in 1381 iirc





Monkeygrinder's Organ said:


> Simon Sudbury - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Despite the warm fuzzy feeling many on the left have about the Peasants Revolt (Yay Watt Tylor and Red Dicken!) including me sometimes, given it serves as a kind of marker for  the death of feudalism (to be replaced by, erm checks notes, capitalism)   it's often forgotten it there was a significant amount of racism in the forms of attacks on Flemish immigrants in London by the revolutionaries...

Here to suck the fun out of everything,


----------



## Rob Ray (Nov 15, 2021)

Oh forgot probably the two major titles in terms of public consumption of the last few years: The Government of No-one by Ruth Kinna as a general trade intro and the full-on 744-page academic tome _Handbook of Anarchism_ by Carl Levy, the latter of which is horrifically expensive but obviously should not under any circumstances be downloaded for free via any sites that rhyme with wibgen.


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 15, 2021)

brogdale said:


> Oh gawd...you'll have the allotment crowd in here, then!





rich! said:


> yeah, week 82 last week
> 
> we're still doing ~80 boxes a week, currently 2/3 of those are solidarity boxes for people in need, and 1/3 are paid for by people who want a veg box.


Incredibly prescient post, that! Clearly we have at least one poster who can check the "I am a member of a digger organisation" option, then.


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 15, 2021)

Rob Ray said:


> The Government of No-one by Ruth Kinna as a general trade intro and


Is the Kinna book any good? The only one of hers I read gave too much space to “anarcho”-capitalism and primitivism at every step, as if they were major contradictions to the current of anarchist thought. I found that quite annoying.


----------



## steeplejack (Nov 15, 2021)

I'm much more sympathetic to anarchism and anarchist ways of organising since I joined the boards 20 years ago, not really a joiner now though. If anarchists are working on an issue and I can be useful in achieiving something, then I would contribute.

I agree with others who say that labels such as "anarchist", "Marxist", "communist" are from two centuries ago and not really at all helpful in navigating the bad hand we've all been dealt in 2021. The again I'm not sure what you do about that- have a re-brand and call your self _"Consensus"_ or _"Working it Out"_ weith associated sound logo and branded leisurewear / hi vis jackets?

fuck that.


----------



## Rob Ray (Nov 15, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> Is the Kinna book any good? The only one of hers I read gave too much space to “anarcho”-capitalism and primitivism at every step, as if they were major contradictions to the current of anarchist thought. I found that quite annoying.


Haven't read it myself but the KSL review wasn't too scathing.


----------



## Dom Traynor (Nov 15, 2021)

steeplejack said:


> I'm much more sympathetic to anarchism and anarchist ways of organising since I joined the boards 20 years ago, not really a joiner now though. If anarchists are working on an issue and I can be useful in achieiving something, then I would contribute.
> 
> I agree with others who say that labels such as "anarchist", "Marxist", "communist" are from two centuries ago and not really at all helpful in navigating the bad hand we've all been dealt in 2021. The again I'm not sure what you do about that- have a re-brand and call your self _"Consensus"_ or _"Working it Out"_ weith associated sound logo and branded leisurewear / hi vis jackets?
> 
> fuck that.


Consignia would be good.


----------



## steeplejack (Nov 15, 2021)

Dissensus?


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 16, 2021)

Rob Ray said:


> Oh forgot probably the two major titles in terms of public consumption of the last few years: The Government of No-one by Ruth Kinna as a general trade intro and the full-on 744-page academic tome _Handbook of Anarchism_ by Carl Levy, the latter of which is horrifically expensive but obviously should not under any circumstances be downloaded for free via any sites that rhyme with wibgen.


Fair enough on the Kinna one being a Penguin, but has anyone actually read the Levy one? First I'd heard of it. I sort of suspect that the major title in terms of public consumption has probably been the Conquest of Bread, oddly enough.
Also, suppose the various Invisible Committee texts are probably worth a mention as being fairly significant recent-ish anarchist-ish books?


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Fair enough on the Kinna one being a Penguin, but has anyone actually read the Levy one? First I'd heard of it. I sort of suspect that the major title in terms of public consumption has probably been the Conquest of Bread, oddly enough.
> Also, suppose the various Invisible Committee texts are probably worth a mention as being fairly significant recent-ish anarchist-ish books?


Have we mentioned ward Churchill's attack on pacifism yet?


----------



## Kevbad the Bad (Nov 16, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> Have we mentioned ward Churchill's attack on pacifism yet?


It's easy attacking pacifists cos they won't fight back.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2021)

Kevbad the Bad said:


> It's easy attacking pacifists cos they won't fight back.


They can bore you to death tho


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Nov 16, 2021)

I found Anarchy Works by Peter Gelderloos a good read. And ofcourse there's always What is Anarchism?/the ABC of Anarchism by Alexander Berkman. Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin is supposed to be good, but I struggled with it at the start and haven't bothered it with it since really. Will have to give it another go.


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 16, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> Have we mentioned ward Churchill's attack on pacifism yet?


Huh, I would've thought of Gelderloos on nonviolence as being more influential/explicitly anarchist than that, I was about to say Gelderloos is a good tip for decent modern anarcho books but see I've now crossposted with CC again.
Oh, and Kristian(sp?) Williams is another.


----------



## Kevbad the Bad (Nov 16, 2021)

I've found 'Black Flame' by Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt a cracking good read. They conflate anarchism and syndicalism as being one and the same, too much for my liking, but it's well written and very informative about anarchism in North and South America, Asia and even Africa. Schmidt turned out to either be a dodgy character With links to the far right or to have had mental health issues, and AK press ceased all publication and distribution of the book. I got a pdf copy for nowt from the libcom website a few years ago. But leaving all that controversy aside, it's well worth reading, albeit critically.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Huh, I would've thought of Gelderloos on nonviolence as being more influential/explicitly anarchist than that, I was about to say Gelderloos is a good tip for decent modern anarcho books but see I've now crossposted with CC again.
> Oh, and Kristian(sp?) Williams is another.


Yeh. But wc's book had about 20, 25 years on gelderloos and both ak and pm have published Churchill's effort. I am not sure that gelderloos would have come to write as he did without Churchill's earlier book, which certainly caused a stir when it came out. Anyway isn't there room for two books on the subject? You wouldn't say let's only look at one book on the spanish revolution or the poll tax movement would you?


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Huh, I would've thought of Gelderloos on nonviolence as being more influential/explicitly anarchist than that, I was about to say Gelderloos is a good tip for decent modern anarcho books but see I've now crossposted with CC again.
> Oh, and Kristian(sp?) Williams is another.


Gelderloos said he was inspired by Churchill among others (failure of nonviolence, p. 13)


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 16, 2021)

Kevbad the Bad said:


> I've found 'Black Flame' by Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt a cracking good read. They conflate anarchism and syndicalism as being one and the same, too much for my liking, but it's well written and very informative about anarchism in North and South America, Asia and even Africa. Schmidt turned out to either be a dodgy character With links to the far right or to have had mental health issues, and AK press ceased all publication and distribution of the book. I got a pdf copy for nowt from the libcom website a few years ago. But leaving all that controversy aside, it's well worth reading, albeit critically.


Ah yeah, that was one on my to-read list for a fair while, never got around to it before the "cancellation" though. Shame, the follow-up book, Cartography... also sounded proper interesting about anarchism outside of the classic Ukraine/Barcelona/Paris narratives.


Pickman's model said:


> Yeh. But wc's book had about 20, 25 years on gelderloos and both ak and pm have published Churchill's effort. I am not sure that gelderloos would have come to write as he did without Churchill's earlier book, which certainly caused a stir when it came out. Anyway isn't there room for two books on the subject? You wouldn't say let's only look at one book on the spanish revolution or the poll tax movement would you?


I wouldn't know, I've never actually read either of them.  Think the longest thing I've read on the poll tax is probably that pamphlet of collected accounts including the one that turned out to be by John Barker/Dines as well.


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Ah yeah, that was one on my to-read list for a fair while, never got around to it before the "cancellation" though. Shame, the follow-up book, Cartography... also sounded proper interesting about anarchism outside of the classic Ukraine/Barcelona/Paris narratives.
> 
> I wouldn't know, I've never actually read either of them.  Think the longest thing I've read on the poll tax is probably that pamphlet of collected accounts including the one that turned out to be by John Barker/Dines as well.


you're in for a treat then if you haven't ready danny burns's book or the haringey solidarity group's history of the poll tax struggle in haringey (i should declare an interest - i met danny burns when he researching the book, and was involved with the haringey anti-poll tax union)


----------



## Threshers_Flail (Nov 16, 2021)

danny la rouge said:


> Is the Kinna book any good? The only one of hers I read gave too much space to “anarcho”-capitalism and primitivism at every step, as if they were major contradictions to the current of anarchist thought. I found that quite annoying.



I found it very lightweight and yep, way too much space for anarcho capitalism etc.


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 16, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> you're in for a treat then if you haven't ready danny burns's book or the haringey solidarity group's history of the poll tax struggle in haringey (i should declare an interest - i met danny burns when he researching the book, and was involved with the haringey anti-poll tax union)


Is the HSG one still in print? Danny Burns and Simon Hannah both sound worth reading, but there's a lot of books out there!


----------



## Pickman's model (Nov 16, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Is the HSG one still in print? Danny Burns and Simon Hannah both sound worth reading, but there's a lot of books out there!


the hsg one's only a pamphlet - The poll tax rebellion in Haringey


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 16, 2021)

Looking through the libcom poll tax tag, I think I've definitely read the BM Blob one, and I think probably the old ACF Beating the Poll Tax at some point as well.


----------



## DaphneM (Nov 16, 2021)

?


----------



## brogdale (Nov 16, 2021)

For anyone wanting to connect with their inner armchair anarchist this winter, I can suggest no better tome than this by David Goodway:



It's an impressive wander through Left-libertarian thought expressed by British writers. Gotta say I loved it and it's taken me down some interesting avenues of literature.


----------



## CNT36 (Nov 16, 2021)

If anyone wants a copy of the Kinna book let me know and I'll post it to you. I got two for Christmas!


----------



## Kevbad the Bad (Nov 16, 2021)

If anyone wants PDF of Black Flame let me know.


----------



## teuchter (Nov 16, 2021)

BristolEcho said:


> That's part of the issue though. Why is most activism/organising done by this particular group of people? If that's actually true and not just a perception. Lots of people don't have the opportunity, comfort or time to play an active role in their local community. Often they are excluded due to various reasons. That's something that needs to be changed.


I think the reason the retired liberal democrat voters get more done is that they don't waste their time having lengthy discussions about which obscure books they have or haven't read. Books that just confirm their already existing ideas or provide opportunities to disagree with people with very similar but slightly different ideas. Look at the last few pages of this thread. These jokers, many of whom are healthy young people, are faffing around on the internet in idle conversation, while the elderly lib dems are out in the community making a difference. Imagine being less effective than the lib dems.


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 16, 2021)

teuchter said:


> I think the reason the retired liberal democrat voters get more done is that they don't waste their time having lengthy discussions about which obscure books they have or haven't read. Books that just confirm their already existing ideas or provide opportunities to disagree with people with very similar but slightly different ideas. Look at the last few pages of this thread. These jokers, many of whom are healthy young people, are faffing around on the internet in idle conversation, while the elderly lib dems are out in the community making a difference. Imagine being less effective than the lib dems.








So basically you're saying that Malatesta was right?


----------



## Kevbad the Bad (Nov 16, 2021)

teuchter said:


> I think the reason the retired liberal democrat voters get more done is that they don't waste their time having lengthy discussions about which obscure books they have or haven't read. Books that just confirm their already existing ideas or provide opportunities to disagree with people with very similar but slightly different ideas. Look at the last few pages of this thread. These jokers, many of whom are healthy young people, are faffing around on the internet in idle conversation, while the elderly lib dems are out in the community making a difference. Imagine being less effective than the lib dems.


Very true. The Lib Dem's did a very powerful job of propping up the Tory government during the coalition. Bravo!


----------



## Dom Traynor (Nov 16, 2021)

Joking and snide comments aside I do think on the whole that the kind of solidarity and mutual aid you see everyday from Tory and Libdem voters and church goers and the like (even if not articulated as solidarity) is probably more effective at building strong communities and neighborhood bonds than most explicitly Anarcho groups. But I think most anarchos actually know that and in my experience many of those community groups actually have a former anarchist or lefty at the heart.


----------



## teuchter (Nov 16, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> So basically you're saying that Malatesta was right?


Right about what? His own description of what he means when he uses a certain term? I don't see any reason to argue with that.


----------



## teuchter (Nov 16, 2021)

Dom Traynor said:


> Joking and snide comments aside I do think on the whole that the kind of solidarity and mutual aid you see everyday from Tory and Libdem voters and church goers and the like (even if not articulated as solidarity) is probably more effective at building strong communities and neighborhood bonds than most explicitly Anarcho groups. But I think most anarchos actually know that and in my experience many of those community groups actually have a former anarchist or lefty at the heart.


That's why it's so important to convert all the anarchists and lefties on here into Tories/Libdems/CofE as efficiently and quickly as possible. So they can get out there and start doing something useful.


----------



## Kevbad the Bad (Nov 16, 2021)

Dom Traynor said:


> Joking and snide comments aside I do think on the whole that the kind of solidarity and mutual aid you see everyday from Tory and Libdem voters and church goers and the like (even if not articulated as solidarity) is probably more effective at building strong communities and neighborhood bonds than most explicitly Anarcho groups. But I think most anarchos actually know that and in my experience many of those community groups actually have a former anarchist or lefty at the heart.


You're mixing up several categories here. Tory voters and Lib Dem voters come in all shapes and sizes. So too those who profess religious belief. On the other hand, members of the Tory party and Conservative clubs are good at building bonds amongst themselves to the exclusion of all others. Ditto members of religious cults Like the CofE or the RC's or whatever. Unless they hope to convert you.
P.S. I'll ask my local M.P. , the right honourable and totally lovely Geoffrey Cox whether he used to be an anarchist.


----------



## Dom Traynor (Nov 16, 2021)

Kevbad the Bad said:


> You're mixing up several categories here. Tory voters and Lib Dem voters come in all shapes and sizes. So too those who profess religious belief. On the other hand, members of the Tory party and Conservative clubs are good at building bonds amongst themselves to the exclusion of all others. Ditto members of religious cults Like the CofE or the RC's or whatever. Unless they hope to convert you.
> P.S. I'll ask my local M.P. , the right honourable and totally lovely Geoffrey Cox whether he used to be an anarchist.


I'm not mixing up any categories my post is quite clear.


----------



## Peter Painter (Nov 16, 2021)

Pickman's model said:


> you're in for a treat then if you haven't ready danny burns's book or the haringey solidarity group's history of the poll tax struggle in haringey (i should declare an interest - i met danny burns when he researching the book, and was involved with the haringey anti-poll tax union)



Yes, the Danny Burns book is good.

I couldn't remember if that was the one I read several years back or not. But I do remember it being the only book about the poll tax that the library had in their collection. I've just checked the catalogue and yes, that's the one.

I also remember reading this:






						The Destruction of Toytown UK - BM Blob
					

A collection of accounts and analysis of the Poll Tax riot, 1990, published by BM Blob.




					libcom.org


----------



## Kevbad the Bad (Nov 16, 2021)

Dom Traynor said:


> I'm not mixing up any categories my post is quite clear.





Dom Traynor said:


> Tory and Libdem voters and church goers and the like


----------



## danny la rouge (Nov 16, 2021)

To be fair to Dom, that’s a list not a string of equations.


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 16, 2021)

Peter Painter said:


> Yes, the Danny Burns book is good.
> 
> I couldn't remember if that was the one I read several years back or not. But I do remember it being the only book about the poll tax that the library had in their collection. I've just checked the catalogue and yes, that's the one.
> 
> ...


Great use of illustrations in that one.


----------



## Flavour (Nov 16, 2021)

brogdale said:


> For anyone wanting to connect with their inner armchair anarchist this winter, I can suggest no better tome than this by David Goodway:



I wonder if the use of the snowflake on the cover is a discreet nod to the increasing use of the outward-facing-arrows symbol among the informals/individualists/Greeks


----------



## Dom Traynor (Nov 16, 2021)

Not sure how listing a few groups is a mix up my dear fellow?


----------



## A380 (Nov 19, 2021)

One could start a UK chapter of this:



			https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c3/Seal_of_the_Socialist_Rifle_Association.png
		










						Socialist Rifle Association - Wikipedia
					






					en.m.wikipedia.org


----------



## Serge Forward (Nov 19, 2021)

And go to jail, do not pass go  etc...


----------



## hitmouse (Nov 20, 2021)

Yeah, seems like it'd be an odd thing to do since the SRA is very much a product of US culture. Can't really imagine that there'd be enough socialist/anarchist farmers and clay pigeon shooting enthusiasts to make a UK SRA worthwhile?


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

Report of founding conference and aims and principles of the AnarCom Network (our constitution is also on our website) :









						Have a Revolutionary 2023!
					

As 2022 comes to an end we celebrate the founding of our organisation. In just 4 months we have come together and formed an amazing network which while small has produced a lot of articles, 2 pamph…




					anarcomuk.uk


----------



## Karl Masks (Jan 1, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> Report of founding conference and aims and principles of the AnarCom Network (our constitution is also on our website) :
> 
> 
> 
> ...


How do you plan to win people over? What program or approach do you offer?


----------



## danny la rouge (Jan 1, 2023)

Karl Masks said:


> How do you plan to win people over? What program or approach do you offer?


Free pretzels to all.


----------



## brogdale (Jan 1, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Free pretzels to all.


Logic


----------



## danny la rouge (Jan 1, 2023)

brogdale said:


> Logic


I’m going to pretend I don’t understand your Steely Dan reference, you hippy.


----------



## brogdale (Jan 1, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> I’m going to pretend I don’t understand your Steely Dan reference, you hippy.


I shouldn't derail like this, but picking up a (decent) vinyl of that album in a chassa for £10 was one of my musical highs of the year; love the album.
Derail over.


----------



## danny la rouge (Jan 1, 2023)

brogdale said:


> I shouldn't derail like this, but picking up a (decent) vinyl of that album in a chassa for £10 was one of my musical highs of the year; love the album.
> Derail over.


Not to prolong the derail, but I think you’d like Horace Silver and Kenny Burrell, then, because those were the biggest influences on Steely Dan.

Check out:


----------



## belboid (Jan 1, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> Report of founding conference and aims and principles of the AnarCom Network (our constitution is also on our website) :
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Bless.  Just what the world needs, another pointless little splitette of a group writing self importantly and badly.   You’ll have another one for next year, no doubt.


----------



## Sasaferrato (Jan 1, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Hilarious. But you’re assuming that organisation necessitates hierarchy. That’s a political assertion not a law of nature.



So how do you organise services for sixty million people with no hierarchy?

Who takes the decisions, and how?

Who enforces decisions?

Name a country that has been successfully run on anarchist principles.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Not to prolong the derail, but I think you’d like Horace Silver and Kenny Burrell, then, because those were the biggest influences on Steely Dan.
> 
> Check out:



Great sounds


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> So how do you organise services for sixty million people with no hierarchy?
> 
> Who takes the decisions, and how?
> 
> ...


My answer to this is as follows - This would be done by communities via popular assemblies and workers' councils ie. the commune.

Some notable examples of worker's self organisation would be significant parts of Spain during the Spanish civil war (particularly in rural areas but also urban collectives) and also the Makhnovist areas of Ukraine from 1918-21 (there are other examples of this sort of thing aswell, throughout histroy).

I would recommend reading about it and looking into it for yourself, and it can be very detailed (there are certain books dedicated to this topic) , but here's one summary of such things (from 2003) :









						A Brief History of Popular Assemblies and Worker Councils
					

Morpheus A Brief History of Popular Assemblies and Worker Councils 15th August 2003




					theanarchistlibrary.org


----------



## Magnus McGinty (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> So how do you organise services for sixty million people with no hierarchy?



By having a lazy aristocracy. 



Sasaferrato said:


> Who takes the decisions, and how?



Rich people, in their own interests. 



Sasaferrato said:


> Who enforces decisions?



An organisation in the employ of the state which is controlled by wealthy people. 



Sasaferrato said:


> Name a country that has been successfully run on anarchist principles.



A contradiction of Capitalism is that it relies on socialist interactions at the bottom to function.


----------



## Sasaferrato (Jan 1, 2023)

Magnus McGinty said:


> By having a lazy aristocracy.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Very good.

Now answer the questions actually put.

I'm genuinely interested. I suppose anarchism could work in a small commune, I'm interested in how it would work in a nation of sixty million people.


----------



## danny la rouge (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> Very good.
> 
> Now answer the questions actually put.
> 
> I'm genuinely interested. I suppose anarchism could work in a small commune, I'm interested in how it would work in a nation of sixty million people.


Federation.  Not that the concept “nations” would be the same.


----------



## Sasaferrato (Jan 1, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> My answer to this is as follows - This would be done by communities via popular assemblies and workers' councils ie. the commune.
> 
> Some notable examples of worker's self organisation would be significant parts of Spain during the Spanish civil war (particularly in rural areas but also urban collectives) and also the Makhnovist areas of Ukraine from 1918-21 (there are other examples of this sort of thing aswell, throughout histroy).
> 
> ...



That rather reinforces my view. There is absolutely no way that the needs of a large nation could be met on the basis you propose above.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> There is absolutely no way that the needs of a large nation could be met on the basis you propose above.


You need to explain why that is the case, although as danny la rouge pointed out we're talking about federations here, not really nations.

Btw in terms of economics, we're talking about worker's ownership of the means of production and distribution, and also decommodification of the economy (the distribution of things based on need).


----------



## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> So how do you organise services for sixty million people with no hierarchy?


Jfc you been on here 20 years and you're only just asking? How staggeringly incurious of you.


----------



## Gromit (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> Very good.
> 
> Now answer the questions actually put.
> 
> I'm genuinely interested. I suppose anarchism could work in a small commune, I'm interested in how it would work in a nation of sixty million people.


It would work in a small community until a bigger community came killed them all and stole their land.
As has happened many times in the past.


----------



## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

Gromit said:


> It would work in a small community until a bigger community came killed them all and stole their land.
> As has happened many times in the past.


Famously this is why capitalism never took off.


----------



## Sasaferrato (Jan 1, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> Jfc you been on here 20 years and you're only just asking? How staggeringly incurious of you.


I have many interests, each, in the fullness of time, gets their turn. 

Also based on importance, fringe politics comes way down the list.


----------



## Sasaferrato (Jan 1, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> You need to explain why that is the case, although as danny la rouge pointed out we're talking about federations here, not really nations.


So, how do you persuade a city like London to become a series of communes? How do deal with issues like transport across the city?


----------



## Pickman's model (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> I have many interests, each, in the fullness of time, gets their turn.
> 
> Also based on importance, fringe politics comes way down the list.


Not sure you've the hair for fringe politics


----------



## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

Not getting round to asking in 20 years on a bulletin board best known for having a lot of anarchists on it suggests you're a _very_ slow learner.


----------



## Pickman's model (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> So, how do you persuade a city like London to become a series of communes? How do deal with issues like transport across the city?


How's it done now?


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> How do deal with issues like transport across the city?


I feel I've already kinda given you an answer to this really, but as I say there are books dedicated to all this y'know. They're worth reading aswell.

Here are some titles : The Anarchist Collectives by Sam Dolgoff, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution by Gaston Leval, and With the Peasants of Aragon by Augustin Souchy.

There are other books and resources about this sort of thing that are worth attention aswell.


----------



## danny la rouge (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> So, how do you persuade a city like London to become a series of communes? How do deal with issues like transport across the city?


A. The problem is rather larger: the whole world needs to be persuaded of the necessity. It’s a task, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth hoping for or trying for.

B. Mail gets around the world without there being an overseeing global postal authority.   I post a letter her in Glasgow to my cousin in Melbourne, and the Australian postal workers still deliver it.


----------



## danny la rouge (Jan 1, 2023)

Pickman's model said:


> How's it done now?


Quite badly.


----------



## Pickman's model (Jan 1, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Quite badly.


Yes. But it is done without Barnet having more authority than Merton. So any future scheme would have existing aspects of organisation without hierarchy between these potential communes to build on.


----------



## teuchter (Jan 1, 2023)

Neither Barnet nor Merton organise cross city transport. TfL has authority over both of them on most transport matters.


----------



## teuchter (Jan 1, 2023)

And transport is much better organised in London than in most other cities in the UK because it has a strong overseeing regulatory authority.


----------



## chilango (Jan 1, 2023)

Huge swathes of the world have their transport organised on an _ad hoc_ community level, and always have.


----------



## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

NB// on a more serious level, the question "what would you do instead" is a largely unanswerable one, inasmuch as you're asking people to outline the operating system of a major city from scratch on a bulletin board. I couldn't do that accurately in detail for actually existing capitalism in any length short of a book, let alone a fully-realised alternative that's never been done before.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> There is absolutely no way that the needs of a large nation could be met on the basis you propose above.


Personally I think with the drive, participation and knowledge of a good number of people, that can grow,  that its possible - so worth working towards rather than giving up and facing capitalist barbarism.


----------



## Serge Forward (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> There is absolutely no way that the needs of a large nation could be met on the basis you propose above.


Not with that attitude.


----------



## Spandex (Jan 1, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Mail gets around the world without there being an overseeing global postal authority. I post a letter her in Glasgow to my cousin in Melbourne, and the Australian postal workers still deliver it.


There has been a global postal authority since 1874, the Universal Postal Union. It's been a UN Specialised Agency since 1964.


----------



## brogdale (Jan 1, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> NB// on a more serious level, the question "what would you do instead" is a largely unanswerable one, inasmuch as you're asking people to outline the operating system of a major city from scratch on a bulletin board. I couldn't do that accurately in detail for actually existing capitalism in any length short of a book, let alone a fully-realised alternative that's never been done before.


Exactly.
But it's the lack of spirit, imagination, ambition or curiosity that gets me about the "how would we [insert anything here]" brigade that gets me.


----------



## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

Spandex said:


> There has been a global postal authority since 1874, the Universal Postal Union. It's been a UN Specialised Agency since 1964.


Which is a federation of postal organisations that replaced the former one-to-one treaties system, rather than a central cabal dictating terms. It may not be anarchist but does point towards a reality that States often agree to forms of federation because it's better than free-for-all competition or top-down dictatorship.


----------



## ska invita (Jan 1, 2023)

Others may have a different vision but for me its not about burning down the state and all other institutions and building from scratch, its about how broadly existing structures are managed differently politically.

For example if you take state runs services (including ones currently privatised which obviously should be nationalised), in my imagining of it they wouldn't look all that different from a distance. Anarchism doesnt not have levels of responsibility within organisations... my understanding is its all about the importance of the principle of 'recallable delegates' i.e. that anyone given a position of power can have that power easily taken away from them from below.

Maybe i'm not a 'real' anarchist as i think layers of political institution from council to central government are basically unavoidable and would be inevitably recreated in a hypothetical from scratch anarchist utopia simulation. For me its about how those layers are structured and the political mechanisms, rules and principles on which they are run.


----------



## JimW (Jan 1, 2023)

Always thought those sort of technical organisational things would be the easy bit, federating upwards to appropriate levels of organisation, would expect more trouble from funding/resourcing and conflict of interest resolutions on wider geographic scales. Balancing between resource rich and poor areas too.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

ska invita said:


> Others may have a different vision but for me its not about burning down the state and all other institutions and building from scratch, its about how broadly existing structures are managed differently politically.
> 
> For example if you take state runs services (including ones currently privatised which obviously should be nationalised), in my imagining of it they wouldn't look all that different from a distance. Anarchism doesnt not have levels of responsibility within organisations... my understanding is its all about the importance of the principle of 'recallable delegates' i.e. that anyone given a position of power can have that power easily taken away from them from below.
> 
> Maybe i'm not a 'real' anarchist as i think layers of political institution from council to central government are basically unavoidable and would be inevitably recreated in a hypothetical from scratch anarchist utopia simulation. For me its about how those layers are structured and the political mechanisms, rules and principles on which they are run.


Seems very 'libertarian municipalist' to me.


----------



## locomotive (Jan 1, 2023)

And a dead man with a beard said...




			
				Bakunin said:
			
		

> Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism censure. I do not content myself with consulting authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.
> 
> If I bow before the authority of the specialists and avow my readiness to follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me necessary, their indications and even their directions, it is because their authority is imposed upon me by no one, neither by men nor by God.


----------



## ska invita (Jan 1, 2023)

JimW said:


> Always thought those sort of technical organisational things would be the easy bit, federating upwards to appropriate levels of organisation, would expect more trouble from funding/resourcing and conflict of interest resolutions on wider geographic scales. Balancing between resource rich and poor areas too.


yes...and borders/political boundaries....


----------



## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

Anarchism from within the system sits pretty much in Colin Ward's wheelhouse, seeds beneath the snow and all that. There's a large body of work, most notably from the 1970s-90s, which specifically dug into taking a decentralising/bottom-up approach to everything from schooling to social work and architecture, as reform rather than revolution. Some of that's also being carried on today in academic circles (eg. logistics).


----------



## ska invita (Jan 1, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> Seems very 'libertarian municipalist' to me.


sounds great to me


----------



## The39thStep (Jan 1, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> Seems very 'libertarian municipalist' to me.


Is there a country where libertarian municipalism has been introduced successfully?


----------



## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

The39thStep said:


> Is there a country where libertarian municipalism has been introduced successfully?


Elements, sure. Best known is probably the Kurds [1][2] who have made some efforts in that direction (albeit with the warping factor of war) and it's been influential in a wide variety of other spheres including the rise of the Indignados, Occupy, Exarchia, the Zapatistas etc. That said, it's always the case that such movements are by the nature of the beast taking place within and besieged by aggressive antagonists in the form of both State and Capital, so implementation and their ultimate limits are full of contradictions, haphazard progress and eventual collapse - which is not to say they aren't worthwhile!


----------



## teuchter (Jan 1, 2023)

chilango said:


> Huge swathes of the world have their transport organised on an _ad hoc_ community level, and always have.


What kind of transport are you talking about here?


----------



## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

Pretty much any of the more rural parts of the developing nations will tend to exist without a centralised service, and often without much of a formalised commercial one. Tbh I suspect you could find analogues in Britain if you looked - both State and corporate interests have abandoned or downgraded many of their prior routes these days. Hell poorer people in the village I grew up in who are both shy the money for a taxi and unable to catch a bus past 6pm are either asking a neighbour or not going anywhere.


----------



## teuchter (Jan 1, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> Pretty much any of the more rural parts of the developing nations will tend to exist without a centralised service, and often without much of a formalised commercial one. Tbh I suspect you could find analogues in Britain if you looked - both State and corporate interests have abandoned or downgraded many of their prior routes these days. Hell poorer people in the village I grew up in who are both shy the money for a taxi and unable to catch a bus past 6pm are either asking a neighbour or not going anywhere.


In other words, places with poor transport.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

The39thStep said:


> Is there a country where libertarian municipalism has been introduced successfully?


Personally it strikes me as just state capitalism in disguise (I certainly don't regard it as libertarian socialism myself and am also of the view that 'state socialism' is an oxymoron). The example thats been put into practice is Rojava and the evidence suggests that its not gone well (and it can't be put down to Turkey and ISIS either), though they do kind of seemed to have maybe achieved some positive things for women. Whats been achieved elsewhere are better examples if you ask me and have achieved some degree of workers' ownership of the means of production and decommodification of the economy, for example - Makhnovist Ukraine, anarchist areas of Spain during the civil war and what the Zapatistas have done etc.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jan 1, 2023)

ska invita said:


> Maybe i'm not a 'real' anarchist as i think layers of political institution from council to central government are basically unavoidable and would be inevitably recreated in a hypothetical from scratch anarchist utopia simulation. For me its about how those layers are structured and the political mechanisms, rules and principles on which they are run.


This is it for me as well. I don't think I'm an anarchist at all nowadays. What you're describing is a state structure. That said structure can be done much better and with far greater accountability from below ought to be a given and would be my aim as a socialist. But we face a spectrum of problems that range right up to the global level, and some kind of confederation with some kind of coercion to stop confederates from cheating one another is needed at every level. To me, that's pretty much definitional of a state structure. Which ones, if any, you actually call 'states' is essentially arbitrary, but generally it is currently arranged along the lines of what level of organisation an army represents. I'd love to move away from that towards other forms of coercion/cooperation, but the essential nature of nested confederations would still remain in some form.


----------



## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

teuchter said:


> In other words, places with poor transport.


Not necessarily, just places without options provided by capitalism or State services, in which the solution has been to rely on community self-organisation. Some of which is doubtless very bad, sure, but some is quite good - in fact the Campaign For Better Transport actively includes them within its main future-visioning document. Tbh you're supporting my point more than your own with this one given that we're both talking about a situation in which neither capitalism nor State intervention is capable of providing a vital service but a decentralised form of solidarity is.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> I have many interests, each, in the fullness of time, gets their turn.
> 
> Also based on importance, fringe politics comes way down the list.


If you really are interested in it (which I very much doubt) theres plenty of reading material and other resources available on it so its something you should definitely have a proper understanding of.

But it seems to me that you're very keen to dismiss something that you don't have a proper understanding of.


----------



## danny la rouge (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> Also based on importance, fringe politics comes way down the list.


Fridge politics is very important in my house.


----------



## danny la rouge (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato An Anarchist FAQ


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> This is it for me as well. I don't think I'm an anarchist at all nowadays. What you're describing is a state structure. That said structure can be done much better and with far greater accountability from below ought to be a given and would be my aim as a socialist. But we face a spectrum of problems that range right up to the global level, and some kind of confederation with some kind of coercion to stop confederates from cheating one another is needed at every level. To me, that's pretty much definitional of a state structure. Which ones, if any, you actually call 'states' is essentially arbitrary, but generally it is currently arranged along the lines of what level of organisation an army represents. I'd love to move away from that towards other forms of coercion/cooperation, but the essential nature of nested confederations would still remain in some form.


You want a 'grass roots socialist state'?


----------



## Supine (Jan 1, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Fridge politics is very important in my house.



So you believe in home ownership then


----------



## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

I would _strongly_ query the idea that State structures inherently reduce rip-offs. Most of the arguments I have with people from former Soviet Bloc countries involve them being incredulous that we'd be so naive as to think enlarging the State is a route to anything but rampant corruption and me being incredulous that they think extending privatisation will protect against same.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jan 1, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> You want a 'grass roots socialist state'?


Not all problems can be dealt with at a grass roots level. How we tackle climate change, and resource management in general, would be one example of a problem that requires large scale organisation, decision-making and also decision-enforcement. Accountability should always feed right down, but some kind of nested structure is needed. And that for me looks very much like a structure with state-like entities in it, whether you call them states or not. 

There is also, always, the question 'how do we get from here to there?' We're not building ideal worlds from scratch. We're attempting to get from where we are now to somewhere better.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> How we tackle climate change, and resource management in general, would be one example of a problem that requires large scale organisation, decision-making and also decision-enforcement.


I really don't see why it would be impossible for the commune structure to deal with that or to work on a big scale.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jan 1, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> I would _strongly_ query the idea that State structures inherently reduce rip-offs. Most of the arguments I have with people from former Soviet Bloc countries involve them being incredulous that we'd be so naive as to think enlarging the State is a route to anything but rampant corruption and me being incredulous that they think extending privatisation will protect against same.


Point I would make about that is that they were living in totalitarian states with zero accountability, hence the corruption. And also hence the corruption continues within a capitalist framework in places like Bulgaria. It's not very sexy to say this, but the enlarged state exemplified by post-war Britain, achieved through democratic socialism, was able to happen with very little corruption. Boring things like institutional robustness come into play.


----------



## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Point I would make about that is that they were living in totalitarian states with zero accountability, hence the corruption. And also hence the corruption continues within a capitalist framework in places like Bulgaria. It's not very sexy to say this, but the enlarged state exemplified by post-war Britain, achieved through democratic socialism, was able to happen with very little corruption. Boring things like institutional robustness come into play.


Very amusing that you think the Atlee govt was socialist I must say. Thanks for that.


----------



## Pickman's model (Jan 1, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Point I would make about that is that they were living in totalitarian states with zero accountability, hence the corruption. And also hence the corruption continues within a capitalist framework in places like Bulgaria. It's not very sexy to say this, but the enlarged state exemplified by post-war Britain, achieved through democratic socialism, was able to happen with very little corruption. Boring things like institutional robustness come into play.


Not to mention cognitive dissonance


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## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> they were living in totalitarian states with zero accountability, hence the corruption




(seriously though, wtf are you talking about, Britain's been corrupt af and has almost no institutional oversight over swathes of how society runs, most infamously its financial sector)


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## littlebabyjesus (Jan 1, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> View attachment 358047


Yeah, corruption in the UK has increased. But it's still nothing like the scale of somewhere like Bulgaria, say, or Romania. Or Cuba. You don't have to pay a bribe to get a hospital bed.


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## Sasaferrato (Jan 1, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> If you really are interested in it (which I very much doubt) theres plenty of reading material and other resources available on it so its something you should definitely have a proper understanding of.
> 
> But it seems to me that you're very keen to dismiss something that you don't have a proper understanding of.



Firstly, I wouldn't say I was interested if I wasn't. You should know by now that with me WYSIWYG.

Secondly, I'm not dismissing the idea, I'm expressing a view that in the small, it could work, but in the big?

Thirdly, I would rather hear about the concept from those invested in it, which is my preferred learning method. We all learn differently.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jan 1, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> (seriously though, wtf are you talking about, Britain's been corrupt af and has almost no institutional oversight over swathes of how society runs, most infamously its financial sector)


I see you edited. It's a different scale. In our everyday lives, we don't have to go around bribing officials just to get our everyday stuff done.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 1, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I see you edited. It's a different scale. In our everyday lives, we don't have to go around bribing officials just to get our everyday stuff done.


No indeed. The corruption is of a different sort and wholly different order - no £50 to get a hospital bed but if you know someone in the govt you can get millions for unusable protective equipment


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> This is it for me as well. I don't think I'm an anarchist at all nowadays. What you're describing is a state structure. That said structure can be done much better and with far greater accountability from below ought to be a given and would be my aim as a socialist. But we face a spectrum of problems that range right up to the global level, and some kind of confederation with some kind of coercion to stop confederates from cheating one another is needed at every level. To me, that's pretty much definitional of a state structure. Which ones, if any, you actually call 'states' is essentially arbitrary, but generally it is currently arranged along the lines of what level of organisation an army represents. I'd love to move away from that towards other forms of coercion/cooperation, but the essential nature of nested confederations would still remain in some form.


'socialism' with a state and a ruling class. Oh dear.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I see you edited. It's a different scale. In our everyday lives, we don't have to go around bribing officials just to get our everyday stuff done.


So you're happy as long as the corruption is at a more grandiose institutional level that you don't personally have a frame of reference for. Cool beans.

(Also it's not true to suggest this stuff doesn't happen at lower levels in the NHS, comparatively speaking the media just likes to focus on the most outrageous cases from foreign climes).


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> This is it for me as well. I don't think I'm an anarchist at all nowadays. What you're describing is a state structure. That said structure can be done much better and with far greater accountability from below ought to be a given and would be my aim as a socialist. But we face a spectrum of problems that range right up to the global level, and some kind of confederation with some kind of coercion to stop confederates from cheating one another is needed at every level. To me, that's pretty much definitional of a state structure. Which ones, if any, you actually call 'states' is essentially arbitrary, but generally it is currently arranged along the lines of what level of organisation an army represents. I'd love to move away from that towards other forms of coercion/cooperation, but the essential nature of nested confederations would still remain in some form.


So do the worker's own and control the means of production and distribution in this 'state socialist' society of yours? And is there a decommodified economy?

Because neither of those things have ever happened with 'state socialism' or with a Labour government in power.


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

The39thStep said:


> Is there a country where libertarian municipalism has been introduced successfully?


In my view, no :









						Rojava: The Myths and the Reality
					

Let us be clear from the outset: Rojava is not a product of a revolution, but simply of one “special armed body” stepping in for another “special armed body”.



					www.leftcom.org


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## A380 (Jan 1, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> 'socialism' with a state and a ruling class. Oh dear.


You don't really understand what socialism actually means, do you?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jan 1, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> So do the worker's own and control the means of production and distribution in this 'state socialist' society of yours? And is there a decommodified economy?
> 
> Because neither of those things have ever happened with 'state socialism' or with a Labour government in power.


This is a bizarre response to what I posted. I posted that state structures could and did enlarge here in the UK post-1945 without a correlated increase in corruption. I posted that this happened through 'democratic socialism', ie a socialist program enacted by a government that was elected through the existing system.

There was loads wrong with the Attlee govt, particularly its handling of foreign policy, but that doesn't change my point. I'm not claiming that this was the greatest govt ever that only did great things. I am claiming that things like an NHS, a comprehensive welfare state, council housing programmes and the nationalisation of large industries and utilities are examples of socialist policies, and I'm also claiming that those policies made a positive difference to the lives of millions of people. I also think there is an important difference between a nationalised industry and a privately owned one. The latter answers to its shareholders for whom it is duty-bound to extract a profit. The former does not.

Regarding 'decommodifying' the economy, we've lost loads in this regard in recent decades. Council housing was an example of decommodified housing. The university grant system was an example of decommodified university education. As we all know, we've been subjected to more than 40 years of commodification of the economy, by both tory and labour. The NHS is still an example of decommodified healthcare.


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I am claiming that things like an NHS, a comprehensive welfare state, council housing programmes and the nationalisation of large industries and utilities are examples of socialist policies,


They're not.


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I posted that state structures could and did enlarge here in the UK post-1945 without a correlated increase in corruption.


I don't think thats true, but even if it is I think your point about corruption has already been dealt with.


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Regarding 'decommodifying' the economy, we've lost loads in this regard in recent decades. Council housing was an example of decommodified housing. The university grant system was an example of decommodified university education. As we all know, we've been subjected to more than 40 years of commodification of the economy, by both tory and labour. The NHS is still an example of decommodified healthcare.


I don't think I regard your example there as decommodification. It seems we have different meanings for that term. I am referring to things genuinely being produced for need and an economy based on human needs and equality, not profit and the rule of a minority.

And no Labour government has ever been socialist, they have only ever been capitalist. The workers' never owned and controlled the means of production, the state and therefore the ruling class did and whenever you have a state you have a parasitical ruling class who run things primarily for their own gain.


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## teuchter (Jan 1, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> Not necessarily, just places without options provided by capitalism or State services, in which the solution has been to rely on community self-organisation. Some of which is doubtless very bad, sure, but some is quite good - in fact the Campaign For Better Transport actively includes them within its main future-visioning document. Tbh you're supporting my point more than your own with this one given that we're both talking about a situation in which neither capitalism nor State intervention is capable of providing a vital service but a decentralised form of solidarity is.


Capitalism by itself isn't interested in providing a vital service unless it happens to be one that can generate a profit, of course.

State intervention is perfectly capable of providing a vital service and in many places it does. Obviously it depends on whether it's a state that wants to do that, but for something like transport (other than perhaps very local transport) state intervention, I would say, has a much greater potential to provide a good transport system than a conglomeration of semi-co-ordinated self-organised community services.

Of course self organised services often fill in the gaps that a poor state service leaves, but that doesn't mean that a state system is intrinsically inable to provide a good transport service. On the other hand, there are things intrinsic to self-organised systems that mean they don't provide a great service beyond a very local one, because that's critically dependant on complex co-ordination and oversight.

If I'm looking at whether somewhere has a good public transport system that's accessible to all, there are usually two things that determine what's on offer: the proportion of the population who rely on it, and the amount of investment the state wants to put into it.

There are places in the world where a lot of people rely on public transport (because few can afford their own vehicles) and where the state doesn't invest much. In these places you often see something that is a kind of conglomerate of locally self-organised systems, although they are essentially run commercially. These are places where you might for example see a lot of minibuses running to a lot of places but without a fixed timetable or even fixed routes. You can get around these places, without your own transport, perhaps better than you can in many rural parts of the UK, but that doesn't mean it's a good transport system; they are usually chaotic and slow, involve a lot of waiting around and don't offer reliable or predictable journey times. That's what you get without any co-ordinating oversight and the co-ordination needs to be at the scale of the transport network so if you want a national network you need co-ordination at that scale.

Every place I've been where I've seen a truly excellent transport system it's co-ordinated by some form of state oversight. The individual operators might be private companies or they might be state owned; that's a separate issue as I see it, but in any case in the UK we've watched transport systems go from partially co-ordinated conglomerates of private companies to increasingly regulated groupings to conglomerates of locally state owned operators to fully nationalised single entities to privatised franchises under greater or lesser state regulation and currently moving towards increasing state regulation and even part nationalisation. In any case there's one thing that never really seems to work which is a bunch of independent entities with no incentive to co-ordinate with each other in a way that isn't focussed on what's most convenient or attractive to each entity.


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 1, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> Firstly, I wouldn't say I was interested if I wasn't. You should know by now that with me WYSIWYG.
> 
> Secondly, I'm not dismissing the idea, I'm expressing a view that in the small, it could work, but in the big?
> 
> Thirdly, I would rather hear about the concept from those invested in it, which is my preferred learning method. We all learn differently.


I very much recommend The Anarchist Collectives by Sam Dolgoff as a starting point, but its too much for me to convey what is written in that book here.

Unlike more statist and top-down experiments, its the more horizontal ones (despite their limitations) that have gone further in achieving proper socialism or communism. That is to say that they achieved some degree of genuine worker's ownership and running of the means of production and distribution, and also real decommodification of the economy.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

teuchter said:


> Of course self organised services often fill in the gaps that a poor state service leaves, but that doesn't mean that a state system is intrinsically inable to provide a good transport service. On the other hand, there are things intrinsic to self-organised systems that mean they don't provide a great service beyond a very local one, because that's critically dependant on complex co-ordination and oversight.


You have no idea what is and isn't "intrinsic to self-organised systems". Kropotkin used to use the lifeboat service as an example of a self-organised system that was run neither for profit nor under State control, and while it's not specifically non-hierarchical it is a nationwide volunteer service covering the entire coastline and is merely one of an entire Third Sector which fills in such grey areas within capitalism and State constructs because _neither one does the job it sells us_. There is no comprehensive State system for most human needs, and in fact never has been even prior to the collapse of the post-war compromise. The State and Capital have _always_ relied on self-organised solidarity to make up for their inability to provide for the working class, particularly during crisis.

As has been pointed out above, complex systems with oversight using flat hierarchies have been created in eras with far less communications infrastructure than today and even in the midst of extreme hostility from vested interests that do their level best to destroy such projects, it's really only lack of imagination and research which would lead to this bizarre idea of "inherent" incapability.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jan 1, 2023)

A volunteer service wasn't going to build Crossrail, though, was it? Big infrastructure projects of that kind require huge investment up front and massive organisation, not to mention systems to allow people to make reasonable objections. Again, it's unfashionable to say such things on here, but Crossrail is a decent example of how big infrastructure projects should happen. There was extensive democratic accountability as the route was planned, so much so that it took years longer to do than it would have done somewhere like, say, China. But the Chinese authorities just push such things through from the top down and tough shit basically on anyone in the way. We are actually better than that, and one of the reasons we're better than that is the state institutions that legally require consultation. 

The idea that 'the state' is all bad just doesn't stand up. It's something we need to be in constant negotiation with and that can be a fucksite better than it is right now, but how do you reasonably coordinate something like the building of a rail network without something like state structures? It would just be the strong fucking over the weak.


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## teuchter (Jan 1, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> You have no idea what is and isn't "intrinsic to self-organised systems". Kropotkin used to use the lifeboat service as an example of a self-organised system that was run neither for profit nor under State control, and while it's not specifically non-hierarchical it is a nationwide volunteer service covering the entire coastline and is merely one of an entire Third Sector which fills in such grey areas within capitalism and State constructs because _neither one does the job it sells us_. There is no comprehensive State system for most human needs, and in fact never has been even prior to the collapse of the post-war compromise. The State and Capital have _always_ relied on self-organised solidarity to make up for their inability to provide for the working class, particularly during crisis.
> 
> As has been pointed out above, complex systems with oversight using flat hierarchies have been created in eras with far less communications infrastructure than today and even in the midst of extreme hostility from vested interests that do their level best to destroy such projects, it's really only lack of imagination and research which would lead to this bizarre idea of "inherent" incapability.



The lifeboat service isn't a transport system. 

Certain things I agree work well on a self-organised basis. Other things I don't.

Give me an example of a transport system that operates at anything beyond a local level, on a "self organised"basis. Not something that existed for a few years in a small area a hundred years ago, something that actually exists in the modern world.


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## Supine (Jan 1, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> You have no idea what is and isn't "intrinsic to self-organised systems". Kropotkin used to use the lifeboat service as an example of a self-organised system that was run neither for profit nor under State control, and while it's not specifically non-hierarchical it is a nationwide volunteer service covering the entire coastline and is merely one of an entire Third Sector which fills in such grey areas within capitalism and State constructs because _neither one does the job it sells us_. There is no comprehensive State system for most human needs, and in fact never has been even prior to the collapse of the post-war compromise. The State and Capital have _always_ relied on self-organised solidarity to make up for their inability to provide for the working class, particularly during crisis.
> 
> As has been pointed out above, complex systems with oversight using flat hierarchies have been created in eras with far less communications infrastructure than today and even in the midst of extreme hostility from vested interests that do their level best to destroy such projects, it's really only lack of imagination and research which would lead to this bizarre idea of "inherent" incapability.



Do you really think there is no organisation and heirarchies in the lifeboat service? There totally is. Maybe no capital interests, because they are volunteers, but there is a system with levels.


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## teuchter (Jan 1, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> the Campaign For Better Transport actively includes them within its main future-visioning document.


By the way, this is what their document actually says - my bold:



> Community transport
> Community transport, in its various forms, is a significant provider of transport in rural
> areas, either operating minibus services or volunteer car schemes. It is estimated that
> over 600 organisations provide community transport across rural England, providing
> ...


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## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> A volunteer service wasn't going to build Crossrail, though, was it?


The best that can be said for this line of argument is that indeed, an anarchist version of Crossrail would be harder to negotiate because you'd not have a government riding roughshod over the environment and the lives of millions of people ("a decent example of how big infrastructure projects should happen" is quite the claim given it's way over budget, deeply unpopular and half of it has already been ditched). But there's nothing stopping large-scale projects from being produced by an anarchist society, should one come into being. The fact you can't envision it speaks only to the extent of your own mental horizons.


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## teuchter (Jan 1, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> The best that can be said for this line of argument is that indeed, an anarchist version of Crossrail would be harder to negotiate because you'd not have a government riding roughshod over the environment and the lives of millions of people ("a decent example of how big infrastructure projects should happen" is quite the claim given it's way over budget, deeply unpopular and half of it has already been ditched). But there's nothing stopping large-scale projects from being produced by an anarchist society, should one come into being. The fact you can't envision it speaks only to the extent of your own mental horizons.


I think you've confused Crossrail with HS2.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

Supine said:


> Do you really think there is no organisation and heirarchies in the lifeboat service?


No, which is why I said "while it's not specifically non-hierarchical."



teuchter said:


> By the way, this is what their document actually says - my bold:


And this is their bold:



They are of course an NGO that ultimately believes in public transport provision from the State, but they are clear that there are areas the State isn't covering and self-organised communities are, and they are in favour of supporting this.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

teuchter said:


> I think you've confused Crossrail with HS2.


Apologies yes I did, though it should also be noted that Crossrail was _also_ way over budget and very late.


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## Supine (Jan 1, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> No, which is why I said "while it's not specifically non-hierarchical."


So your ok with hierarchy 👍 organisation always needs some kind of pyramid.


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## A380 (Jan 1, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> They're not.



There you go. They are kind of the dictionary definition of socialism. Every time I think your grasp of basic theory is weak you demonstrate it’s actually worse than that.


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## A380 (Jan 1, 2023)

teuchter said:


> The lifeboat service isn't a transport system.
> 
> …



TBF it’s part of the infrastructure of the maritime transport system of both cargo and passengers.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 1, 2023)

Supine said:


> So your ok with hierarchy 👍 organisation always needs some kind of pyramid.


Are you being deliberately obtuse or is this actually your level?


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## chilango (Jan 2, 2023)

teuchter said:


> What kind of transport are you talking about here?


Coaches, buses, minibuses, trucks, o CK up, taxis/collectivos, tuktuks, boats....


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## chilango (Jan 2, 2023)

teuchter said:


> In other words, places with poor transport.


Nope. Poor places with transport.


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## Magnus McGinty (Jan 2, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> Very good.
> 
> Now answer the questions actually put.
> 
> I'm genuinely interested. I suppose anarchism could work in a small commune, I'm interested in how it would work in a nation of sixty million people.


I was pointing out the ridiculous way it 'works' now. And wondering how you found it difficult to imagine it could work better in other ways.


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## teuchter (Jan 2, 2023)

chilango said:


> Nope. Poor places with transport.


Poor places with poor transport. Transport that could be a lot better if it were better organised, and not run on what in the end is a kind of free market basis.


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## teuchter (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> No, which is why I said "while it's not specifically non-hierarchical."
> 
> 
> And this is their bold:
> ...


I don't disagree with them. Where state provision is inadequate, some gaps can be filled with these kinds of services. They are always local and at small scale though, and don't scale up in a way that a whole transport system can be organised that way. And with proper funding and more ambition the state could offer something better, like it does in many other countries.


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## redsquirrel (Jan 2, 2023)

A380 said:


> There you go. They are kind of the dictionary definition of socialism. Every time I think your grasp of basic theory is weak you demonstrate it’s actually worse than that.


You're talking about 'dictionary definitions' while deriding others grasp of theory.

Even if you do not agree, you must be aware that plenty of socialists distinguish between control of the MoP by the state from control of the MoP by the workers.
Considering the increasing symbiosis between state and capital it is pretty naive to see nationalisation/state control as necessarily socialist (LNER and Northern being prime examples - or are these examples of socialist policies too?).

State control can be means for increasing exploitation as much, if not more then, as a means for decreasing exploitation.


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## SpookyFrank (Jan 2, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> A volunteer service wasn't going to build Crossrail, though, was it?



And why should they? It was built for the benefit of property speculators, not the working class.


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## SpookyFrank (Jan 2, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> but how do you reasonably coordinate something like the building of a rail network without something like state structures? It would just be the strong fucking over the weak.



So, a bit like how infrastructure and planning currently work then. Only with the state in play, the 'strong' are armed and defended in a hundred ways against the usually far more numerous 'weak'. Would they even be strong without capital and the state?


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## kabbes (Jan 2, 2023)

If we’re going to talk about corruption, we need to distinguish between the different types of corruption. There’s a researcher, Yuen Yuen Ang, who has done some interesting work on this. She did the Freakonomics podcast, which is worth a full listen: 









						Is the U.S. Really Less Corrupt Than China? - Freakonomics
					

Is the U.S. Really Less Corrupt Than China? - Freakonomics



					freakonomics.com
				




Ang sums it up herself best, to be honest:



> _ANG: What I try to do is to avoid being ideological about it. The common definition of corruption is the abuse of public power for private gain, and that definition usually excludes legal forms of influence politics. My definition would be broader than that. I would say that whenever there is so much power that one is able to influence or dictate the rules of the games, you begin to have the potential for corruption. And that is a gray line. In the context of countries like the United States, advanced capitalist democracies, it’s really hard to pin down what are the boundaries of having excessive political influence_





> _ANG: I propose a typology of four types of corruption divided along two dimensions. First, whether the corruption involves elites or non-elites. And second, whether the corruption involves theft or exchange. So this intersection creates, first of all, corruption with theft, which I divide into petty theft and grand theft. Petty theft would be like extortion — a police officer who just stops you and robs you of $200. Grand theft would be embezzlement. Nigeria would be a classic case, billions of dollars siphoned out of a country. And then I distinguish between two types of transactional corruption. The first is what I call speed money, which is bribes paid to low- or medium-level officials in order to overcome red tape or delays or harassment. And then I have a fourth category called access money, which is privileges paid to powerful officials, not because you want to overcome red tape, but because you want to buy special deals from them.  _





> _ANG: I use the analogy of drugs because we know that all drugs are harmful, but they harm in different ways. Petty theft and grand theft are like toxic drugs, where if you take this drug, it’s definitely going to damage your health, you get no benefit from it.  _





> _ANG: Speed money are like painkillers, so they help you to relieve a headache by overcoming red tape, but they don’t help you grow muscles fast. They don’t help you to grow your business. And access money are the steroids of capitalism, and steroids, we know, help you grow muscle fast. They help you perform superhuman feats. But they come with serious side effects that accumulate over time, and they only erupt in the event of a meltdown.  _


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## Peter Painter (Jan 2, 2023)

Another transport system is possible.

A different transport system based upon the needs of the people and protecting the planet is entirely possible. 

But that transport system can never be achieved all the time that one of the most important factors is making profits.

It's also unlikely to be possible all the time the individual freedom of those wealthy enough to own, run and maintain a private vehicle is considered to be more important than the collective freedom of movement and the collective necessity of protecting our planet.

Yet in a society with a political system based upon mutual aid and co-operation such a transport system is easily imaginable. One that would be clean and free for all to use.


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## ska invita (Jan 2, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> The idea that 'the state' is all bad just doesn't stand up. It's something we need to be in constant negotiation with and that can be a fucksite better than it is right now, but how do you reasonably coordinate something like the building of a rail network without something like state structures? It would just be the strong fucking over the weak.


I agree with that...Foundational anarchists wrote about the state in an era when the state did little more than collect taxes and have the monopoly of violence. The modern state does a lot more publicly beneficial things since then <the result of a historic social victory.

Anarchisms relation to the state is one of the key stumbling blocks for me, one of the areas ive tried to read most on and never been fully satisfied. If you picture an anarcho-ideal direct-democratic, federal system with a 'national' centralised political decision making body with recallable delegates etc this isnt so different from a state in my view.

Having a good working definition of the word state is an important place to start in this conversation.


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## brogdale (Jan 2, 2023)

ska invita said:


> I agree with that...Foundational anarchists wrote about the state in an era when the state did little more than collect taxes and have the monopoly of violence. The modern state does a lot more publicly beneficial things since then <the result of a historic social victory.
> 
> Anarchisms relation to the state is one of the key stumbling blocks for me, one of the areas ive tried to read most on and never been fully satisfied. If you picture an anarcho-ideal direct-democratic, federal system with a 'national' centralised political decision making body with recallable delegates etc this isnt so different from a state in my view.
> 
> Having a good working definition of the word state is an important place to start in this conversation.


I certainly see where you're coming from with this, but I really think it's also important to distinguish between the (welfare) state 1945-1976 and the increasingly neoliberal consolidator state that has followed. When capital's fear of system competition caused the state to offer concessions to labour I can see how arguments regarding the state as beneficial or benign might have had more merit . But with the state acting as it does now as a vehicle to transfer wealth regressively from taxes on earned income into unearned returns to capital, I think anarchistic interpretations will become increasingly appealing, particularly to younger people who's experience of the state is often as inquisitor, unsympathetic gatekeepers, revenue raisers and as a front for money lenders.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

A380 said:


> There you go. They are kind of the dictionary definition of socialism. Every time I think your grasp of basic theory is weak you demonstrate it’s actually worse than that.


They’re not necessarily socialist. The post war welfare state was a result of the Beveridge report, written by a Liberal peer, and would have been implemented by whichever party had won the post war election.  The post war consensus included all of those points raised by LBJ, and was supported by Tory and Labour governments alike for decades until diluted by neoliberalism, (itself in turn supported by Tory and Labour governments alike). 

A “dictionary definition” of socialism relying on just those policies listed would not be a very good one.


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## Storm Fox (Jan 2, 2023)

There seems to be a lot of talk about corruption and if corruption is an entity in itself. But it's not, it's people who are corrupt, dishonest and have a thirst for power. In kabbes's quotes from Ang above, if everyone were honest, there would be a problem, so whatever system you have there is going to be corruption. In addition, get someone with that mix who is charismatic and you have a real problem. See American Megachurches as an example. All are self-organised and voluntary.
Corrupt people are going still be there under any system. How do you deal with them?

How do you get people involved? A large percentage of the population cannot be bothered to vote, and a large number of the people who do vote for parties are self-serving. What happens to these people under anarchism? Do they not get an input into the system?

And with the Mega-church example, the right are better at self-organising than the left, and the left keeps splitting.


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## ska invita (Jan 2, 2023)

brogdale said:


> I certainly see where you're coming from with this, but I really think it's also important to distinguish between the (welfare) state 1945-1976 and the increasingly neoliberal consolidator state that has followed. When capital's fear of system competition caused the state to offer concessions to labour I can see how arguments regarding the state as beneficial or benign might have had more merit .


Yeah no doubt, I'm not trying to airbrush out the shit things the state is capable of enacting, even in the years you mention, but in my mind the state isn't a force unto itself, its made up of people with a set of rules, ideologies and structures and it's these that need changing.

For me Anarchism is the ultimate critique of power and an approach to politics that tries to stop abuse of, and redistribute all power in society and human interactions. To that extent im 100% on board and an anarchist.

Where I think I diverge is from some of the practical end-point visions anarchists have about what that society would like, and that end point isn't just an irrelevant theoretical speculation because from there come steps as to What To Do and How To Get There...... which to bring it back to the OP I dont think I agree on/am convinced by with (most? all?) anarchist organisations beyond more subtle non-revolutionary attempts to build autonomy. But when it gets to the bigger scale questions, if I'm not convinced I can't see how I could be a "member". 

From what I can tell there's only two options regarding the state: 'seize' control of the state or create an alternate power base to it.  I dont think these are mutually exclusive - in fact I think both have to happen. 

For me seizing control of the state has to be via democratic means. That means interacting with the state and parliamentary politics with all its realpolitik contradictions and limitations.
 Cultures of autonomy and accountability can and have to be built at other levels within the superstructure/society. In my mind this pincer movement would transform society and the nature of the state over time. 
<<<That's basically my political philosophy, and as yet, rightly or wrongly, because of that I've not found an anarchist organisation which I feel comfortable to join to aid that.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

Why _should_ people “be bothered” to vote under the current system?  I’m a habitual non voter. It’s not because I am not interested in being involved in decision making. It’s precisely because voting is _not_ involvement in decision making. 

There were posters in Scotland encouraging voting a few years back saying something along the lines of “if you care about education, the health service, the social services, housing, then use your vote”.  None of the parties were offering anything very different any of those.  The ouster actually undermined the point it was trying to make.


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## Sasaferrato (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> Apologies yes I did, though it should also be noted that Crossrail was _also_ way over budget and very late.


As were the Edinburgh trams.

In a city like London (or indeed Edinburgh) the plan is great until you open the ground, then you discover all the undocumented infrastructure.


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## Sue (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Why _should_ people “be bothered” to vote under the current system?  I’m a habitual non voter. It’s not because I am not interested in being involved in decision making. It’s precisely because voting is _not_ involvement in decision making.


Just to add that if the system/political party policies are so shit that people don't want to vote, those are the things that need to change rather than blaming voters.


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## Kevbad the Bad (Jan 2, 2023)

ska invita said:


> Yeah no doubt, I'm not trying to airbrush out the shit things the state is capable of enacting, even in the years you mention, but in my mind the state isn't a force unto itself, its made up of people with a set of rules, ideologies and structures and it's these that need changing.
> 
> For me Anarchism is the ultimate critique of power and an approach to politics that tries to stop abuse of, and redistribute all power in society and human interactions. To that extent im 100% on board and an anarchist.
> 
> ...


Seizing control of the state through democratic means sounds all well and good, but there is no shortage of examples where those opposed to change resist with violence and stop any such transfer of power.


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## teuchter (Jan 2, 2023)

Sue said:


> Just to add that if the system/political party policies are so shit that people don't want to vote, those are the things that need to change rather than blaming voters.


It's not necessarily "blaming" anyone, it's just an observation about what many people are (or rather aren't) interested in. Even more people are disinterested in what anarchists have got to say.


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## brogdale (Jan 2, 2023)

teuchter said:


> It's not necessarily "blaming" anyone, it's just an observation about what many people are (or rather aren't) interested in. Even more people are disinterested in what anarchists have got to say.


disinterested or uninterested?

And what possible metric would you be applying there?


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## Sue (Jan 2, 2023)

teuchter said:


> It's not necessarily "blaming" anyone, it's just an observation about what many people are (or rather aren't) interested in. Even more people are disinterested in what anarchists have got to say.


Saying people 'couldn't/can't be bothered' isn't neutral, is it?


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 2, 2023)

Sasaferrato said:


> I wouldn't say I was interested if I wasn't.


You said that fringe politics is way down on your list, which came across to me as dismissive and quite narrow-minded.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> You said that fringe politics is way down on your list, which came across to me as dismissive and narrow-minded.


He had a very long list that took him 20 years to work through, but now he’s finally got around to anarchism.  

To be perfectly honest, I’m not holding out much hope given his understanding of mainstream politics.


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 2, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> It would just be the strong fucking over the weak.


Oh that tired old chestnut. Funnily enough thats what we've always had with the state. Wherever or wheneever you've got a state you've got a minority of people running things in their own nefarious interests in one way or another.


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 2, 2023)

Btw there is abit about the transport system in The Anarchist Collectives by Sam Dolgoff and though it wasn't full blown anarchist communism in that part of Spain there were improvements made to the service by the anarchist union. The book is very good and looks at other sectors aswell (including healthcare), and other aspects of the revolution. The other two books I mentioned are also probably worth reading, but I think Dolgoff's book gives a good overview.


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## teuchter (Jan 2, 2023)

Sue said:


> Saying people 'couldn't/can't be bothered' isn't neutral, is it?


What would be a better word - unmotivated?


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

teuchter said:


> What would be a better word - unmotivated?


Yes, because that suggests the next question to ask, instead of assuming a conclusion had been reached.


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## Sue (Jan 2, 2023)

teuchter said:


> What would be a better word - unmotivated?


'Didn't'. People might not have voted for umpteen different reasons.


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## teuchter (Jan 2, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> Btw there is abit about the transport system in The Anarchist Collectives by Sam Dolgoff and though it wasn't full blown anarchist communism in that part of Spain there were improvements made to the service by the anarchist union. The book is very good and looks at other sectors aswell, and other aspects of the revolution. The other two books I mentioned are also probably worth reading, but I think Dolgoff's book gives a good overview.


I looked at it last night.

It describes how the existing structures of the Barcelona city-wide transport system and the national rail system were taken over. It doesn't describe the kind of federated arrangement of local organisations that this discussion started out talking about. And these situations only lasted for a short period of time didn't they? So it doesn't tell us anything about how things like long term investment would be planned and managed.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 2, 2023)

.


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## JimW (Jan 2, 2023)

I find it hard to imagine how current developed world levels of urbanism can be managed in an anarchist model. One of the interesting things about the communes here, that was a model with the potential for a different type of modernity but it lived and died with top down Leninism. What it did do was envisage a pattern of living and producing with the potential to be sustainable.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

JimW said:


> I find it hard to imagine how current developed world levels of urbanism can be managed in an anarchist model. One of the interesting things about the communes here, that was a model with the potential for a different type of modernity but it lived and died with top down Leninism. What it did do was envisage a pattern of living and producing with the potential to be sustainable.


I mean, I don’t think the developed world model of urbanism is sustainable, so it does need to be reimagined.


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## Karl Masks (Jan 2, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> I very much recommend The Anarchist Collectives by Sam Dolgoff as a starting point, but its too much for me to convey what is written in that book here.
> 
> Unlike more statist and top-down experiments, its the more horizontal ones (despite their limitations) that have gone further in achieving proper socialism or communism. That is to say that they achieved some degree of genuine worker's ownership and running of the means of production and distribution, and also real decommodification of the economy.


So again, how are you going to persuade people other than by telling them to read a book? Most people aren't going to want to read that book when they are already being persuaded to vote against their own itnerests on a daily basis.


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## A380 (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> They’re not necessarily socialist. The post war welfare state was a result of the Beveridge report, written by a Liberal peer, and would have been implemented by whichever party had won the post war election.  The post war consensus included all of those points raised by LBJ, and was supported by Tory and Labour governments alike for decades until diluted by neoliberalism, (itself in turn supported by Tory and Labour governments alike).
> 
> A “dictionary definition” of socialism relying on just those policies listed would not be a very good one.


You have my argument the wrong way round. Socialism isn't the same as having a 'socialist' government it's a way of delivering goods or services. To argue the massive redistribution and restructuring of the post war  government wasn't socialism, just because it didn't change the whole of society to a socialist system  (or the Janet and John description of advanced communism AA seems to be mixing up with it)  is as disingenuous as claiming any of the 20th century's  'communist' states were fully socialist societies.


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## chilango (Jan 2, 2023)

If it were to happen, I suspect that systemic change to something like anarchism is not going to happen right now through the efforts of of tiny Anarchist groups prompting a revolutionary seizure of power, but rather emerge in the ashes of the imminent collapse of industrial capitalism.

Discussion of whether currently existing mass infrastructure could be taken over and run along anarchist lines is sadly alternate history stuff at this point in time.

The discussion will be to how best (re)build in the wreckage and the abandoned without the gated bubbles of Space Karen's and their private armies wiping us out.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

A380 said:


> You have my argument the wrong way round. Socialism isn't the same as having a 'socialist' government it's a way of delivering goods or services. To argue the massive redistribution and restructuring of the post war  government wasn't socialism, just because it didn't change the whole of society to a socialist system  (or the Janet and John description of advanced communism AA seems to be mixing up with it)  is as disingenuous as claiming any of the 20th century's  'communist' states were fully socialist societies.


You are misinterpreting my point. Those policies - the NHS, the welfare state, nationalised industry - are not necessarily socialist nor are they sufficient for socialism to exist.  Socialist does not mean bureaucratic or public sector.


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## A380 (Jan 2, 2023)

chilango said:


> If it were to happen, I suspect that systemic change to something like anarchism is not going to happen right now through the efforts of of tiny Anarchist groups prompting a revolutionary seizure of power, but rather emerge in the ashes of the imminent collapse of industrial capitalism.
> 
> Discussion of whether currently existing mass infrastructure could be taken over and run along anarchist lines is sadly alternate history stuff at this point in time.
> 
> The discussion will be to how best (re)build in the wreckage and the abandoned without the gated bubbles of Space Karen's and their private armies wiping us out.


This, society changes from one state to another when the technology of that civilisation in terms of production and distribution of goods and services requires it to change.  Guessing what the changes will be that will enable a change to full socialism is a mugs game/ opportunity for speculative fiction. I bet a small amount of money on part of it being low carbon energy with low marginal  cost for dispatch and AI, but the only certainty with that is I'll be wrong.


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## A380 (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> You are misinterpreting my point. Those policies - the NHS, the welfare state, nationalised industry - are not necessarily socialist nor are they sufficient for socialism to exist.  Socialist does not mean bureaucratic or public sector.


Socialism means the cost is socialised. How is the NHS or the Welfare state not socialist ? You can have islands of socialism in Capital.  In the same way we still have island remnants  of feudalism and even slavery. I have no doubt that in a Socialist state there would still be remnants  of capitalism.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

A380 said:


> Socialism means the cost is socialised. How is the NHS or the Welfare state not socialist ? You can have islands of socialism in Capital.  In the same way we still have island remnants  of feudalism and even slavery. I have no doubt that in a Socialist state there would still be remnants  of capitalism.


You’re defining socialism very differently to the way I would. I work in the public sector. Education. My workplace is not socialist.  There is no workplace democracy, there is no service user democracy, the provision is tailored to the demands of business.


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## A380 (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> You’re defining socialism very differently to the way I would. I work in the public sector. Education. My workplace is not socialist.  There is no workplace democracy, there is no service user democracy, the provision is tailored to the demands of business.


I am defining it differently to you. That's the issue, socialism gets conflated with lots of other things. You don't need work place democracy to deliver socialism. Likewise workplace democracy can  (and very occasionally does) exist in purely capitalist organisations.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

A380 said:


> You don't need work place democracy to deliver socialism.


Then I’m not a socialist. Which is news to me.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

chilango said:


> If it were to happen, I suspect that systemic change to something like anarchism is not going to happen right now through the efforts of of tiny Anarchist groups prompting a revolutionary seizure of power, but rather emerge in the ashes of the imminent collapse of industrial capitalism.
> 
> Discussion of whether currently existing mass infrastructure could be taken over and run along anarchist lines is sadly alternate history stuff at this point in time.
> 
> The discussion will be to how best (re)build in the wreckage and the abandoned without the gated bubbles of Space Karen's and their private armies wiping us out.


Yes, and (in some case seemingly wanton) misunderstandings about how most anarchists actually see this process are at the heart of quite a lot of the confusion. Asking "how would you do a transport megaproject" for example seems to consider it from a perspective where a scrappy bunch of random anarchos with no expertise are suddenly confronted with coordinating a major urban planning operation. Which ironically is what actually happens today via MPs with no expertise and corpo boards whose interest in social functionality is way down the list. If you look at the history of London transport "efficient" really isn't the word that comes to mind - and the Tube is broadly considered one of the best of its kind. The flattening of hierarchy _doesn't mean the elimination of leadership or authority derived from expertise,_ it simply means the elimination of assumed control based on ownership_._


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## A380 (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Then I’m not a socialist. Which is news to me.



I presume you are deploying irony and humour for rhetorical effect 😀.

Of course you are a socialist.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

A380 said:


> I presume you are deploying irony and humour for rhetorical effect 😀.
> 
> Of course you are a socialist.


I’m saying you’re wrong about what  socialism is.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> You’re defining socialism very differently to the way I would. I work in the public sector. Education. My workplace is not socialist.  There is no workplace democracy, there is no service user democracy, the provision is tailored to the demands of business.


It's not all or nothing, though, is it? It's not either 'this workplace is fully socialist' or 'this workplace is fully capitalist'. And the old-fashioned ethos of public service has been eroded for decades in all kinds of areas. But with a state-owned entity, there is at least the possibility of democratic accountability where the first priority of its managers is not to make a profit. With a private business, there is very little chance of that. In terms of achieving the things you mention, I would suggest a first necessary step would be the taking of ownership into collective hands in some form, whether that means worker-owned, state-owned or some hybrid model that incorporates all stakeholders. In the old Yugoslavia, there were various forms of workplace democracy. That wouldn't have been possible if the workplaces had been private businesses.

But yeah, there are definitional problems here. I would call the taking of sectors of the economy, be they education, healthcare, housing, utilities or industry, into public hands a socialist policy. That a bunch of non-socialists may also agree with it at certain points in history doesn't change that. It isn't a guarantee of workplace democracy - the Soviet Union shows us that - but I would suggest that it is a necessary step towards it. 

There are a few terms flying around here that seem to have uncertain definition. Commodification is one. 'State capitalism' is another. It's an easy phrase to throw around, but I don't think it makes much sense from a Marxist pov. A collectively owned business is no longer obliged to seek profit. In fact,in many instances it can be incorporated in such a way that it is obliged not to seek profit. The mechanics of Marxist exploitation that flow from the profit motive cease to apply. That matters and it makes the term 'state capitalism' hugely problematic. It's a bit like calling any repressive regime 'fascist'.


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## A380 (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> I’m saying you’re wrong about what  socialism is.



I know. And I’m arguing you are making the label socialism do too much heavy lifting.


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## The39thStep (Jan 2, 2023)

I'm for muscular reformism. I'd start with the Atlee govt reforms and then add work place democracy and user/customer/citizen involvement .  Probably call it Stepism .


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> It's not all or nothing, though, is it?


No, it isn’t.  But it’s nonsense to say that the welfare state = socialism = the welfare state.  The welfare state was a compromise between labour and capital.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> It's not all or nothing, though, is it?


For libertarian socialists it is, in fact it's largely the point. Either you're free and an equal part of controlling your community and projects or you ain't, working under the unelected hand of a boss who can strip you of your means of survival if you get on their bad side is no more "controlling the means of production" if you do it for the civil service than if you do it for a private firm, except in the most abstracted and useless of ways.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> For libertarian socialists it is, in fact it's largely the point. Either you're free and an equal part of controlling your community and projects or you ain't, working under the unelected hand of a boss who can strip you of your means of survival if you get on their bad side is no more "controlling the means of production" if you do it for the civil service than if you do it for a private firm, except in the most abstracted and useless of ways.


Nah. There are loads of shades of grey. The existence of things like affordable housing, free healthcare, a benefits system, free education, pensions, etc, makes a huge difference to how you relate to your boss, whether they're private or public. The tyranny of the boss increases the less public provision there is, which makes the fall when you lose that job all the more vertiginous. A comparison across different countries in the world shows that. For example, Japanese workers routinely staying late at work do so because they fear losing their job, and they fear losing their job because so many benefits in Japan are workplace-dependent.


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## teuchter (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> Yes, and (in some case seemingly wanton) misunderstandings about how most anarchists actually see this process are at the heart of quite a lot of the confusion. Asking "how would you do a transport megaproject" for example seems to consider it from a perspective where a scrappy bunch of random anarchos with no expertise are suddenly confronted with coordinating a major urban planning operation. Which ironically is what actually happens today via MPs with no expertise and corpo boards whose interest in social functionality is way down the list. If you look at the history of London transport "efficient" really isn't the word that comes to mind - and the Tube is broadly considered one of the best of its kind. The flattening of hierarchy _doesn't mean the elimination of leadership or authority derived from expertise,_ it simply means the elimination of assumed control based on ownership_._


No, the reason I don't think these kinds of projects could be realised under an anarchist setup, one where it's some kind of federation of local organisations, is nothing to do with "the elimination of leadership or authority derived from expertise".

It's to do with competing interests and larger scales. The oversight has to be provided by someone/something who is promoting the interests of the larger scale system, which will often be contrary to local interests. So they have to have some kind of authority to over-rule.


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## A380 (Jan 2, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Nah. There are loads of shades of grey. The existence of things like affordable housing, free healthcare, a benefits system, free education, pensions, etc, makes a huge difference to how you relate to your boss, whether they're private or public. The tyranny of the boss increases the less public provision there is, which makes the fall when you lose that job all the more vertiginous. A comparison across different countries in the world shows that. For example, Japanese workers routinely staying late at work do so because they fear losing their job, and they fear losing their job because so many benefits in Japan are workplace-dependent.



You just have to look at American people with chronic medical conditions ( or children with the same) who are genuinely locked into a job because they wouldn’t be able to get new health insurance for an existing condition.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> The existence of things like affordable housing, free healthcare, a benefits system, free education, pensions, etc, makes a huge difference to how you relate to your boss, whether they're private or public.


These aren't "shades of grey," let alone "control of the means of production," what you're describing is concessions by Capital which _potentially_ dilute bosses' power to directly intimidate individuals while leaving the actual structures of control untouched. Specifically they're features of social democracy - and of course of Leninism, which simply introduced them while making it absolutely clear what happened to workers who stepped out of line.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> Yes, and (in some case seemingly wanton) misunderstandings about how most anarchists actually see this process are at the heart of quite a lot of the confusion. Asking "how would you do a transport megaproject" for example seems to consider it from a perspective where a scrappy bunch of random anarchos with no expertise are suddenly confronted with coordinating a major urban planning operation. Which ironically is what actually happens today via MPs with no expertise and corpo boards whose interest in social functionality is way down the list. If you look at the history of London transport "efficient" really isn't the word that comes to mind - and the Tube is broadly considered one of the best of its kind. The flattening of hierarchy _doesn't mean the elimination of leadership or authority derived from expertise,_ it simply means the elimination of assumed control based on ownership_._


On one recent occasion that this came up, littlebabyjesus asked me if I was willing to give up my car use.  Now, I’m a blue badge holder but I would be very happy to give up my car use if the infrastructure of the city I live in was reimagined sufficiently to make that possible.  As it is, as society is now configured, I do need my car in order to have anything approaching mobility and involvement in daily life.  But that’s because Glasgow City Council, for all its talk of “20 minute neighbourhoods” nevertheless persists in allowing new drive through developments, like the recent Starbucks/Burgerking and whatever else at Thornwood, to the south of where I live, or the out of town shopping strip mall at Drumchapel, where the nearest B&Q is.

I’d love the M8 to be closed off and public parks appear in its stead, and the area in front of the Mitchell Library reclaimed for pedestrian use. For a free public transport network to include an extended Subway, reaching the East End and North.  

But as it is, I live in an urban environment that is hard for many people to get around. 

I’ve read a bit of literature about reimagining urban environments. But what I’d like to see is people with some expertise do proper studies and then properly consult _and inform_ the public.  What I don’t want to see is some clownish cartoon insurrecto who thinks a round black ball with a burning wick is a good emblem to win over public discourse given the job of designing the transport network, in a committee or any other way.


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## A380 (Jan 2, 2023)

teuchter said:


> No, the reason I don't think these kinds of projects could be realised under an anarchist setup, one where it's some kind of federation of local organisations, is nothing to do with "the elimination of leadership or authority derived from expertise".
> 
> It's to do with competing interests and larger scales. The oversight has to be provided by someone/something who is promoting the interests of the larger scale system, which will often be contrary to local interests. So they have to have some kind of authority to over-rule.



In any society that isn’t a post scarcity economy you need a way of taking macro decisions. The problem with ours (in the West) is that process is owned by a mix of capital and representative democracy with the line between them in flux. Many of the decision makers reaping huge rewards from their position.

But in the same way as you would listen to the expertise of boot makers when it comes to boots, there is no reason you couldn’t have people who’s training and professional development is about being experts at making macro decisions.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

A380 said:


> You just have to look at American people with chronic medical conditions ( or children with the same) who are genuinely locked into a job because they wouldn’t be able to get new health insurance for an existing condition.


Yes, left to its own devices capitalism is indeed incapable of maintaining a mass healthcare system with universal coverage for the working class.


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## A380 (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> Yes, left to its own devices capitalism is indeed incapable of maintaining a mass healthcare system with universal coverage for the working class.



It wouldn’t be incapable of it if there were returns to be made for owners. But because the benefits are external there aren’t. So it isn’t.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

teuchter said:


> It's to do with competing interests and larger scales. The oversight has to be provided by someone/something who is promoting the interests of the larger scale system, which will often be contrary to local interests. So they have to have some kind of authority to over-rule.


Because there's no possible way in which a federated organisation that doesn't feature a single controlling authority could come to a conclusion which doesn't please everyone.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

.


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## Red Cat (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> For libertarian socialists it is, in fact it's largely the point. Either you're free and an equal part of controlling your community and projects or you ain't, working under the unelected hand of a boss who can strip you of your means of survival if you get on their bad side is no more "controlling the means of production" if you do it for the civil service than if you do it for a private firm, except in the most abstracted and useless of ways.



Theoretically I think you end up trapped because yes, logically its one or the other. It doesn't fit though with subjective experiences of shades of grey.


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## A380 (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> .


Good point.


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## brogdale (Jan 2, 2023)

Have to say I'm finding the discussion in this thread very interesting; one of the highlights of the Christian festive period for me.


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## kabbes (Jan 2, 2023)

Recently, I’ve found myself wondering if these debates are hamstrung by a focus on individual and collective agency. We always end up talking about what system we would like to have. That then leads to the question of which system would work best. But I think there are fundamental questions that exist outside agency that are taken for granted in that debate. Higher-order questions.

Like, how does the nature of the system exist to perpetuate itself outside of agentic preference?  (Ie, how do the power relations immanent in the social relations of its social order act to reproduce themselves?). Which leads to asking: Work best for what purpose?  Working best to ensure the stability of the system is not the same as working best to produce high contentment.

Any social system that doesn’t have its own reproduction built into its power relations will be unstable and it will fall. It doesn’t matter what its benefits are or how many it helps — it won’t last. So before I engage with a theoretical construct, that’s my first thing I want to know.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jan 2, 2023)

A380 said:


> You just have to look at American people with chronic medical conditions ( or children with the same) who are genuinely locked into a job because they wouldn’t be able to get new health insurance for an existing condition.


A concrete example of one of the consequences of the commodification of health care, and by contrast, an illustration of how health care here in the UK has, in a very real, concrete sense, been decommodified. It is no longer something to be bought and sold, for which a price needs to be negotiated.


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 2, 2023)

Anyhow, this isn't the  What is Socialism, or How Would Anarchism Work thread is it? Seems to me its been massively derailed.


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## kabbes (Jan 2, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> Anyhow, this isn't the  What is Socialism, or How Would Anarchism Work thread is it? Seems to me its been massively derailed.


It’s asking why people aren’t members of anarchist organisations. It probably makes sense to listen to their answers.


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 2, 2023)

kabbes said:


> It’s asking why people aren’t members of anarchist organisations. It probably makes sense to listen to their answers.


Fair enough


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

kabbes said:


> It’s asking why people aren’t members of anarchist organisations. It probably makes sense to listen to their answers.


Well, it’s asking _anarchists_ who aren’t members of anarchist organisations _why_ they aren’t.


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 2, 2023)

I remember a comrade saying how , if it was necessary for there to be some degree of hierarchy or 'executive power' with something (such as a transport system) then as long as its mandated/voted for by the community then thats fine. Wouldn't have to be a state either. And I don't completely dismiss federation. Having said that theres probably people who know more about it than me.


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Well, it’s asking _anarchists_ who aren’t members of anarchist organisations _why_ they aren’t.


Thats a fair point.


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## Jeff Robinson (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Well, it’s asking _anarchists_ who aren’t members of anarchist organisations _why_ they aren’t.



Shame. A thread full of people saying “I’m not a member of an anarchist organisation because I’m not an anarchist” would potentially be very interesting and fruitful.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

Jeff Robinson said:


> Shame. A thread full of people saying “I’m not a member of an anarchist organisation because I’m not an anarchist” would potentially be very interesting and fruitful.


Then you’re in for a treat!


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Well, it’s asking _anarchists_ who aren’t members of anarchist organisations _why_ they aren’t.


Tbh I was wondering about that question, because my answer is different depending on whether it's local or national. I'm a member of Freedom Press (pretty much a local group albeit with a national-facing remit) because it has a practical application, and I'm a (semi-lapsed) member of SolFed but have strong criticisms of the current crop of federal anarchist groups.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

I should perhaps say I’m now part of a different anarchist organisation to the one I was in when I started this thread.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> Tbh I was wondering about that question, because my answer is different depending on whether it's local or national. I'm a member of Freedom Press because it has a practical application, and I'm a member of SolFed but have strong criticisms of the current crop of federal anarchist groups.


Aye, I think I was trying to avoid using the word national.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> have strong criticisms of the current crop of federal anarchist groups


Are they criticisms you’d care to share with the thread?  I’m not suggesting it’s obligatory, just since you raise it.


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## A380 (Jan 2, 2023)

"I’m not a member of an anarchist organisation because I’m not an anarchist."


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

A380 said:


> "I’m not a member of an anarchist organisation because I’m not an anarchist."


Just out of interest, how are you defining being an anarchist?


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## A380 (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Just out of interest, how are you defining being an anarchist?


Eight legs, catches prey in silk webs. Obvs.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

A380 said:


> Eight legs, catches prey in silk webs. Obvs.


And a beak for eating honey.


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## chilango (Jan 2, 2023)

As a "fellow traveller" of Anarchism (it's a label I sometimes use but more often don't) but who's never been a proper member of a big "A" Anarchist Org. I've always been puzzled by the need/desire to have a bunch of slightly different groups all trying to do more or less the same things. The current AFed/ACG/AnCom trajectory even more so.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

chilango said:


> As a "fellow traveller" of Anarchism (it's a label I sometimes use but more often don't) but who's never been a proper member of a big "A" Anarchist Org. I've always been puzzled by the need/desire to have a bunch of slightly different groups all trying to do more or less the same things. The current AFed/ACG/AnCom trajectory even more so.


It’s probably not the case they’re all trying to do the same thing. Two of them maybe are, but I don’t think the other is.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Are they criticisms you’d care to share with the thread?



Mixed, some are more based on context-specific actions taken or not taken which I think would qualify mainly as intra-group sniping, which I try not to do, but some are more general. Some of the big ones are probably:

A tendency to bureaucratise at very small numbers where flexibility would probably be more sensible. eg. AF and SolFed both run their major decisions through bi-annual in-person meetings with reps negotiating on the basis of direct mandates, which makes response times extraordinarily slow for orgs which hover between two and three figure memberships particularly given today's technology.
Lack of a coherent action strategy, with the "federal" part of the equation frequently not meaning very much beyond funding occasional printed matter and cohering a few writers on a website (who could have done that anyway, including to larger audiences on other more established outlets like libcom).
Shortfalls in planning for success. I'm partway through a longer writeup about this, but orgs are extremely prone to splitting when recruitment goes well because they tend not to think about absorbing a mass of new members into existing cultures which are usually both a bit arcane and known inside-out by a minority of old mates.
The above apply to pretty much every national org including my own.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> Mixed, some are more based on context-specific actions taken or not taken which I think would qualify mainly as intra-group sniping, which I try not to do, but some are more general. Some of the big ones are probably:
> 
> A tendency to bureaucratise at very small numbers where flexibility would probably be more sensible. eg. AF and SolFed both run their major decisions through bi-annual in-person meetings with reps negotiating on the basis of direct mandates, which makes response times extraordinarily slow for orgs which hover between two and three figure memberships particularly given today's technology.
> Lack of a coherent action strategy, with the "federal" part of the equation frequently not meaning very much beyond funding occasional printed matter and cohering a few writers on a website (who could have done that anyway).
> ...


Cheers.


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## kabbes (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Well, it’s asking _anarchists_ who aren’t members of anarchist organisations _why_ they aren’t.


How do they know if they are an anarchist without discussing these ideas?

I think it’s fair to say that those responding in this thread have, for the vast majority, not been people with an ideological opposition to anarchism.  They are people trying to explain why they do not feel like they would belong to an anarchist organisation, despite having a philosophy that should be open to it.  

If you’re expecting a bunch of people to declare that they are died-in-the-wool anarchists and yet unwilling to join with others, you might have a longer wait.


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## chilango (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> It’s probably not the case they’re all trying to do the same thing. Two of them maybe are, but I don’t think the other is.


In theory? or in practice? Because from the outside it's hard to see.

(Not that I want to reopen any inter-group beefs, but rather in a more general sense it's baffling)


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

I'd imagine the original intent was to work out how to recruit from the lowest-hanging branches - outright anarchists who might be persuadable to join a group - rather than to convert the next rung up of sympathetic types who've never felt entirely convinced. 

Not to downplay the importance of talking to kinda-but-nah folks, but generally speaking the most powerful recruiter is simply winning stuff. People join groups that are effective, usually well before considering the specific politics.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

chilango said:


> In theory? or in practice? Because from the outside it's hard to see.
> 
> (Not that I want to reopen any inter-group beefs, but rather in a more general sense it's baffling)


I’d say two are class struggle communist and the other would see itself as more broadly intersectional.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

kabbes said:


> How do they know if they are an anarchist without discussing these ideas?
> 
> I think it’s fair to say that those responding in this thread have, for the vast majority, not been people with an ideological opposition to anarchism.  They are people trying to explain why they do not feel like they would belong to an anarchist organisation, despite having a philosophy that should be open to it.
> 
> If you’re expecting a bunch of people to declare that they are dyed-in-the-wool anarchists and yet unwilling to join with others, you might have a longer wait.


Och, it’s fine for bulletin board threads to meander. I have no problem with the discussion here. It’s been interesting enough.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> I'd imagine the original intent was to work out how to recruit from the lowest-hanging branches - outright anarchists who might be persuadable to join a group - rather than to convert the next rung up of sympathetic types who've never felt entirely convinced.


Perhaps uncharitably put, but yes, it was a genuine interest in what the barriers are to joining an organisation, and how that could be addressed.


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## chilango (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> I’d say two are class struggle communist and the other would see itself as more broadly intersectional.


I know you'd say that. But how does that manifest in practice? How does it look different to the outside world?


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## danny la rouge (Jan 2, 2023)

chilango said:


> I know you'd say that. But how does that manifest in practice? How does it look different to the outside world?


I think it’s hard for me to put that into words without sounding sectarian, which I don’t want to do.

But I understand your frustration and it is less than optimal.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> Perhaps uncharitably put, but yes, it was a genuine interest in what the barriers are to joining an organisation, and how that could be addressed.


Oh it wasn't meant as an insult, initial recruiting from the ranks of demobilised anarchists is an obvious move for any new org.


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## chilango (Jan 2, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> I think it’s hard for me to put that into words without sounding sectarian, which I don’t want to do.
> 
> But I understand your frustration and it is less than optimal.


Yeah, I don't particularly want to discuss the AFed/ACG split. Though I'm even more baffled as to why the AnCom Network has been set up separate from the ACG (no need to tell me). Or the split in the IWA or, well, you get the drift.

For sure there are real differences, but are they really big enough to merit splitting already small groups into even smaller ones?


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## chilango (Jan 2, 2023)

Then there's the bigger question of what the orgs are actually for? and would people join to do [insert specifics] stuff?

For me, for example, I would be looking for discussion and analysis. I wouldn't be looking for activism.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

So without getting into specific cases, splits are usually a combination of problems, in which political disagreement is frequently a lesser factor (while being presented as the main one). A handful of people joining with totally different attitudes to a single issue can easily clash with everyone else, a massive ruckus blows up and it ends with everybody having to take a side. Or it can be as simple as someone with a lot of mates in the org having a really massive falling out with someone else with a bunch of other mates. Tensions can arise because the finances have gone awry, or a key diplomatic figure leaves, etc etc. These would all be small issues in say, Unite, but if six people in an org of 30 are pissed off that's a fifth of the membership, which is a crisis and, quite easily, a split. Which is also exacerbated by the knowledge that no-one actually _has_ to be there. I could leave Solfed tomorrow with minimal consequence - can't say the same about a union branch.


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## JimW (Jan 2, 2023)

chilango said:


> Then there's the bigger question of what the orgs are actually for? and would people join to do [insert specifics] stuff?
> 
> For me, for example, I would be looking for discussion and analysis. I wouldn't be looking for activism.


Yeah, I'd join if I was intending to contribute or thought i could be useful but I'm not really in a position to so don't.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

chilango said:


> Then there's the bigger question of what the orgs are actually for? and would people join to do [insert specifics] stuff?
> 
> For me, for example, I would be looking for discussion and analysis. I wouldn't be looking for activism.



For me this is the sort of, event horizon for groups moving from a circle of people with similar views to a functional organisation. The key is that people should feel they're getting something out of it and losing something by leaving. In a union that's obvious - if you're out you don't get a say or qualify for support if you're being victimised - and even so it's a job to bring people in on an active basis. For a revolutionary group it's basically just community and a sense of putting your politics where your mouth is, and that's a limited demographic.


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## Red Cat (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> These aren't "shades of grey," let alone "control of the means of production," what you're describing is concessions by Capital which _potentially_ dilute bosses' power to directly intimidate individuals while leaving the actual structures of control untouched. Specifically they're features of social democracy - and of course of Leninism, which simply introduced them while making it absolutely clear what happened to workers who stepped out of line.



That's why I said experienced as, as distinct from a theoretical understanding of class. I could've said materially but not everyone agrees with a class analysis, so of course people experience shades of grey of control and democracy rather than binary oppositions.


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## Red Cat (Jan 2, 2023)

But I'm not an anarchist, so I'm bowing out anyway.


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## teuchter (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> Because there's no possible way in which a federated organisation that doesn't feature a single controlling authority could come to a conclusion which doesn't please everyone.


Yes there are loads of examples of federated organisations that function, but that's not what's under dispute - the question is whether such a thing can work under an anarchist structure that would grant it with a different kind of decision making authority and which would mean it was resourced in a very different way.

But what do you mean by no "single controlling authority" as far as the EU is concerned?


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

teuchter said:


> Yes there are loads of examples of federated organisations that function, but that's not what's under dispute


It'd help if you stopped moving the goalposts, but fine.



teuchter said:


> - the question is whether such a thing can work under an anarchist structure that would grant it with a different kind of decision making authority and which would mean it was resourced in a very different way.


Clarify please? What do you mean "different kind of decision-making authority"? Anarchist structures aren't inherently alien to human organising, we still have concepts like formal agreements and consequences for breaking them.



teuchter said:


> But what do you mean by no "single controlling authority" as far as the EU is concerned?


As in the structure of the EU is based on agreements between federated members acting as equals (in principle if not in fact, these are capitalist States after all), not on say, a single sovereign body at the top of a pyramid.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> As in the structure of the EU is based on agreements between federated members acting as equals (in principle if not in fact, these are capitalist States after all), not on say, a single sovereign body at the top of a pyramid.


That's not really true. The federated members agree to be bound by rulings of the European Court of Justice. Effectively, it is a body of law that stands at the top of the pyramid.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> That's not really true. The federated members agree to be bound by rulings of the European Court of Justice. Effectively, it is a body of law that stands at the top of the pyramid.


And what it is which forces them to stay?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> And what it is which forces them to stay?


Well the level of coercion that binds them is above the level of armies, so it's self-interest that keeps them together. And it's institutional robustness that makes their membership meaningful. Breaking the rules or unilaterally withdrawing would incur costs. 

How do we go from here to a situation where there is no level at which coercion occurs with the help of an army? I don't know. However such supra-state institutions are a start. The states give up some of their sovereignty in return for membership, and for me that is a positive. It's the opposite of Brexit thinking - 'take back control'. I want the British state to be subordinate to supra-state organisations like the EU, the UN, etc. (On a side note, the institutional weakness of the UN nowadays is a thoroughly bad thing.) I would argue that potentially within this nested structure, more devolution of powers down to the local level is possible than in a situation where nation states are aggressively asserting their sovereignty.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> it's self-interest that keeps them together


Correct. They are able, as Britain has demonstrated, to leave, but they adhere to a set of agreements because the alternative is not to have access to benefits which come as part of being in the EU such as access to resources, labour, expertise etc. I happen to disagree that supra-national bodies are a de facto good in a capitalist world (Fortress Europe and bullying of smaller nations are examples of how this can get poisonous) but they do provide an example of how the threat of force and direct pyramids of authority are not the only ways to cohere large, complex societies.


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## kabbes (Jan 2, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> So without getting into specific cases, splits are usually a combination of problems, in which political disagreement is frequently a lesser factor (while being presented as the main one). A handful of people joining with totally different attitudes to a single issue can easily clash with everyone else, a massive ruckus blows up and it ends with everybody having to take a side. Or it can be as simple as someone with a lot of mates in the org having a really massive falling out with someone else with a bunch of other mates. Tensions can arise because the finances have gone awry, or a key diplomatic figure leaves, etc etc. These would all be small issues in say, Unite, but if six people in an org of 30 are pissed off that's a fifth of the membership, which is a crisis and, quite easily, a split. Which is also exacerbated by the knowledge that no-one actually _has_ to be there. I could leave Solfed tomorrow with minimal consequence - can't say the same about a union branch.


I know this is a lazy cliche, but nevertheless there is some truth to it. It doesn’t bode well for the idea of devolved collectivist self-government if even a very small group of political fellow travellers can’t create a common path without splitting into factions. Even if there are good reasons for it, it is a very negative example  for outsiders to observe.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

kabbes said:


> Even if there are good reasons for it, it is a very negative example  for outsiders to observe.


Sure, but it's also not all that representative of the potentialities of the ideology. Stability is based on having strength in depth and competence draws from whatever pool is available, which in our case is a small pool - though I'd actually say on that note we often do way better than our active numbers might imply. And unlike say, the Tories, or Labour, or the Communist Party, we're not arguing that we should be the ones running things (though that said, I've found that wrangling anarchists is quite a good way of learning to get shit done with minimal resources).


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## kabbes (Jan 2, 2023)

Going back to my point about how and if power relations immanent in the social relations of a social order reproduce that social order — this thing we’re talking about right here, this factional splitting, shows up a massive potential problem that needs talking about and resolving. If there is something about the social relations in anarchist groups that can’t even reproduce its own structure from one bookfair to the next, how the hell is the anarchism envisaged by that group going to be stable enough to survive in the wider world?  Saying “we don’t have enough depth yet” doesn’t help. Adding more people increases the complexity and the number of inflection points. It needs to be able to keep going with 5 people before it can manage 50.

Remember, I’m not talking here about ideologies or what would be “best”. I’m just talking about whether or not something _can_ survive, not if it _should_ survive.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jan 2, 2023)

kabbes said:


> It needs to be able to keep going with 5 people before it can manage 50.


Not sure that's necessarily true. Larger groups can have more resilience, and complexity can bring with it stability. Far easier for a group of five to fall apart than a group of 50 or 500 or 5000. Just takes one argument.


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## kabbes (Jan 2, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Not sure that's necessarily true. Larger groups can have more resilience, and complexity can bring with it stability. Far easier for a group of five to fall apart than a group of 50 or 500 or 5000. Just takes one argument.


That’s true enough.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t bode well, does it?  These are organisations with strong and broad ideological agreement and common purpose. But as a philosophy, all this is seemingly threatened wherever there is lack of unanimity on all details. Is this inherent to the nature of the organising system?   Is it just repeated bad luck owing to bad faith actors?  Something else?


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## Rob Ray (Jan 2, 2023)

kabbes said:


> Saying “we don’t have enough depth yet” doesn’t help.


I wasn't saying it as a solution to the concept of how a large population run along anarchist lines might maintain sociopolitical cohesion tbf, but it _is_ important to note if your reasoning for anarchism not working is that very small groups tend to argue and split a lot.

On the main point though, there's really only a handful of examples of anarchism becoming large enough to actually test such questions in a practical sense, most of which adopted a mix of anarchist and less anarchist approaches, and all of them have been done under either war or siege conditions (CNT, Zapatistas, Makhnovists etc). So if people are looking for "here's a perfect concrete working example" there isn't one.

There's lots of partial examples which have worked in some degree but not in others, most of which have had to make compromises with the existing system. Mondragon's a very successful federation of worker co-ops, featuring flattened wage structures and often non-hierarchical working approaches, with a turnover in the billions and 80,000 employed, but it's still a corporate enterprise. SAC is a successful syndicalist union in Sweden, but it's also had to make significant compromises with State power. Radical Routes celebrated its 30th anniversary last year as an, essentially, anarchist-run federation of housing co-ops but it has to do a lot of work with banks and can't risk people's housing by getting too spiky.

The answers to whether a society _could_ be run at scale using anarchist methodology are, thus, also partial. We know scale can be achieved, because the CNT did it even in a war zone. We know that elements of anarchist approaches can be and frequently are adopted as methods to run organisations even within capitalism, because there's lots of "flattened" societies, charities and even companies like the (very flawed) Valve model. And as much as there is no example of a large anarchist-run society at peace to prove it can be done, there is also no proof that it _can't _be. Folks seem to think the anarchists on this thread are being vague or evasive. This is not the case. What we are being is honest, and refusing to make promises or offer certainties about an idea we cannot, as yet, analyse in its ultimate application. No-one here is an "anarchist" in the sense of having been brought up in an anarchist society with all the social, cultural and political realignment that would entail, we're "anarchists" living in a society built around capitalism and State power who are trying to envisage something better - it's like asking someone brought up in the 10th century how the 20th century works. And then asking them to explain it all in a forum post rather than a book.

But we _can_ try and raise our eyeline above the muck to see what we can see.


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## LDC (Jan 3, 2023)

kabbes said:


> That’s true enough.
> 
> Nevertheless, it doesn’t bode well, does it?  These are organisations with strong and broad ideological agreement and common purpose. But as a philosophy, all this is seemingly threatened wherever there is lack of unanimity on all details. Is this intent to the nature of the organising system?   Is it just repeated bad luck owing to bad faith actors?  Something else?



TBH, I think one of the main reasons is that the anarchist movement and groups attracts more than their fair share of people that for some reason/s don't manage as well in 'normal' life as many others do, and with them bring a host of issues and problems that impact their ability to operate in a group. That and wide and eclectic views on what anarchism is to further complicate matters. (Plus all the aforementioned reasons.)


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## 8ball (Jan 3, 2023)

When every small step is expected to point in the direction of a clearly defined and agreed utopia, it can be pretty hard to settle upon where to go for lunch.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 3, 2023)

I can speak for myself about my part in founding the AnarCom Network, but please don't take my remarks as a statement by the organisation. It isn't, it's just my view.

I consider the ACG to be a comrade organisation. I still have friends and comrades in the organisation.  There was a particular organisational issue that wasn't resolved to my satisfaction and there was a particular day that a number of us left, and broadly for the same reason.  

We did not leave in order to found the AnarCom Network. We didn't even do it directly on leaving.  But obviously we kept in touch and decided it made sense to do stuff together, which led us to form the new organisation.

I've kept in touch with members of the ACG and I will be working together with them on mutual projects as and when they arise. 

What are non members meant to think?  Well, there's number of aspects to that.  First of all, what is my aim in working within organised anarchism. It isn't actually to turn working class people into anarchists in the sense of people well-versed in Kropotkin and Malatesta.  It's to reinvigorate working class self confidence and self belief, to spread the values of solidarity and mutual aid, and through them show the value of direct action and self management.  

So in that sense, the differences that exist between the organisations shouldn't matter, because it isn't the aim that the organisations build empires, but that they support conversations, ideas and praxis in our communities. 

What are potential members to think? Well, we're very small and new.  We formed for the sense of comradeship and working together.  We have had membership queries, and people can only really go on what they see us say and do.  I know this can be a problem.  I haven't looked for a while, but I know that the ACG and the AF had virtually the same Aims and Principles for a period.  That's because it was the same person who pretty much wrote them.  (I consider him a friend and a comrade and I've still been in touch with him since leaving the ACG).  However, I don't think those two organisations are as similar as that document in common would suggest.

This leads us to something else that has been brought up: a wide range in what people think anarchism is.  Obviously there are some who call themselves anarchist with whom I'd have nothing in common: the so-called AnCaps.  I wouldn't be in an organisation with them.  But also even with the same basic guiding document, different ideas about what that means can arise. And in fact the smaller the organisation, the more problems this has the potential of causing.

The organised left in general is at a very low ebb at the moment.  Strike militancy is actually running ahead of it. We've seen the various umbrella organisations actually lacking the capacity to do much with the wave of strikes.  Organised anarchism is obviously only a fraction of that general left.  I think we are very good at doing a lot with the limited resources we have.  But as has been said, we are not pushing ourselves as the people who should be running things.  Quite the opposite.


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## ska invita (Jan 3, 2023)

Kevbad the Bad said:


> Seizing control of the state through democratic means sounds all well and good, but there is no shortage of examples where those opposed to change resist with violence and stop any such transfer of power.


yes im well aware of the challenge.. im also aware of the challenge of replacing the UK state wholesale with a series of anarchist communes etc, and winning an election and dealing with the fallout seems more achievable to me.


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## Shechemite (Jan 3, 2023)

LDC said:


> TBH, I think one of the main reasons is that the anarchist movement and groups attracts more than their fair share of people that for some reason/s don't manage as well in 'normal' life as many others do, and with them bring a host of issues and problems that impact their ability to operate in a group.



Ime this is true in activism per se


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## LDC (Jan 3, 2023)

I think one of the (many) challenges to anarchist theory and practice is the fact that the political ideas and organisational forms of it arose in a very different time, one where the role of the State and its institutions were much clearer to many/most people. There's a level of complexity now (both in society as it is and the problems its created) that have no easy answers, and the answers that looked workable and robust 100 (or even 50 years) ago now look very unrealistic. And much of what some anarchists suggest as 'solutions' are clearly not very convincing to many people.

There's also the question of what is a State. If we have some centralised forms of organisation to fix certain global problems; climate change, weapons of mass destruction, global transport, etc. then at what point does this end up actually being a State or pseudo-State body, rather than some anarchist organ of collective organisation that has no power to enforce rules/laws etc.?

I mean I'm also interested in the getting from A to B discussion as well. I'm increasingly thinking it's as much likely to be some mix of collapse, the withdrawal of State insititutions from some areas, a seizing of territory, etc. and only in part a process of an uprising/social revolution.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 3, 2023)

ska invita said:


> yes im well aware of the challenge.. im also aware of the challenge of replacing the UK state wholesale with a series of anarchist communes etc, and winning an election and dealing with the fallout seems more achievable to me.



But you can't win an election. You have neither the votes nor a system willing to accommodate you. And the process that would allow this to happen is the same one anarchists are advocating. To resurrect the classic Solidarity quote:



> Meaningful action, for revolutionaries, is whatever increases the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the equalitarian tendencies and the self -activity of the masses and whatever assists in their demystification. Sterile and harmful action is whatever reinforces the passivity of the masses, their apathy, their cynicism, their differentiation through hierarchy, their alienation, their reliance on others to do things for them and the degree to which they can therefore be manipulated by others - even by those allegedly acting on their behalf.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 3, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> But you can't win an election. You have neither the votes nor a system willing to accommodate you. And the process that would allow this to happen is the same one anarchists are advocating. To resurrect the classic Solidarity quote:


even if one election could be won, i doubt a second would and the period in office would make the hysteria about jeremy corbyn look small potatoes. in short, parliament will never vote itself out of existence.


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## AmateurAgitator (Jan 3, 2023)

Karl Masks said:


> So again, how are you going to persuade people other than by telling them to read a book? Most people aren't going to want to read that book when they are already being persuaded to vote against their own itnerests on a daily basis.


Yes ofcourse, theres literally no other way of conveying ideas etc at all than with books.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 3, 2023)

The reality of the Parliamentary limit for tolerating leftie ideas has been particularly stark this cycle, it's true, but what left electoralism (deliberately) forgets is that it's all fundamentally based on _leverage_, not individual votes. When the workers had leverage, Tory governments built council housing. When they lost that leverage Labour was there cutting benefits. Without the extra-Parliamentary threat from below there is only the threat of the Markets, ie. the rich. Without a vibrant culture of working class resistance with its own media there is only the voice of the rich. And thus neoliberalism becomes TINA.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jan 3, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> The reality of the Parliamentary limit for tolerating leftie ideas has been particularly stark this cycle, it's true, but what left electoralism (deliberately) forgets is that it's all fundamentally based on _leverage_, not individual votes. When the workers had leverage, Tory governments built council housing. When they lost that leverage Labour was there cutting benefits. Without the extra-Parliamentary threat from below there is only the threat of the Markets, ie. the rich. Without a vibrant culture of working class resistance with its own media there is only the voice of the rich. And thus neoliberalism becomes TINA.


There's a lot of truth to that, but even then, elections can still matter. There is a tangible, measurable difference between Lula and Bolsonaro, for instance, both of them reacting the same situation on the ground wrt leverage. I think a Corbyn-led Labour govt in the UK would have been tangibly, measurably different. We'll never know, sadly.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 3, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> There's a lot of truth to that, but even then, elections can still matter. There is a tangible, measurable difference between Lula and Bolsonaro, for instance, both of them reacting the same situation on the ground wrt leverage. I think a Corbyn-led Labour govt in the UK would have been tangibly, measurably different. We'll never know, sadly.


if only you read more widely here you'd have encountered this post


Kate Sharpley said:


> Albert writing in 1952:
> "When we declare our opposition to reformism, we do not mean that we oppose reforms, and obviously any crumb is better than no bread at all. What we oppose is the devotion of the labour movement to the reformist principle, thus gradually taking over from the middle-class do-gooders, and even (as has happened above all in England) letting those people in turn take over the direction of the labour movement politically, on the grounds that they will thus manage to achieve a few parliamentary and other reforms here and there. The result of this action is that in the end we get some reforms, but no social change-over such as the labour movement was originally created for. "
> Workers’ Control and the Wage System (Ideas: What is Anarcho-Syndicalism?)


clearly elections have a bearing on what happens but what administrations produce is what they think they can get away with, and what they can get away with is limited by opposition, eg opposition to the poll tax

any corbyn government would have been hamstrung by the opposition to him within his own party let alone the opposition in the media etc


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## Karl Masks (Jan 3, 2023)

AmateurAgitator said:


> Yes ofcourse, theres literally no other way of conveying ideas etc at all than with books.


good luck with that then


----------



## Magnus McGinty (Jan 3, 2023)

Karl Masks said:


> good luck with that then


I think you missed the sarcasm.


----------



## Pickman's model (Jan 3, 2023)

Magnus McGinty said:


> I think you missed the sarcasm.


don't know how, it was literally dripping down the screen


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## Karl Masks (Jan 3, 2023)

Pickman's model said:


> don't know how, it was literally dripping down the screen


being neurodiverse I don't parse digital sarcasm that's as dry as that.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 3, 2023)

Karl Masks said:


> being neurodiverse I don't parse digital sarcasm that's as dry as that.


do you not think there are other ways of spreading ideas than through books? through discussion on an internet forum, for example?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jan 3, 2023)

Pickman's model said:


> if only you read more widely here you'd have encountered this post
> 
> clearly elections have a bearing on what happens but what administrations produce is what they think they can get away with, and what they can get away with is limited by opposition, eg opposition to the poll tax
> 
> any corbyn government would have been hamstrung by the opposition to him within his own party let alone the opposition in the media etc


You're incapable of engaging on here without some attempt to belittle the person you engage with. It's pathetic. 

But I'll respond to this because this bit - 'what administrations produce is what they think they can get away with' - is exactly what I'm disputing. That implies that every administration has similar aims, which simply isn't true. Again, I would point you at the example of the contrast between Bolsonaro and Lula in Brazil. Mujica in Uruguay would be another good example of an elected leader with significantly different aims from the person he defeated in the election.


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## Magnus McGinty (Jan 3, 2023)

Karl Masks said:


> being neurodiverse I don't parse digital sarcasm that's as dry as that.


Glad to have helped then.


----------



## Pickman's model (Jan 3, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> You're incapable of engaging on here without some attempt to belittle the person you engage with. It's pathetic.
> 
> But I'll respond to this because this bit - 'what administrations produce is what they think they can get away with' - is exactly what I'm disputing. That implies that every administration has similar aims, which simply isn't true. Again, I would point you at the example of the contrast between Bolsonaro and Lula in Brazil. Mujica in Uruguay would be another good example of an elected leader with significantly different aims from the person he defeated in the election.


all administrations have the same aim, which is to implement as much of their programme as they can. the amount they can implement will depend on how much and how effective opposition they receive.


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## Fozzie Bear (Jan 3, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> Mixed, some are more based on context-specific actions taken or not taken which I think would qualify mainly as intra-group sniping, which I try not to do, but some are more general. Some of the big ones are probably:
> 
> A tendency to bureaucratise at very small numbers where flexibility would probably be more sensible. eg. AF and SolFed both run their major decisions through bi-annual in-person meetings with reps negotiating on the basis of direct mandates, which makes response times extraordinarily slow for orgs which hover between two and three figure memberships particularly given today's technology.
> Lack of a coherent action strategy, with the "federal" part of the equation frequently not meaning very much beyond funding occasional printed matter and cohering a few writers on a website (who could have done that anyway, including to larger audiences on other more established outlets like libcom).
> ...


Interesting.

Presumably the argument for a bureaucratic structure (point 1) is precisely in case there is a large uptick in members? But actually that isn't sufficient (point 3)?

(Perhaps a another side to this is that small orgs might attract people with a predisposition to bureaucratise things, to the detriment of other tasks?)


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## teuchter (Jan 3, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> What are non members meant to think?  Well, there's number of aspects to that.  First of all, what is my aim in working within organised anarchism. It isn't actually to turn working class people into anarchists in the sense of people well-versed in Kropotkin and Malatesta.  It's to reinvigorate working class self confidence and self belief, to spread the values of solidarity and mutual aid, and through them show the value of direct action and self management.


If this is the real aim I wonder if it would be better to make an organisation without "anarchist" in the name. Maybe fewer people would be dismissive or intimidated, and you'd get better engagement.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 3, 2023)

teuchter said:


> If this is the real aim I wonder if it would be better to make an organisation without "anarchist" in the name. Maybe fewer people would be dismissive or intimidated, and you'd get better engagement.


We do plenty without labelling it “anarchist”, because you’re right, both “anarchist” and “communist” have baggage and we’ve saddled ourselves with both.


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## brogdale (Jan 3, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> We do plenty without labelling it “anarchist”, because you’re right, both “anarchist” and “communist” have baggage and we’ve saddled ourselves with both.


He may be on to something there; maybe give _Statist capitalists _a go?


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## Rob Ray (Jan 3, 2023)

Fozzie Bear said:


> Interesting.
> 
> Presumably the argument for a bureaucratic structure (point 1) is precisely in case there is a large uptick in members? But actually that isn't sufficient (point 3)?
> 
> (Perhaps a another side to this is that small orgs might attract people with a predisposition to bureaucratise things, to the detriment of other tasks?)


Yes to both, but various other elements as well.

The start points for Constitutions and procedures are often cribbed from more successful (ie. historic) orgs which had built up substantial systems for dealing with a wide variety of issues (eg. someone misbehaving, intra-branch friction etc), and will include measures that are either overkill or unworkable, leading to ...
Annual tweaking and New Ideas which add up over time to make what were fairly streamlined systems more and more Byzantine. Solfed for example has been fiddling with its ruleset for more than 30 years, not always with the most comprehensive of notes, so even the longest-serving folks are often not entirely clear on the actively agreed procedures. Plus ...
The use of older constitutions and rulesets tends to effectively ignore or barely engage with the advent of the internet, so the actual making of decisions often seems bizarrely archaic.
Edit: Oh the other big one is anarchists attempting to replace the authority of individual power with the authority of the ruleset. Imv this is often an error, as it misunderstands the desire to remove central authority for a desire to remove personal responsibility, and can end up shoving decision-making into exactly the kind of hammer-for-a-screw legalism we critique in other contexts. But it can be a factor.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 3, 2023)

teuchter said:


> If this is the real aim I wonder if it would be better to make an organisation without "anarchist" in the name. Maybe fewer people would be dismissive or intimidated, and you'd get better engagement.


As said above, we do. But then of course the best of our activities end up disassociated from anarchism, rather perpetuating the problem in which people say "what do anarchists actually achieve though?"


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## danny la rouge (Jan 3, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> As said above, we do. But then of course the best of our activities end up disassociated from anarchism, rather perpetuating the problem in which people say "what do anarchists actually achieve though?"


Indeed.


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## teuchter (Jan 3, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> We do plenty without labelling it “anarchist”, because you’re right, both “anarchist” and “communist” have baggage and we’ve saddled ourselves with both.


I mean your organisation itself, though, rather than the things it does. Maybe more people would be interested in joining you, and helping you to do the not-exactly-anarchism stuff that you do. That's kind of what the thread started being about, right?


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## teuchter (Jan 3, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> As said above, we do. But then of course the best of our activities end up disassociated from anarchism, rather perpetuating the problem in which people say "what do anarchists actually achieve though?"


Why's that a "problem"?


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## Rob Ray (Jan 3, 2023)

teuchter said:


> I mean your organisation itself, though, rather than the things it does. Maybe more people would be interested in joining you, and helping you to do the not-exactly-anarchism stuff that you do. That's kind of what the thread started being about, right?


This is known as a front, and is generally frowned on as being pretty misleading. Plus it doesn't work, the world isn't entirely full of stupid people, they tend to read the Aims and Principles and be "oh so you're anarchists."



teuchter said:


> Why's that a "problem"?


Because ultimately it doesn't matter what the label is it'll be pilloried in the same way because it's a challenge to the status quo, and then what, change the name again? Start from scratch? What's the point of that? Plus unlike Hermes we can't just peel off the old label and stick Evri on all our vans, there's 150 years-worth of literature on the subject which is all branded "anarchism" that we'd kind of like people to read.


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## Magnus McGinty (Jan 3, 2023)

teuchter said:


> I mean your organisation itself, though, rather than the things it does. Maybe more people would be interested in joining you, and helping you to do the not-exactly-anarchism stuff that you do. That's kind of what the thread started being about, right?


I thought the question was directed at anarchists. Anyway, broader church orgs tend to attract loons.


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## Shechemite (Jan 3, 2023)

Magnus McGinty said:


> . Anyway, broader church orgs tend to attract loons.



Urban isn’t that bad is it?


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## Magnus McGinty (Jan 3, 2023)

Shechemite said:


> Urban isn’t that bad is it?


It has indeed. But I was thinking more along the lines of Occupy.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jan 3, 2023)

Magnus McGinty said:


> It has indeed. But I was thinking more along the lines of Occupy.


It's a bit of a conundrum, isn't it? For example, the strength of the Arab Spring movements was also their weakness. Decentralised and leaderless, they were impossible to suppress, but their lack of centralisation and leadership also meant that there was no clear pathway forwards once the regimes had been toppled.


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## teuchter (Jan 3, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> This is known as a front, and is generally frowned on as being pretty misleading. Plus it doesn't work, the world isn't entirely full of stupid people, they tend to read the Aims and Principles and be "oh so you're anarchists."



Change the aims and principles to reflect what the group actually does, then.



Rob Ray said:


> Because ultimately it doesn't matter what the label is it'll be pilloried in the same way because it's a challenge to the status quo, and then what, change the name again? Start from scratch? What's the point of that?



My question was why it's a problem if the best of your activities end up disassociated with "anarchism", and people ask "what do anarchists actually achieve?"

The answer is fairly simple: "quite a bit of good stuff, but not really anarchism". It's better than "nothing".


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## Magnus McGinty (Jan 3, 2023)

littlebabyjesus said:


> It's a bit of a conundrum, isn't it? For example, the strength of the Arab Spring movements was also their weakness. Decentralised and leaderless, they were impossible to suppress, but their lack of centralisation and leadership also meant that there was no clear pathway forwards once the regimes had been toppled.


And they could easily be hijacked/subverted. Which brings us back round to why you need orgs and structures.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 3, 2023)

teuchter said:


> The answer is fairly simple: "quite a bit of good stuff, but not really anarchism". It's better than "nothing".


So to be clear, your strategic advice is for us to not do anarchist stuff and not call ourselves anarchists. Great stuff thanks mate, I'll file that brilliant plan right alongside the works of Sun Tzu. 

Oh no, it fell in the bin, shame .


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## JimW (Jan 3, 2023)

What we need is TikTok influencers and Minecraft streamers _of the left_


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## Petcha (Jan 3, 2023)

Anarchists *voting* on whether or not they're anarchists...?

Gotta be a pisstake. I had gathered voting on anything was anathema to an anarchist? Gonna stay out of this thread but that's pretty funny.


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## DotCommunist (Jan 3, 2023)

Petcha said:


> Anarchists *voting* on whether or not they're anarchists...?
> 
> Gotta be a pisstake. I had gathered voting on anything was anathema to an anarchist? Gonna stay out of this thread but that's pretty funny.


I don't mind people disagreeing with what they have understood but someone guffawing over thier own ignorance winds me up. Less recons, more reading.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 3, 2023)

Petcha said:


> Gonna stay out of this thread but that's pretty funny.


Uh, not really no. Anarchists vote on stuff all the time.


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## Petcha (Jan 3, 2023)

DotCommunist said:


> I don't mind people disagreeing with what they have understood but someone guffawing over thier own ignorance winds me up. Less recons, more reading.



Sorry, slow news day. That just tickled me.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jan 3, 2023)

Petcha said:


> I had gathered voting on anything was anathema to an anarchist?


There's no contradiction between refusing to vote within a state system whose legitimacy you don't recognise and promoting democracy within your own movement.


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## 8ball (Jan 3, 2023)

Magnus McGinty said:


> Anyway, broader church orgs tend to attract loons.



Just not so many as the extremely narrow church orgs.

I think the problem with glossing over certain terms is that firstly there can be a loss of identity and secondly you run the risk of some idiot outing the local mutual aid group as "HARBORING ANARCHISTS!!!"  , which could be a bit of a distraction.


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## 8ball (Jan 3, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> Uh, not really no. Anarchists vote on stuff all the time.



Such as _I'm A Celebrity..._


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## Magnus McGinty (Jan 3, 2023)

8ball said:


> Just not so many as the extremely narrow church orgs.


Depends how we’re defining loon. I was meaning specifically truther types rather than cult like Marxist sects (which aren’t anarchist anyways).


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## danny la rouge (Jan 3, 2023)

Petcha said:


> I had gathered voting on anything was anathema to an anarchist?


You had gathered wrong.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 3, 2023)

8ball said:


> Such as _I'm A Celebrity..._


Hancock could not be allowed to win


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## 8ball (Jan 3, 2023)

Magnus McGinty said:


> Depends how we’re defining loon. I was meaning specifically truther types rather than cult like Marxist sects (which aren’t anarchist anyways).



They're everywhere.  Not sure you can keep them out just by means of what's written on the tin.
Unless you name yourself something like "THE LANARKSHIRE RESOLUTELY ANARCHIST OSAMA BIN LADEN DEFINITELY DID IT MUTUAL AID GROUP AND FOOD BANK".


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## Magnus McGinty (Jan 3, 2023)

8ball said:


> They're everywhere.  Not sure you can keep them out just by means of what's written on the tin.
> Unless you name yourself something like "THE LANARKSHIRE RESOLUTELY ANARCHIST OSAMA BIN LADEN DEFINITELY DID IT MUTUAL AID GROUP AND FOOD BANK".


Speaking from experience which admittedly is limited they’re less attracted to the words anarchist and communist the same as others. A more broadly speaking name such as Occupy may coincide more easily with their thinking. 
Sites they’re attracted to such as Natural News absolutely slate the left for example.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 3, 2023)

8ball said:


> They're everywhere.  Not sure you can keep them out just by means of what's written on the tin.
> Unless you name yourself something like "THE LANARKSHIRE RESOLUTELY ANARCHIST OSAMA BIN LADEN DEFINITELY DID IT MUTUAL AID GROUP AND FOOD BANK".


TLRAOBLDDIMAGAFB has unfortunately split over a disagreement about idpol. And it definitely was about idpol, not as you might have heard about Tony sleeping with Reg's ex.


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## 8ball (Jan 3, 2023)

Magnus McGinty said:


> Speaking from experience which admittedly is limited they’re less attracted to the words anarchist and communist the same as others. A more broadly speaking name such as Occupy may coincide more easily with their thinking.
> Sites they’re attracted to such as Natural News absolutely slate the left for example.



XR has a whole bunch of them.
Using words like "anarchist" as a means of keeping people out can get a bit culty if overdone.


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## Magnus McGinty (Jan 3, 2023)

8ball said:


> XR has a whole bunch of them.
> Using words like "anarchist" as a means of keeping people out can get a bit culty if overdone.


XR is another good example. Although that appears to be single issue as opposed to anarchism under a different name.


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## Magnus McGinty (Jan 3, 2023)

8ball said:


> Using words like "anarchist" as a means of keeping people out can get a bit culty if overdone.


A bit like calling a golf club a sports club to attract more interest and when they get there they find they can only play golf.


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## teuchter (Jan 3, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> So to be clear, your strategic advice is for us to not do anarchist stuff and not call ourselves anarchists. Great stuff thanks mate, I'll file that brilliant plan right alongside the works of Sun Tzu.
> 
> Oh no, it fell in the bin, shame .



As I understand it, you're already not doing anarchist stuff, and that stuff is the best and most effective stuff. Therefore, don't call yourselves anarchists, and more people might want to join you.

What does calling yourselves anarchists achieve?


----------



## 8ball (Jan 3, 2023)

Magnus McGinty said:


> A bit like calling a golf club a sports club to attract more interest and when they get there they find they can only play golf.



More like calling a leisure centre a badminton club because you don’t want accountants turning up.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 3, 2023)

teuchter said:


> As I understand it, you're already not doing anarchist stuff, and that stuff is the best and most effective stuff.


You understood wrong. We do useful things which are not labelled as anarchist, this does not mean we don't do useful stuff as anarchists as well.



teuchter said:


> Therefore, don't call yourselves anarchists, and more people might want to join you.
> 
> What does calling yourselves anarchists achieve?


I genuinely pity the mentality that produced these two sentences.


----------



## 8ball (Jan 3, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> TLRAOBLDDIMAGAFB has unfortunately split over a disagreement about idpol. And it definitely was about idpol, not as you might have heard about Tony sleeping with Reg's ex.



I think if you consult the group’s constitution, sleeping with exes domiciled outside the limits of Lanarkshire is also a thumbsdownable offence, regardless of the argument over the jazzhanding of goths being an idpol faction.


----------



## belboid (Jan 3, 2023)

LDC said:


> I think one of the (many) challenges to anarchist theory and practice is the fact that the political ideas and organisational forms of it arose in a very different time, one where the role of the State and its institutions were much clearer to many/most people. There's a level of complexity now (both in society as it is and the problems its created) that have no easy answers, and the answers that looked workable and robust 100 (or even 50 years) ago now look very unrealistic. And much of what some anarchists suggest as 'solutions' are clearly not very convincing to many people.
> 
> There's also the question of what is a State. If we have some centralised forms of organisation to fix certain global problems; climate change, weapons of mass destruction, global transport, etc. then at what point does this end up actually being a State or pseudo-State body, rather than some anarchist organ of collective organisation that has no power to enforce rules/laws etc.?


My main disagreement with anarchism has always been about what is a 'state' and the fact that, what the best anarchists describe as a central but still freely federated and democratic organ, is really a state by any other name.  And that isn't meant as a pedantic point or any kind of 'gotcha' but to note that if we don't know what a thing is, we will be hampered in our understanding of how to control it and how to eventually do away with it. 

In the meanwhile we have to work to, to use that Albert quote, build the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the equalitarian tendencies and the self -activity of the masses and whatever assists in their demystification.  And far from being against voting it means a massive expansion of voting, of democratising the institutions as best we can under the current system and to expose the contradictions between the claims of bourgeois democracy and the reality. 


LDC said:


> I mean I'm also interested in the getting from A to B discussion as well. I'm increasingly thinking it's as much likely to be some mix of collapse, the withdrawal of State insititutions from some areas, a seizing of territory, etc. and only in part a process of an uprising/social revolution.


This seems all too likely to me too, but the problem is, its hard to argue for in advance "we're just waiting for the imminent collapse of capitalism when the values of anarchism will become apparent!"


----------



## Rob Ray (Jan 3, 2023)

belboid said:


> the problem is, its hard to argue for in advance "we're just waiting for the imminent collapse of capitalism when the values of anarchism will become apparent!"


The _real_ question is how to parse the sudden realisation of a need for anarchist values against the non-understanding of a large number of people who are so wrapped up by the existing system they are totally incapable of imagining anything else, and in fact act against their own interests to protect the status quo. The rise of Mutual Aid groups during the pandemic (sparked by a Freedom Press article) was a very important example of this, and we're actually working on a book about that very topic.


----------



## Karl Masks (Jan 3, 2023)

Pickman's model said:


> do you not think there are other ways of spreading ideas than through books? through discussion on an internet forum, for example?


The Inquiry wasn't whether or not it's possible, but whether or not the person in question is willing or able. Explaining anarchism to a largely disinterested if not hostile audience isn't easy.


----------



## Pickman's model (Jan 3, 2023)

Karl Masks said:


> The Inquiry wasn't whether or not it's possible, but whether or not the person in question is willing or able. Explaining anarchism to a largely disinterested if not hostile audience isn't easy.


let's revisit what you actually asked


Karl Masks said:


> So again, how are you going to persuade people other than by telling them to read a book? Most people aren't going to want to read that book when they are already being persuaded to vote against their own itnerests on a daily basis.


you weren't asking what you think you were asking


----------



## teuchter (Jan 3, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> You understood wrong. We do useful things which are not labelled as anarchist, this does not mean we don't do useful stuff as anarchists as well.


What sort of useful stuff falls into the category of "done as anarchists" rather than "not labelled as anarchist"?


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## Rob Ray (Jan 3, 2023)

teuchter said:


> What sort of useful stuff falls into the category of "done as anarchists" rather than "not labelled as anarchist"?


Read through some anarchist news media or something if you're actually interested rather than just being tendentious, you're quite capable of using Google.


----------



## teuchter (Jan 3, 2023)

Rob Ray said:


> Read through some anarchist news media or something if you're actually interested rather than just being tendentious, you're quite capable of using Google.


I was interested to know what you (or other anarchists acting "as anarchists") mean by useful, and to whom. Google can't tell me that.


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## Rob Ray (Jan 3, 2023)

teuchter said:


> I was interested to know what you (or other anarchists acting "as anarchists") mean by useful, and to whom. Google can't tell me that.


No. I've got neither time nor the inclination to indulge your laziness and go through Freedom News, libcom, reddit or whatever to make a list for you to try and pick holes in. If you're interested you can show some initiative. If you aren't and, as has been the case through most of this thread, are mainly in it to find excuses to be dismissive, then that's your bag.


----------



## 8ball (Jan 4, 2023)

belboid said:


> My main disagreement with anarchism has always been about what is a 'state' and the fact that, what the best anarchists describe as a central but still freely federated and democratic organ, is really a state by any other name.



I get what you mean here, but if you remove elements like alienation from means of production, various forms of compulsion, the enforcement of inequality with hard borders, unaccountability of authority, the monopoly on violence, the ability of States to threaten and go to war (both military and economic) in a monolothic fashion, and an assortment of things I'm too groggy to think of right now, then I'm not sure how long the resulting society would resemble a State for.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 4, 2023)

8ball said:


> I get what you mean here, but if you remove elements like alienation from means of production, various forms of compulsion, the enforcement of inequality with hard borders, unaccountability of authority, the monopoly on violence, the ability of States to threaten and go to war (both military and economic) in a monolothic fashion, and an assortment of things I'm too groggy to think of right now, then I'm not sure how long the resulting society would resemble a State for.


Societies and states are not the same thing


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## 8ball (Jan 4, 2023)

Pickman's model said:


> Societies and states are not the same thing



Full moon in 2 days...


----------



## Pickman's model (Jan 4, 2023)

8ball said:


> Full moon in 2 days...


That's the most politically astute post you've made in years


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## 8ball (Jan 4, 2023)

Pickman's model said:


> That's the most politically astute post you've made in years



Certainly counts for it round here.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 4, 2023)

8ball said:


> Certainly counts for it round here.


If you have a body which facilitates the running of supra-communal things like transport, like an electric grid, that does not make it either a state or a society. Society is the population at large, in the same way an ocean is a body of water. Society has its currents, like an ocean, and like an ocean only a proportion of it can be controlled. The state is the conglomeration of attempts to control society whether through thought - eg education - or some more active measure like the army or police.

For marx the state was the means by which one class oppresses another. Our modern state incorporates this but adds other levels which also control but have other activities - eg the nhs. Controlling does not prevent it being in some ways beneficial - universal vaccination for instance. The state determines who is 'in' and who 'out' - not everyone in UK society had access to the national health service, for example. Similarly with the welfare state, payments are not universal and as we've seen during eg the miners strike or more recently with the quotas of sanctions can be applied or withheld to further the state's interests, not society's. The state is of course in society insofar as it is composed of members of society but its interests are opposed to those of society as it seeks to maintain its own power and existence.


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## Karl Masks (Jan 4, 2023)

Pickman's model said:


> let's revisit what you actually asked
> 
> you weren't asking what you think you were asking


Your inability to understand my post isn't my problem.


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## 8ball (Jan 4, 2023)

Pickman's model said:


> If you have a body which facilitates the running of supra-communal things like transport, like an electric grid, that does not make it either a state or a society. Society is the population at large, in the same way an ocean is a body of water. Society has its currents, like an ocean, and like an ocean only a proportion of it can be controlled. The state is the conglomeration of attempts to control society whether through thought - eg education - or some more active measure like the army or police.
> 
> For marx the state was the means by which one class oppresses another. Our modern state incorporates this but adds other levels which also control but have other activities - eg the nhs. Controlling does not prevent it being in some ways beneficial - universal vaccination for instance. The state determines who is 'in' and who 'out' - not everyone in UK society had access to the national health service, for example. Similarly with the welfare state, payments are not universal and as we've seen during eg the miners strike or more recently with the quotas of sanctions can be applied or withheld to further the state's interests, not society's. The state is of course in society insofar as it is composed of members of society but its interests are opposed to those of society as it seeks to maintain its own power and existence.



A fair bit to unpack there.  I guess it would help to know what question you thought you were answering.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 4, 2023)

8ball said:


> A fair bit to unpack there.  I guess it would help to know what question you thought you were answering.


Your confusion between states and societies


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## 8ball (Jan 4, 2023)

Pickman's model said:


> Your confusion between states and societies



You wasted that much time on a single elision a small child could understand? 

You might want to look up for yourself what a society is too before drowning yourself in nautical metaphors.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 4, 2023)

8ball said:


> You wasted that much time on a single elision a small child could understand?
> 
> You might want to look up for yourself what a society is too before drowning yourself in nautical metaphors.


Perhaps you need to enlist the assistance of a small child then as you plainly struggle with it


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## 8ball (Jan 4, 2023)

Pickman's model said:


> Perhaps you need to enlist the assistance of a small child then as you plainly seem to struggle with it



FFS, you can’t even make literal sense at this point. 

Try smaller words, maybe a dictionary.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 4, 2023)

8ball said:


> FFS, you can’t even make literal sense at this point.
> 
> Try smaller words, maybe a dictionary.


Which words are you having difficulty with?


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## 8ball (Jan 4, 2023)

Pickman's model said:


> Which words are you having difficulty with?



See, you’ve gone and done it again.  All good words, just no grasp of their meaning.

Your ability to use a computing device seems to indicate some promise, so keep at it.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 4, 2023)

8ball said:


> See, you’ve gone and done it again.  All good words, just no grasp of their meaning.
> 
> Your ability to use a computing device seems to indicate some promise, so keep at it.


One day you'll advance beyond ad hominems. Maybe.


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## 8ball (Jan 4, 2023)

Pickman's model said:


> One day you'll advance beyond ad hominems. Maybe.



One day you’ll stop hiding behind them.
Who am I kidding, of course you won’t.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 4, 2023)

8ball said:


> One day you’ll stop hiding behind them.
> Who am I kidding, of course you won’t.


I'm not hiding. If you've an actual disagreement with my post 614 then let's hear it


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## 8ball (Jan 4, 2023)

Pickman's model said:


> I'm not hiding. If you've an actual disagreement with my post 614 then let's hear it



You need time to Google for more ad homs? 

I’d happily take up that point with a good faith actor, but I’m reminded of that old adage about wrestling with pigs.


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## Red Cat (Jan 4, 2023)

This anarchism looks fab, respectful and curious discussion, and good conflict resolution skills too. What's not to like?


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## Pickman's model (Jan 4, 2023)

8ball said:


> You need time to Google for more ad homs?
> 
> I’d happily take up that point with a good faith actor, but I’m reminded of that old adage about wrestling with pigs.


If I sought an ad hom I don't think I'd need to search for it. But throughout this lovely little exchange you've been a worse faith actor than me


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## 8ball (Jan 4, 2023)

Red Cat said:


> This anarchism looks fab, respectful and curious discussion, and good conflict resolution skills too. What's not to like?



There’s also a meat raffle.


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## danny la rouge (Jan 4, 2023)

Red Cat said:


> This anarchism looks fab, respectful and curious discussion, and good conflict resolution skills too. What's not to like?


To be fair, several of the people engaged in this thread are not anarchists.

But can we have the meat raffle another night? I’m vegan.


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## locomotive (Jan 6, 2023)

danny la rouge said:


> But can we have the meat raffle another night? I’m vegan.


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## Magnus McGinty (Jan 6, 2023)

locomotive said:


> View attachment 358563


Also applicable to AF/ACG/ANCOM


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## Serge Forward (Saturday at 12:57 AM)

Not really


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