During the biggest crisis of capitalism of our generation, why is the UK anarcho-left not growing?

Is it simply that the existing groupings are too weak or wrongminded to get anything off the ground?

Or maybe in other areas, apart from the formal anarcho-left things are moving?

How's it doing in sweden?

Doesn't seem to be growing here, either, despite the presence of a fairly strong far-left. The Left Party is making proposals to help small businesses and the anarchosyndicalists seem to still be doing their own thing, plus lots of the anarcos mainly want to attack fascists.

Edit: not that I have much insight into Sweden's anarcholeft.

The left is dead.

Everywhere, or just the UK and Sweden?

Everywhere as far as I can see.

Whats the latest from Greece?

cos no one has a fucking clue what your proposing as an alternative. I've never even had it explained on here after 10 years of posting, and your meant to be the fucking experts!

Who's "you"?

The UK anarcho-left. (Read the thread title )

They're not on here are they?

I can't really be arsed to play these stupid games where people point out there are 50 shades of left, and the particular shade that is in question isn't ACTUALLY here to be explained or defended. I mean ffs that's part of the fucking problem.

I'm not disagreeing with that, I'm just saying that IME there's a smattering of very vocal lefties/anarchists on here who might or might not be representative of the far left in the UK. Probably not if you ask me.

The left, as in a popular and powerful political movement, is dead and has been for a generation, at least in the 1st world.

There are some, including fairly prominent ones, yeah.

Really? In that case the left is even more dead than I thought. Nothing personal, but this is hardly a hubbub of revolutionary activity is it?

The old left is dead cos people don't work in mass unionised industries and drink down the same pub. There aren't "bosses and workers" any more there's the 1% and the other 99% fragmented in to a million pieces.

The alternative is for people to make their own decisions about things and run things themselves. The alternative isn't telling them in advance how the world should be run.

Why would you assume that *this* would be anything more than a hobby?

There's that. And then there's the abject failure of people on the so-called left today to give a shit about engaging with people on their own terms instead of terms like Class War, Revolution, Commodity Fetishism and whatnot.

I don't, but then again this is a fairly big national forum with a wide readership. Much bigger than Indymedia and other typically leftie sites. So you'd think serious anarchos/lefties would see this as a somewhat important venue for reaching out to people.

Most "reaching out to people" is done in the workplace and local communities, not on forums.

I consider the Occupy movement to be anarcho-left even down to the not achieving anything in the end and having no unified strategies to achieve an undefined goal.

I read in a book the other day that there has never been a society without leaders in human history, and that even democracy don't work in a crisis.

Personally I'd like to have a pretty good idea what the fuck the altnerative is before I completely denounce capitalism. We're better off than a country in full on civil war and famine after all.

Which as it should be, but don't you think that electronic comms are important in political campaigning/organizing?

The first statement is a bit off, altho close enough to the truth. The second - depends on what you mean by "democracy", "work" and "crisis"

To an extent. But forums aren't that effective for campaigning/organising.

Yeah, I can see that. Can still see a massive role for digital comms in protests and more tactical jobs tho. Longer term face to face is the better option - building trust and dialogue and all that is so much easier when you can see, smell and hear the others.

Oh, I imagine that digital comms are used loads.

Hell yeah - but twitter and facebook + blog/website are far, far better places to do it than here imo - much bigger & wider audience, much easier for a story to become viral.

e2a: anyone who followed the workfare stuff back in Feb/March. should be left in doubt as to the power of digital comms - but it was facebook and twitter that was most important, along with Mumsnet.

Absolutely. Here's good for discussion, it's not exactly representative.