danny la rouge
Ninja swords for all disabled people
Oh, OK. Everyone joins committees to decide what gets done.A brief outline of his ideas would suffice!
Is anarchism a joke?
- Thread starter CUMBRIANDRAGON
- Start date
danny la rouge
Ninja swords for all disabled people
i remember the maoists used to have a slogan that the fish need a sea to swim in .. it seems to me brit@ has forgotten this
agree!a very good point, very well expressed.
that's esssentially what i didn't like about that 'revolting london' leaflet. it was like a leaflet PROMOTING what was basically class struggle anarchism but kinda tagged onto the mayoral election.
it should JUST have been a leaflet slagging off the candidates, calling them wankers, gobshites etc and not bothering with pushing the (anarchist) party line which just puts folk off. if anything it should have been entirely oppositional to all the other political groupings pushing a political line but by default would probably have been regarded as no different by those it (i would imagine) hoped to attract.
something which, sadly, i think was rather reflected in the turn-out.
still, to their credit, at least the did do something.
what total bollox you talk .. anarchists, with the pre- SP, were the back bone of the anti poll tax movement .. the SWP ignored the issue for many months due to their idiot denial of the importance of community .. then they tried to take over groups all over the country by packing meeting etc and distracted from the task in hand .. the behaviour of the SWP during the poll tax was a disgrace
biff curtains
Fred West or Fred Housego
When the labour movement hasn't got the self confidence to strike in it's own interests why the fuck should we strike against the war? Which is abstract and far flung for most people.
I've always thought the opposite, to be honest.
There's books and books of this stuff. Sometimes it feels like he's planned every inch of post revolutionary society when you read Albert.
There's more here. Used to be a stand alone website with reams of stuff on parecon, but the link's broken at the moment so I can't point you to it.
danny la rouge
Ninja swords for all disabled people
Erm, nope. Structure galore! That link isn't the whole thing, you know.
There are also places it is being put into practice, so it is constantly being refined.
I have reservations, but also a lot of time for it for two reasons: 1, it is actually being used. 2, it could be the type of model needed for large organisations "post revolution", such as broadcasting organisations, for example.
A libertarian society would probably ideally have Parecon pockets, in my view.
Seriously, I'll lend you a book.
Nigel
For A Degenerates' Workers State
I was'nt slating it, but like you implied the way it comes across in the last article seems like a utopian pipe dream, without any infastructure I cannot see it working.
I think that the main problem with the left is hanging onto Bolshervik model, with its beaurocratic elites, which I cannot see turning into anything but authoritarian, restrictive governments.
But I cannot see Anarchists offering anything viable
No the SWP did support calls for workers to organise non-collection. (That would be local Government workers who are public servants but not Civil Servants as they don't work for the Civil Service). One council - Greenwhich - did take strike action after a legal ballot. The strike was legally over the workloads caused by poll tax administration (there could be no legal strike over poll tax as a political/moral issue), the impact of the industrial action was to refuse to collect. So it wasn't a completely impossible demand.
I know of one location where the poll tax records were taken out and dumped in a river by a dissillusioned worker who was actually a LP member.
However, the SWP did also support non-payment, and organised many of the local groups. There was some initial slowness in Scotland, but by the time registration was rolling out to England the SWP were up to speed.
In my area an assortment of Trots* organised the group in 1989. We went around estates while most people were still ignorant about the whole thing.
By late 1989 and 1990 the other Trots had left town and the SWP along with students and non-alligned locals ran the campaign.
The local Anarchists were mainly into hunt-sabbing. They did attend some anti-poll tax events we organised, but they missed the London demo (riot) because it clashed with a hunt sab.
*One of those Trots who was then a member of Workers Power previously of the SWP, before that of the WRP, is now a member of the Anarchist Federation via the RCP and Red Action.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Unbelievable. Apart from the AF producing the very first anti-poll tax publication in england (on top of calling strikers scabs and all the other tripe you think people on here will swallow). I really mean the total glossing over and what anounts to a series of lies about the SWPs position at the start of the anti-poll tax campaign. It's easy to start after you'd 're-adjusted' your postion. What made you re-adjust your position?
Shameless.
It is interesting on the economic aspect that some of the economic ideas that have been associated with anarchism and the libertarian left (to the scorn of orthodox Leninists an Trotskyists) are now gaining much more support and being adopted in watered down forms across much ot the political spectrum - i.e. mutualism, cooperativism and economic democracy. This stretches from the Green Party, the Labour left, independent socialists (Ken Coates etc) even to mainstream social democrats (reading between the lines of Neal Lawson's article in the Guardian this week). Even the Tories are attempting to fake it in the UK.
Anarchist or Libertarian Communism remains the absoloutist position of "orthodox" anarchists though - and Albert's Parecon is perhaps just an updated and more fleshed out idea of the libertarian communism of Kropotkin, Isaac Puente et al. There was an interesting debate between Albert and Schweikart on Z-Net over the relative merits and feasability of their economic models - Parecon (roughly speaking communist with a small c) and Economic Democracy (roughly speaking socialist-mutualist).
Of course in the end you can have all the intricate models you want but, as in Argentina in recent memory it is what working people put in place following economic upheaval/transition that counts - although some piecemeal and often temporary experiments can be conducted whilst still under the reign of capital. Some of these may even be introduced on a local or larger scale by progressive parties and movements.
As far as UK (and world) anarchism is concerned, intellectually it is not a joke as suggested above - if anything it is currently having its' intellectual storehouse regularly pilfered by left, right and centre. Organisationally it maybe though, and many anarchists are a joke, although this was more common when "punk" still held some sway (being in most cases a form of extreme and quickly commodified anti-social individualism and infantilism rather than a socio-political current).
Way back when, when I was an anarcho-syndicalist we semed to have more purchase on reality (and easily identifiable common enemies - requiring easily identifiable tactics of opposition - with much of the rest of the left in Thatcherism and street fascism) than is currently evident from what passes for either the anarchist movement or the "left".
Now that the things we face are socially ingrained neo-liberalism, populist "democratic" fascism and a global challenge of war, climate change and resource scarcity, from the outside the anarchist movement (and much of the rest of the left) appear often to be running round like headless chickens without focus or the ability to talk to/communicate with people outside their own circles.
Those things in this neck of the woods that are promising are influenced by, sometimes participated in, but definitely outside the ideological UK "anarchist" movement. Counter to Groucho's assertion the growth of the British Isles IWW is a promising sign (though relatively small at the moment 4-500 is the biggest explicitly syndicalist/industrial unionist initiative in this part of the world for a long time and ties in with other base level organising efforts) What is inportant here is that the IWW is not politically sectarian and is not "anarchist" - if it were, then it would not grow as it has done and includes socialists and greens and left libertarians of various stripes as well as independent minded workers. On a political level the IWCA has been a comparable initiative of the broadly speaking libertarian (in the sense of non-leninist, not the "social libertarian" sense ) left. Despite recent setbacks this still seems a worthwhile initiative, though too rigid "cultural classism" and sectarian habits learned by its activists whilst in the leninist and anarchist movements may hold it back.
Meanwhile, some of the Marxist left are exploring new territory under the banner of ecosocialism, whilst left greens are seeking to "redden" their part of the green movement under the same banner. Whether this comes to anything will perhaps depend on whether both groups can properly critique and move beyond the historical dead-end of Trotskyism in the case of the left groups and the dead end of popular frontist/coalitionist parliamentarianism that has neutralised many of the European Green Parties as serious vehicles for change (and the drift to the right of European Green Parties is now approaching a critical point)
We are in a time of political, economic and ideological flux with many opportunities and threats. Whether anarchists, or for that matter the left as a whole are "a joke" stuck in oudated analyses and purist little cults or can transform into something relevant and promising is in their own hands.
Anarchist or Libertarian Communism remains the absoloutist position of "orthodox" anarchists though - and Albert's Parecon is perhaps just an updated and more fleshed out idea of the libertarian communism of Kropotkin, Isaac Puente et al. There was an interesting debate between Albert and Schweikart on Z-Net over the relative merits and feasability of their economic models - Parecon (roughly speaking communist with a small c) and Economic Democracy (roughly speaking socialist-mutualist).
Of course in the end you can have all the intricate models you want but, as in Argentina in recent memory it is what working people put in place following economic upheaval/transition that counts - although some piecemeal and often temporary experiments can be conducted whilst still under the reign of capital. Some of these may even be introduced on a local or larger scale by progressive parties and movements.
As far as UK (and world) anarchism is concerned, intellectually it is not a joke as suggested above - if anything it is currently having its' intellectual storehouse regularly pilfered by left, right and centre. Organisationally it maybe though, and many anarchists are a joke, although this was more common when "punk" still held some sway (being in most cases a form of extreme and quickly commodified anti-social individualism and infantilism rather than a socio-political current).
Way back when, when I was an anarcho-syndicalist we semed to have more purchase on reality (and easily identifiable common enemies - requiring easily identifiable tactics of opposition - with much of the rest of the left in Thatcherism and street fascism) than is currently evident from what passes for either the anarchist movement or the "left".
Now that the things we face are socially ingrained neo-liberalism, populist "democratic" fascism and a global challenge of war, climate change and resource scarcity, from the outside the anarchist movement (and much of the rest of the left) appear often to be running round like headless chickens without focus or the ability to talk to/communicate with people outside their own circles.
Those things in this neck of the woods that are promising are influenced by, sometimes participated in, but definitely outside the ideological UK "anarchist" movement. Counter to Groucho's assertion the growth of the British Isles IWW is a promising sign (though relatively small at the moment 4-500 is the biggest explicitly syndicalist/industrial unionist initiative in this part of the world for a long time and ties in with other base level organising efforts) What is inportant here is that the IWW is not politically sectarian and is not "anarchist" - if it were, then it would not grow as it has done and includes socialists and greens and left libertarians of various stripes as well as independent minded workers. On a political level the IWCA has been a comparable initiative of the broadly speaking libertarian (in the sense of non-leninist, not the "social libertarian" sense ) left. Despite recent setbacks this still seems a worthwhile initiative, though too rigid "cultural classism" and sectarian habits learned by its activists whilst in the leninist and anarchist movements may hold it back.
Meanwhile, some of the Marxist left are exploring new territory under the banner of ecosocialism, whilst left greens are seeking to "redden" their part of the green movement under the same banner. Whether this comes to anything will perhaps depend on whether both groups can properly critique and move beyond the historical dead-end of Trotskyism in the case of the left groups and the dead end of popular frontist/coalitionist parliamentarianism that has neutralised many of the European Green Parties as serious vehicles for change (and the drift to the right of European Green Parties is now approaching a critical point)
We are in a time of political, economic and ideological flux with many opportunities and threats. Whether anarchists, or for that matter the left as a whole are "a joke" stuck in oudated analyses and purist little cults or can transform into something relevant and promising is in their own hands.
Nigel
For A Degenerates' Workers State
Another Rant Against The SWP!!!!!!!!!
This is absolute rubbish.
I was in the SWP at the time, any action initiated by white collar unions like CPSA was not pushed forward by the SWP. Tony Cliff made a notorious speech about ,"You might as well burn your bus ticket as you Poll Tax Bill". They were later involved in the anti poll tax movement, and despite the policies of the SWP many members played an heroic role, even going to prison for not paying poll tax. But in general most of the Hacks in the SWP were prepared to push non payment to the first hurdle of a fine, and then pay, were hostile towards non registration, sectarian towards anyone who had a serious agenda of fighting the poll tax(apart from if they thought they could get them to join their mickey mouse organisation), frightened of upsetiing 'left' labour councillers and were very glad when it was all over, sabotaging any attempt to continue the campaigns against Council Tax, local government capping etc. etc.
This is absolute rubbish.
I was in the SWP at the time, any action initiated by white collar unions like CPSA was not pushed forward by the SWP. Tony Cliff made a notorious speech about ,"You might as well burn your bus ticket as you Poll Tax Bill". They were later involved in the anti poll tax movement, and despite the policies of the SWP many members played an heroic role, even going to prison for not paying poll tax. But in general most of the Hacks in the SWP were prepared to push non payment to the first hurdle of a fine, and then pay, were hostile towards non registration, sectarian towards anyone who had a serious agenda of fighting the poll tax(apart from if they thought they could get them to join their mickey mouse organisation), frightened of upsetiing 'left' labour councillers and were very glad when it was all over, sabotaging any attempt to continue the campaigns against Council Tax, local government capping etc. etc.
Maybe comming together more ,Opening social centres {squats} etc. . I don't have the answers.
october_lost
It's not hip any more...
Its not a one or the other choice, you should engage in all spheres of life that you can. Picking fights here and there is a recipe for a very weak movement imo
re SWP and the poll tax:
i was a member of the swappies at the time and also a local govt worker. There was quite a bit of tension between us and the SP/Militant at the time (I was in a poll tax group with a Militant member called Jeremy Dear - he's doing alright now). They were critical of the SWP because our posters said 'Don't collect don't pay' and their's said 'don't pay don't collect' - a distinction i didn't really understand at the time, but it was indicative of a slowness of the SWP to appreciate the community struggle - despite what had been going on in Scotland.
During our first local anti-poll tax march Militant slagged us off publically for chanting 'fight Thatcher's poll tax, not Thatcher's war' (the first Gulf War was taking place at the time) cos we might put off anti-poll tax activists who were ambivalent or supportive of the war. I've come to think that Militant were probably right about this, but I also think that publishing an anti-poll tax newsletter that specifically condemned the SWP for this was a mistake given that the SWP and Miltant in my london borough was the only organised resistance - there was no @ or Labour left activity at all where we were. (I had quite a heated argument with Jeremy Dear about this at the time.)
A group from our SWP branch die-hardly refused to pay and had our wages attached after going through liability orders and court hearings etc. We also got lists leaked to us from the Community Charge office of those who were going to be the first to receive summonses and we drove around the borough in a car putting leaflets through people's doors encouraging them to attend court. This was not a tactic supported by the SWP branch. What we did do was host a meeting at our union branch for members of Greenwhich workers who were on strike over the issue - Rahul Patel came and spoke. Came to nothing, really.
But - having woken up - the SWP did organise around court hearings and provide McKenzies friends. I attended court hearings from Essex to Bournemouth offering support to non-payers, either direct advice or demonstrating. SWPers also fought back in Trafalgar Sq - I had a number of close friends who were nicked after dawn raids (and I count it among the most inspiring events of my political life). SWP members and sympathisers in our union branch organised a coach to the event which dropped us off in South London. We booked a 50-seater and there were only 6 of us on it, iirc!
Given the nature of the Party it was difficult for me to get a grip of the criticism against it at the time - there was so little internal discussion and I was crap at searching out other Left or @ publications until after the event. What I heard subsequently about Swappie behaviour around the country - altho I had no first-hand experience of it - came as no surprise really, and I've read and heard of lots of accounts since that are plausible, notwithstanding the partisan bias of many.
In reality, notwithstanding the debates at Swappie Central Committee level and the behaviour of some branches - perhaps/probably a lot - in hijacking and domineering local campaigns in an effort to recruit rather than to do the business, SWP members did a great deal during the campaign both at local community and union level, in spite of all the manoeuvering in the Party above, as the SP and @ groups did too. Guess it depended where you were really...
i was a member of the swappies at the time and also a local govt worker. There was quite a bit of tension between us and the SP/Militant at the time (I was in a poll tax group with a Militant member called Jeremy Dear - he's doing alright now). They were critical of the SWP because our posters said 'Don't collect don't pay' and their's said 'don't pay don't collect' - a distinction i didn't really understand at the time, but it was indicative of a slowness of the SWP to appreciate the community struggle - despite what had been going on in Scotland.
During our first local anti-poll tax march Militant slagged us off publically for chanting 'fight Thatcher's poll tax, not Thatcher's war' (the first Gulf War was taking place at the time) cos we might put off anti-poll tax activists who were ambivalent or supportive of the war. I've come to think that Militant were probably right about this, but I also think that publishing an anti-poll tax newsletter that specifically condemned the SWP for this was a mistake given that the SWP and Miltant in my london borough was the only organised resistance - there was no @ or Labour left activity at all where we were. (I had quite a heated argument with Jeremy Dear about this at the time.)
A group from our SWP branch die-hardly refused to pay and had our wages attached after going through liability orders and court hearings etc. We also got lists leaked to us from the Community Charge office of those who were going to be the first to receive summonses and we drove around the borough in a car putting leaflets through people's doors encouraging them to attend court. This was not a tactic supported by the SWP branch. What we did do was host a meeting at our union branch for members of Greenwhich workers who were on strike over the issue - Rahul Patel came and spoke. Came to nothing, really.
But - having woken up - the SWP did organise around court hearings and provide McKenzies friends. I attended court hearings from Essex to Bournemouth offering support to non-payers, either direct advice or demonstrating. SWPers also fought back in Trafalgar Sq - I had a number of close friends who were nicked after dawn raids (and I count it among the most inspiring events of my political life). SWP members and sympathisers in our union branch organised a coach to the event which dropped us off in South London. We booked a 50-seater and there were only 6 of us on it, iirc!
Given the nature of the Party it was difficult for me to get a grip of the criticism against it at the time - there was so little internal discussion and I was crap at searching out other Left or @ publications until after the event. What I heard subsequently about Swappie behaviour around the country - altho I had no first-hand experience of it - came as no surprise really, and I've read and heard of lots of accounts since that are plausible, notwithstanding the partisan bias of many.
In reality, notwithstanding the debates at Swappie Central Committee level and the behaviour of some branches - perhaps/probably a lot - in hijacking and domineering local campaigns in an effort to recruit rather than to do the business, SWP members did a great deal during the campaign both at local community and union level, in spite of all the manoeuvering in the Party above, as the SP and @ groups did too. Guess it depended where you were really...
biff curtains
Fred West or Fred Housego
Unfortunately the pathetic dregs of the left tend to pick and choose - the bits that are glamarous or foreign.
