Anarchism

I've always wondered how many times the great artists have destroyed what to others would have been quite stunning only to create something that stands the test of time.

Like have you ever made a so so tune then completely deconstructed it to rebuild it into something that is beautiful?

Are you quite happy to plod along maintaining your status quo for the sake of others or do you want to destroy yourself and rebuild in your own best image that would then do more for others ?
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
mistadubalina is, of course, just trying to stir up trouble as he's wont to do. but, likely unwittingly, he touches on some common misconceptions. let's just lay them to rest straightaway.

i prefer to live the dream than read about it...

and yet here you are, making dreadfully unwitty comments on an internet message board.

you haven't the slightest fucking notion of what "living the dream" entails.

re: armchair anarchism & "living the dream"

I'm lucky enough to live in a reasonably tolerant & more important affluent 1st world country so I have never experienced serious repression but I have friends - especially in Mexico - who have. I know ppl on both sides of the border who have been or are in prison. I had trumped up felony charges brought against me but was again lucky enough to have them eventually dropped. An aquaintance was murdered in Mexico last year whilst engaged in political work. To say nothing of Brad Will, or those being prosecuted, validly or not, under the current Green Scare. & on & on, as well as all the names from history.

obv many armchair revolutionaries of all varieties, including anarchists. on the other hand a lot of good people - considerably more worthwhile than m. dubalina, I suspect - have suffered & fought for that stupid dream. It is not all a jolly lark for his or anyone else's stupid, childish whimsy.

I can only speak for myself but I found that action w/out at least some theory, w/out some notion of what you're doing & why, is just as useless if not worse than the opposite. "praxis" has the ring of a buzzword, but there you go.

being well-read is not equivalent to be an armchair revolutionary. tho if I am an armchair revolutionary then fine. I'm not politically active now. I was for a long time to the extent that it dominated my life in an unhealthy fashion. haven't been for a couple years. may or may not be again at in the future. either way I don't feel compelled to justify anything. nor should not being active preclude anyone from being able to discuss anything.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Who among us would be anarchists, pretty much living by their own rules devoid of any seeming sense of morality and not giving 2 fucks whether they offended anybody?

as I've I said I'm not attached to any term & I often prefer to specifically avoid "anarchist/m" b/c it tends to elicit idiocy such as the above comment.

the irony of saying anarchists are devoid of morality (putting aside Beyond Good & Evil anti-morality arguments for the moment) is particuarly rich as they tend to be some of the moralistic people around, to the point of unbearable sanctimony even.

you gotta love the contradictions eh

& here I was laboring under the misconception that by discussing politics on the Internet we were going to smash the state & bring about an egalitarian utopia.:rolleyes:
 

martin

----
As I understand it, anarchism cannot be imposed on others. So an anarchist 'takeover' (in a political sense) would only be achievable if everybody unilaterally embraced it as a philosophy/lifestyle.

It didn't take me long to suss that getting the people on one tube carriage to agree on anarchy and freedom - never mind an entire country - isn't going to happen anytime soon. Sure, there are instances where humans get on very well and can affect small changes in a leaderless, united environment. However, these tend to be very temporary and, humans being what they are, believing that 'leaders' won't inevitably emerge to inflict their egotistical demands on others is pretty deluded, IMO.

However, I'm not arguing that I'm right.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
As I understand it, anarchism cannot be imposed on others. So an anarchist 'takeover' (in a political sense) would only be achievable if everybody unilaterally embraced it as a philosophy/lifestyle.

It didn't take me long to suss that getting the people on one tube carriage to agree on anarchy and freedom - never mind an entire country - isn't going to happen anytime soon. Sure, there are instances where humans get on very well and can affect small changes in a leaderless, united environment. However, these tend to be very temporary and, humans being what they are, believing that 'leaders' won't inevitably emerge to inflict their egotistical demands on others is pretty deluded, IMO.

this is all true as far as it goes. the key word is small - fewer people in each community. as I've said & will say again, once it's beyond the point where everyone can realistically know everyone else face to face it's sunk.

let's be very clear that one can hold & strive toward an ideal while being fully aware that it will never be reached.

most people I've known & interacted with (aside from, unsurprisingly, the very young clueless & idealistic) held no such illusions anyway.
 
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droid

Guest
As I understand it, anarchism cannot be imposed on others. So an anarchist 'takeover' (in a political sense) would only be achievable if everybody unilaterally embraced it as a philosophy/lifestyle.

It didn't take me long to suss that getting the people on one tube carriage to agree on anarchy and freedom - never mind an entire country - isn't going to happen anytime soon. Sure, there are instances where humans get on very well and can affect small changes in a leaderless, united environment. However, these tend to be very temporary and, humans being what they are, believing that 'leaders' won't inevitably emerge to inflict their egotistical demands on others is pretty deluded, IMO.

However, I'm not arguing that I'm right.

I think that's an illustration of another misconception to some extent. Anarchism, by its nature is not about imposing values on others, but (in my mind) creating genuinely democratic structures that allow people to participate in the economic and social factors that shape their lives. Of course, if you ask people if they would like to live in a decentralised society set up along anarcho-syndicalist lines you'll get blank stares and muttered insults, but if you set up say... a credit union or a neighbourhood municipal group which actually demonstrates that people can have an influence on these factors then I think you'd get genuine participation.

There's one anarchist principle that i think is widely accepted - that all authority is illegitimate until proven otherwise - illustrated by the fact that I know almost no-one (including parents, neighbours etc...) who trusts politicians, police, the system in general. They accept their existence (what choice is there?), but they don't trust.
 
stir up trouble

elicit idiocy

dreadfully unwitty

haven't the slightest fucking notion

his stupid, childish whimsy.

considerably more worthwhile than m. dubalina


are you done ???...*yawn*

and i mean that cos it's late and i need sleep so i can dream MY dream and live it how i see fit not how some beached as troll on the net sees fit.

Its fine by me if you would rather project your life and failed dreams on me or others to justify your worthless existence and hide it behind a veneer of intelligence and cheap insults. I just hope that armchair is nice and soft and comfortable so you can watch the revolution on the telly from the comfort of home or read about it and if worse comes to worse you can always get your repressed friends to tell you all about it in case it isnt televised.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Of course, if you ask people if they would like to live in a decentralised society set up along anarcho-syndicalist lines you'll get blank stares and muttered insults, but if you set up say... a credit union or a neighbourhood municipal group which actually demonstrates that people can have an influence on these factors then I think you'd get genuine participation.

well put.

tho in my experience the reality of this has been mixed. it turns out it's actually pretty danged tricky to put across your ideas in such a way that people who have no clue what you're talking about can, if not agree, then at least relate.

the stuff I've been involved in this vein with that has gone best has usually been the simplest. community gardens on empty lots, Food Not Bombs, bicycle programs (where you can build & repair them for free), etc. things that have an immediate impact, that are not hard for people to get involved in but which still give them a chance to do things for themselves (& learn how to do those things) rather than be told what to do or just have something handed to them.

that last is the key part - giving people the opportunity to empower themselves. obv much easier said than done.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
well put.

tho in my experience the reality of this has been mixed. it turns out it's actually pretty danged tricky to put across your ideas in such a way that people who have no clue what you're talking about can, if not agree, then at least relate.

the stuff I've been involved in this vein with that has gone best has usually been the simplest. community gardens on empty lots, Food Not Bombs, bicycle programs (where you can build & repair them for free), etc. things that have an immediate impact, that are not hard for people to get involved in but which still give them a chance to do things for themselves (& learn how to do those things) rather than be told what to do or just have something handed to them.

that last is the key part - giving people the opportunity to empower themselves. obv much easier said than done.

Do people feel this works better in some current societies than others? I feel that the UK is so socially atomised now that I wonder to what degree people would take on things like this - other European nations seem to have much more of a ooummunitarian feel to them. And in the case of the French, an ongoing tradition of dissent as well.
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
Do people feel this works better in some current societies than others? I feel that the UK is so socially atomised now that I wonder to what degree people would take on things like this - other European nations seem to have much more of a ooummunitarian feel to them. And in the case of the French, an ongoing tradition of dissent as well.

Up here, there are community/ voluntary groups for bloody everything, although they are highly de-politicised in the main.

But they are a good example of individuals empowering themselves and others through collective effort.

Such organisations are generally democratic in theory, although often overcome by one or two power crazed knobs
 

vimothy

yurp
What are the functional and institutional differences between anarcho-syndicalist organisations and any comparable organisation?
 

nomos

Administrator
when you say 'comparable organisation' do you mean worker-run but not explicitly anarcho-syndicalist?
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Up here, there are community/ voluntary groups for bloody everything, although they are highly de-politicised in the main.

not so true in the States. rugged individualism & so on. also, just out curiousity when you see "up here" where do you mean? wondering if it's an area of Scotland or northern England that still retains traces of a radical (probably labor) history. Minnesota & Wisconsin (Milwaukee's the only major US city to ever elect a socialist mayor) are a bit like that here, partly the legacy of all those socialist Germans & Scandinavians who emigrated over in the 1800s.

Such organisations are generally democratic in theory, although often overcome by one or two power crazed knobs

self-proclaimed anarchist ones too, unfortunately. Whenever people try to work collectively without a defined leader this problem is almost certainly bound to arise. I reckon the best approach, rather than getting discouraged, is to try & be prepared to deal with it when it does happen. & to try not to be the power crazed knob yourself;).
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
What are the functional and institutional differences between anarcho-syndicalist organisations and any comparable organisation?

1 - what Nomos said. absent of specification "comparable organizations" could be other types of anarchists, other types of labor unions, other types of syndicalists.

2 - it's not my area of expertise (on the opposite end of the anarchist spectrum, so to speak) tho I'd still take a stab at answering.
 

vimothy

yurp
when you say 'comparable organisation' do you mean worker-run but not explicitly anarcho-syndicalist?

Anything -- I guess I was thinking of anarcho-syndicalist vs. non-anarcho-syndicalist unions, but I'd also be interested in reading about any prospective forms of anarcho-syndicalist social organisation. In fact, anything that differentiates anarchist, of whatever stripe, forms of social institution from comparable non-anarchist forms, of whatever stripe.
 
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