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ruin wrote

This leftist mass movement political shit gets more tiresome with each year I get older.

When anarchists come with slogans of “Well paying union jobs for all!” or “Direct democracy!” I back away slowly and avoid making eye contact. The tanks can’t be far behind...

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

Yup. And in my experience it's the mass-movement types (reds) who are smug as fuck, while black / green / grey anarchists are accused of being divisive for not getting on board with their program (or more often, we're just villainized and excluded). So sick of pious reds and their smug fucking faces. The next time someone says "bad take, comrade" to me I'm going to lose it. I really don't want to be around these people any more with their creepy collectivist shame games. They really are one step away from tankies.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

Is this (partially) about the comment i made in that thread that was locked? If so, this is pretty passive aggressive, you never even replied to the message i sent you privately to continue the conversation lol, but you're still talking about it in the abstract to flatter your own perspective?

Insofar as saying "this is a bad take", there's really nothing wrong with disagreeing with someone's speech, and just saying you disagree with it, because you see that speech as having negative consequences for people who suffer abuse (the context that convo was about). It's not like, a deadly threat to one's existence, to just share "I disagree with your perspective or expression on this way, because I see this discourse it has some negative effects on survivors of abuse by connecting them to the perpetration of abuse".

I'm also surprised that so many people here are...smugly disparaging this article? It is true, I actually agree with the bulk of the point of this article. I don't think that reveling in the failure of people's desperate hopes for a better life is the side of my politics I like to put out into the world; not in my better moments, anyway.

Sure, I may laugh when a centrist loses, especially in the colonizer countries, after they fuck over any chance for even modest reforms, but while I disagree that social democrats and democratic socialists have good praxis or are worth supporting in any way I kind of find it depressing when they lose because of the consequences for everyday people in those societies. Most especially, I mourn the death of possibility for everyday people, which is reified whenever left wing efforts fail, whether it's an occupied warehouse, an infoshop, or some perma-doomed electoral bullshit...it's the effect on the people on the ground and where they're at, which is the truly bleak thing about such predictable fuckups and failures the left does.

I think it's quite a good point this author raises, that anarchist should be offering a more constructive position that takes advantage of these fuckers' losses and failures to advance our desires, rather than passively spectating. They aren't mutually exclusive activities even, but sometimes it seems like people I share affinity with approach the latter to the exclusion of the former despite that anyway. It's sort of misanthropic and counter to my approach, so I find some conflict with it you know what I mean?

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ruin wrote

Staying out of the first half of your comment since I’m blissfully unaware of the backstory...

My issue with the article isn’t the criticism of smugness, but rather the leftist fetishization of mass movement and historical value. In this sense the author is smug as fuck.

Personally, I don’t see politics as a way forward and I’ve yet to see a defense of leftist tactics that isn’t moralizing and humanist. That’s not compatible with my conception of liberation. I don’t begrudge you for disagreeing, but I’d also add that I don’t consider myself misanthropic in the slightest. People are great, culture is fucked.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

but rather the leftist fetishization of mass movement and historical value.

It's true, that fixation is very tired and boring and not helpful either, and is usually just a way to again be just a passive spectator, ironically enough for the author!

But, there has to be a way for anarchist to engage with the historical moment in some coherent and legible way. Not everyone has to want this, but I think in my personal perspective, anarchist are wasting rare opportunities all the time with internally referential nonsense. I prefer to try and move the needle on the people who aren't in my little in-groups, because I find that more fulfilling than staying around the same people who agree with me on the basic issues all the time. However, some people feel just the opposite, and I think both activities can be either helpful or unhelpful to achieving one's varying desires.

I think the fundamental irony of the piece is that it's two groups of passive aggressive anarchist being smug toward each other and the whole damned world, sitting around in the infoshop...instead of, occupying a squat, or anything that would actualize their desires more.

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ruin wrote

Point taken. I think this is tough to tackle because on the one hand you have anarchism as politics and then you have anarchy as life, and you have those who reject all titles in their conception of liberation. Not saying anyone is better. I could change my mind tomorrow and it doesn’t matter because it’s my choice alone.

Whether you skew left or post left can make simple agreement on terms a challenge.

Your points are all valid from your perspective, but I would counter that anarchist action has no inherent need to be either historically legible or coherent. In the case that you view the society and culture as the enemy, in addition to the government, you will need to conceive of tools and tactics that deny its value completely rather than just replicate its value and structure in a less authoritarian or hierarchical guise. I recognize the enormity of this task and it’s difficulty is why I personally feel it lends itself to individual or small group actions or creation in whatever form it make take.

We’re currently working to reimagine our family’s life in a more strictly projectual sense and it’s pretty fucking crazy. Much respect to anyone who’s trying to move the needle in whatever way they see fit. I just bristle at people to tell me how we should/shouldn’t do it.

As always, thanks for your input. I really enjoy your posts. Whether or not I agree, they’re always well reasoned and sincere.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

Your points are all valid from your perspective, but I would counter that anarchist action has no inherent need to be either historically legible or coherent.

OK, well, I would like for that, so mine will be, and perhaps others will not.

In the case that you view the society and culture as the enemy, in addition to the government, you will need to conceive of tools and tactics that deny its value completely rather than just replicate its value and structure in a less authoritarian or hierarchical guise. I recognize the enormity of this task and it’s difficulty is why I personally feel it lends itself to individual or small group actions or creation in whatever form it make take.

Certainly, it is good to keep an open mind and heart with such a difficult reverse-engineering to undertake.

Much respect to anyone who’s trying to move the needle in whatever way they see fit. I just bristle at people to tell me how we should/shouldn’t do it.

Good luck to your endeavour, I can relate to the aversion to prescription or proscription. I am an inventer and tinker-er at heart, myself, so I like to try new things, and mostly to see what doesn't work and infer from there.

As always, thanks for your input. I really enjoy your posts. Whether or not I agree, they’re always well reasoned and sincere.

You are too kind, I can only return the grace.

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[deleted] wrote

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ruin wrote

Fuck me for using irony ripe for quoting on the internet;) but I’m new at this.

Maybe a rejection of moralism and absolutism would be the appropriate tools to end the endless cycle?

Unfortunately that perspective isn’t conducive to building a mass movement of historical significance.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

Ah, yeah that's a bad take right there lmfao (from Witch_dottore42)

You are right, and I should recognize more that this type of language is often misused to belittle certain very reasonable points of view or questions (why are self-described leftists, defending authoritarian systems which fail in clear ways to liberate people). I think i understand more why you were upset by my choice of expressing my ideas with those words, with not much further elaboration, in that other conversation.

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ruin wrote

I can picture Bookchin in his cardigan shaking his fist and shouting at those damn lifestylers to get off his utopian lawn...

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train wrote

I'll agree that MLs and a number of other socialists like shaming people for not participating in whatever their particular brand of mass movement politics are. However, I don't think that kind of behavior is representative of all socialists.

Rather I believe that shaming people for their ideology is a self indulgent act. It might feel validating for the person doing the shaming. However, it's ultimately self defeating if you aim is to actually engage with people. Some socialists recognize that and others don't.

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Bezotcovschina wrote (edited )

Ahh! Do I love quality discussions on Raddle!

Sorry, have nothing to say about the article - I'm too unfamiliar with British (I guess) politics.

As for "anarchist movements"... I don't know. Sure, for seasoned nihilists it may looks silly, annoying even. But I just can't stop being inspired by their passion, energy, naivness, youngness. I won't ever be the part of such movements, nor I want to. But I'll always be supportive to those who gave up their freedom and lives, endured humiliations and torture for some phantasmal image of better future.

EDIT: Sounds pathetically pretentious, I must admit.

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ziq OP wrote

honestly I didn't even read the article, I just dump links and read the ones people say are worth reading

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote

i'm pretty good at ascertaining if something is poop or not just based on the source, the topic and the title

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ziq OP wrote

and when I link to a red site like freedomnews, I just assume it's poop but post it anyway because some people like poop

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celebratedrecluse wrote (edited )

Instead of facing up to this damning indictment of our failure to become a historical force, we anarchists seem, if anything, to have retreated further into a resigned minoritarianism that is more concerned with being right than it is with changing the world.

Damn, that's pretty much what I was saying a week a go , or at least what i was trying to articulate.

edit: More thoughts came

I think this is the kind of morality, w hich i connect anarchist discourse to protestant christianity discourse with. Specifically, the desire to create an ideal form, which will either universalize upon the whole world (less realistic, imo) or for which alternatively the world beyond specifically defined entities in relationship to the self will become irrelevant and the only thing that matters is the particular ideal form/ living "the good life" and self-actualization on an individual or small group scale.

For example, the leftists i know who recycle despite it all gets burned at the factory anyway, and the anarchists whose praxis is limited primarily to that they are vegan on an individual dietary level, and the liberals who go to their organizing meetings ad nauseum with nothing to show for it, are all kind of doing the same type of activity imo, regardless of theoretical disputes they have on a regular basis.

Imho, you can see this ideal-form (what i would say is, platonic thinking) with the propaganda of the deed dogma, and also with the intentional community/land project tendency, and a variety of other anarchist cultural and political phenomena over the centuries.

I think that this similarity is important, because it gives us a glimpse of the limits and contours of anarchist epistemology and ontology, and the ways in which it may be mediated and constrained to be funneled back into liberality. In order to avoid this, we must always be attacking liberalism, it is one of the most resilient ontologies of this moment, in my opinion. Figuring out how to do that, is something I am learning to listen to others about, as I am just as implicated as many others in this reification of lib-ness.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

this author refers to "ruthless criticism" needing to be focused back upon the anarchist tendency, by anarchists. This is the article they quote, it's one of Marx's letters to Arnold Ruge, who I understand i think was a rad lib who Marx and others worked with during the 1848 revolutions, but Arnold seemed more concerned with religious philosophy than the more materialist ideas of Marx. They drifted apart after the revolutions failed.

The internal difficulties seem to be almost greater than the external obstacles. For although no doubt exists on the question of “Whence,” all the greater confusion prevails on the question of “Whither.” Not only has a state of general anarchy set in among the reformers, but everyone will have to admit to himself that he has no exact idea what the future ought to be. On the other hand, it is precisely the advantage of the new trend that we do not dogmatically anticipate the world, but only want to find the new world through criticism of the old one. Hitherto philosophers have had the solution of all riddles lying in their writing-desks, and the stupid, exoteric world had only to open its mouth for the roast pigeons of absolute knowledge to fly into it. Now philosophy has become mundane, and the most striking proof of this is that philosophical consciousness itself has been drawn into the torment of the struggle, not only externally but also internally. But, if constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.

Therefore I am not in favour of raising any dogmatic banner. On the contrary, we must try to help the dogmatists to clarify their propositions for themselves. Thus, communism, in particular, is a dogmatic abstraction; in which connection, however, I am not thinking of some imaginary and possible communism, but actually existing communism as taught by Cabet, Dézamy, Weitling, etc. This communism is itself only a special expression of the humanistic principle, an expression which is still infected by its antithesis – the private system. Hence the abolition of private property and communism are by no means identical, and it is not accidental but inevitable that communism has seen other socialist doctrines – such as those of Fourier, Proudhon, etc. – arising to confront it because it is itself only a special, one-sided realisation of the socialist principle.

Arnold Ruge was a leader in religious and political liberalism, but did not produce any work of enduring importance

lol

But, anyway-- It's interesting, because in this passage, I kind of tentatively see Marx as taking an almost anarchist epistemology here. It's an interesting quote. He's basically stepping outside of his dialectic (that is, his brand of communism, and its ideology) and saying "it's important to get beyond surface levels of language and fixed modes of thinking, and instead engage with the actual ideas and material things those ideas represent".

Marx can be kind of useful sometimes, unexpectedly imo, and especially when you take him out of the original context lmao. Of course, the original context, of trying to encourage collaboration with a lib, is also interesting and probably relevant. Interested to hear others' takes on this.

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