what you call "pretty impressive workers self-management" was tolerated and then abandoned by the bureaucrats of the CNT. for me the triumphs of Spanish anarchists in transforming social, economic, and political relations between July 36 and May-August 37 were made more tragic -- and therefore more destructive to anarchism -- by the betrayals of "influential militants" and pro-government fake anarchists/real syndicalists throughout the three years of civil war. for each successful self-managed experiment (autonomous militias, agricultural collectives, industrial collectives, pro-woman policies, etc) there were dozens of individual bureaucrats (republicans, socialists, catalanists, AND cenetistas and faistas) who connived against them behind the scenes at first, and then openly by the spring of 1937. the continual moves to unify the UGT with the CNT were a particularly despicable example, where each condition of the CNT was watered down or ditched by 1938 while those of the UGT continued to be enforced. Montseny's and Garcia Oliver's call for a cease fire in May 37 was a political betrayal of the highest magnitude -- especially since at that point, there was no coercion involved; instead they had swallowed the bullshit of "anti-fascist unity" and tossed aside all pretense to furthering either workers self-management or anarchist revolution. it leaves a particularly bitter aftertaste.

i'd rather have a principled failure of "insurrectos" than a defeat due to craven, bureaucratic (that is, non-mandated), and willful collaboration with anti-revolutionaries.

Start here https://www.indigenousaction.org/

Price says Baker is anti-insurrection because of its 150 years of failure, but completely ignores the even larger failures of anarcho-syndicalism. to be fair, since neither tendency can point to any enduring successes, it's absurd to condemn only one for its failures.

and Bookchin

If someone is a Marxist, they have everything to do with Hegel. There's no need to quote or cite Hegel because it's inherent in all strains of Marxism. If you want to understand Stirner then you need to be familiar with Hegel as well.

I read the book. I'm old fashioned that way.

If you agree with me that Blumenfeld doesn't understand Stirner, then why are you promoting the book?

It's not an argument against anarchism but an argument against work 🤓

Blumenfeld does what many contemporary non-Party Marxists have done for the last 95 years or so: utilize Marxian analytics to critique Marx. Big deal. But because he has not understood Stirner well enough, his critique of Marx for not appreciating Stirner fall flat. Stirner is ridiculing Hegelianism, so Marx was right to push back instead of attempting to reconcile Der Einzige with his own inversion of Hegel; Blumenfeld doesn't understand how much Der Einzige relied on sarcasm, and so had to be written to be "extreme." What would a synthesis of Hegel and anti-Hegel look like? Who cares? Blumenfeld's attempt (similar, but far inferior to that by For Ourselves back in 1974) still centers on Hegel; Stirner was already fed up with centering that old fart; no reconciliation or synthesis is possible.

Blumenfeld is a Marxist and does not understand Stirner well enough for his book to be a satisfying read/slog for those who appreciate Der Einzige.

Marx is okay for reading... if you're trying to fall asleep

there's not even a basic shared understanding of hierarchy, so why would anyone think there's common ground? while lots of dopey anarchists will continue to be fooled about the reasons for MLs and other so-called radicals to oppose the current ruling class, others of us already know what their plans are for us and our allies "after the revolution." when those assholes call for "left unity" what they really mean is "come into our front group so we can have a larger not-explicitly-creepy assembly. no thanks to being window dressing for red fascists.

"a bit harsh"? i presume then that you've never attended any ceremony or ritual at a Taoist temple. it's not simply a cosmology where one's ancestors are venerated, but a cosmology that venerates "immortals" (kinda like saints); any system with saints is not against hierarchy.

spontaneity versus imposed order, sure, but in relation to what? the Chaung Tzu isn't a text meant for peasants either.

it's a fine thing to look at ancient texts and discover tidbits here and there that point to a possible antecedent for anarchist ideas, but when the overwhelming majority of the content points away from them, it's impossible for me to take them as relevant antecedents that are worthy of more detailed study. the same kind of bullshit cherrypicking comes from xtian anarchists, where three or four lines from the gospels are pointed to as "proof" that jeebus was a revolutionary anarchist. it's absurd to come to such a conclusion when the bulk of the texts point elsewhere.

aww, the little liberal is being a grumpy Gus

then you have not understood who Lao Tse was or what the purpose was of him writing the Tao te Ching. It's a guide for wise rulers in a centralized bureaucratic state. the hierarchy between emperor, bureaucracy, merchants, and peasants was virtually impermeable at the time Taoism began as an upstart rival to Confucianism. Taoism also takes that hierarchy for granted; Taoist texts were never meant for peasants. That is reason enough to reject them as anarchist adjacent. You will find many great things in Taoism that resonate with an anarchist sensibility, but the two paths do not have a significant enough overlap for most anarchists.

It's only funny if it's a deliberate parody. If it's unintentional self-parody, then it's not funny at all, just cringey. This is cringey.

Of course not

"spooks... are a means to keep people subservient to themselves and each others' ideas." this is incorrect. ideas that mandate particular and specific social obligations outside of oneself are spooks. you formulation is the inverse of a usual Stirnerian perspective.

"the reification of social constructs is a way by which we are impeded from realising freedom." reification might be one way, but it's not the only way. social constructs are already reified -- that's what makes them constructs. as such, they are far more illustrative of spooks than your initial equation.

"by playing into that language isn't one still reinforcing those social constructs that survive on through language?" if you believe that language is the primary location of creating and reinforcing social constructs, then sure, why not? but language is definitely not the only place reinforcement occurs; social cues, moral panics, and common sense do not rely on language. it is necessary but not sufficient, not by a long shot.

"TERFs... use gender nihilism." this is exactly wrong. anti-trans assholes use gender essentialism, a supposedly scientific conflation of gender and sex.

"In other words, why not play with the language? Disrupt the foundations on which these specious notions rest, because after all, who cares if they get confused and muddled up? Aren't these categories worthless anyway?" ...I don't care about any of them and don't accept any one of them, and so describing myself differently from one moment to the next is a rejection of those terms and the pernicious constructs and systems they rest upon." language is not specious, but deliberate. what's specious are the foundations of common (biological) sense and gender essentialism. playing with the language is a (played out) dadaist intervention, that, while personally satisfying to you, is either irrelevant to others in the trenches (as it were) of fighting back against gender essentialism and LGBTQAI+ bashing, or just confusing. you can of course call yourself anything you like, but as with all other social interactions, there are consequences. since you don't identify with any of these presumably static identities, the consequences for you are minimal --- if they exist at all -- but to those for whom such an identity (however reified they might be, however based on spooks they might be -- to you, safely on the outside of their daily struggles) is how they prefer to present to the world, the language is actually quite important. by declaring that you want to play with the terms, you're resting on your privilege of not having to face gender policing by people who act violently when gender norms are subverted.

I was pointing out that others have explored these ideas with fewer contradictions

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/search?query=Gender+nihilism

https://www.indigenousaction.org/

love me some Flower Bomb 🤙🏾

only about half the libraries in the US are Carnegie

learn how public lending libraries work, doofus. sure, they tax revenue to help keep them staffed and open, but they are in a completely different category from the cops or other municipal government agencies.

I like these two https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lupus-dragonowl-against-identity-politics

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lawrence-jarach-essentialism-and-the-problem-of-identity-politics

I used to publish a zine back from about 1999 to 2010. No blog. But plenty of essays published under my name.

I wish I could upvote this 1000 times. Thanks ramonita!