A brief yet triumphant review of the past, present, and future of anarchist media

For Aragorn! and Greg.

From the origins of anarchist thought and practice, anarchists have been using media to express and share anarchist ideas with other anarchists and their friends. Some of the prominent anarchist newspapers and journals early on were Mother Earth, Liberty, Freedom, The Blast, The Alarm, Golos Truda, Freie Arbeiter Stimme, Freiheit, the Arbeiter-Zeitung, among many others. The scope of this text is not to trace the history of anarchist media throughout time, but to examine the anarchist media that has surfaced from the late 1990s largely in North America and into the present and future of anarchist spaces.

Anarchists need anarchist media to provide a space for conversation, dialogue, to celebrate, to mourn, to record and document, strategize, plan, organize, and welcome our non-anarchist friends to the most beautiful idea. These general ideas related to anarchist media practice feel almost like they could be points of unity that all anarchists can agree on, to some extent, which might be saying too much about how often anarchists disagree with everything, including other anarchists.

The future of anarchist media is just a Zoom call away

As the 1970s commerical jingle goes, “reach out and touch someone.” Late last year I attended a virtual talk entitled “The Future of Anarchist Media” that featured three panelists and a moderator during the Boston Anarchist Bookfair. The participants were It’s Going Down (IGD), SubMedia, and CrimethInc. with Ella Fassler being the one posing the questions. Below are some of my thoughts on that conversation along with some other references to texts and happenings with the anarchist media landscape.

The manner is which one measures the impact of anarchist media. How do we know anarchist media is having an impact, being read, listened to, and watched other than informally judging newspaper boxes in the streets? With metrics, numbers, and the Internet of things for many anarchist websites, but these practices are far from the best method, especially for those websites that don’t keep logs. Using metrics and analytics to keep track of how, when, and where anarchist media is being created and shared doesn’t exactly sound like the most anarchist practice either and a murky long-term goal at best. There are different attempts to try and reach mass audiences, while others are more focused on the deeper connections between a smaller number of anarchists, like friends doing an anarchist project or actions from a small town. Within this, one could ask what does anarchist media look like outside of the big spaces and anarchist jurisdictions of the world? It’s also possible to tell by paying attention to popular culture like after 2001 in the Battle of Seattle and later on down the road, “the year of antifa” or with the prevalence of keywords throughout the past and their occurrence in the mainstream media (MSM). An obvious example of this would be after former president of the United States of America (USA) Donald Trump frequently loved to mention “anarchists” even if it really had absolutely nothing to do with actual anarchists.

How are anarchists digesting media today? Doom scrolling social media is one response for many, but Big Tech and social media are not and never have been the friends of anarchists. IGD has over 100k followers on Twitter and they mentioned in the Zoom panel that “that’s why we try to spread the love around.” Certainly, this statement is more true now than in the past as IGD now also has an international Twitter social media account that focuses on anarchist and leftist ideas from around the world, not simply North America as their prior coverage has largely been limited to.

If anarchists are trying to escape the net, how do they get away from conversing with each other over the Web 2.0 corporations? The origins of Twitter lay in the anarchist project “txtmob” which was first developed by the Institute for Applied Autonomy for protesters at the 2004 Democratic National convention in Boston and the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. A well-known anarchist superhacker was also once one of Twitters main security people. From these giant social media companies like Twitter and FaceBook, censorship of anarchist content and specific groups on using their corporate products to spread anarchists messages have been cut off. Recently FaceBook deleted the pages of IGD and CrimethInc. to the outrage of many, but some smaller anarchist FaceBook anarchist groups do continue to exist on the platform; for how long we’re not sure. Of those still on there, the new form of censorship is not coming from humans monitoring social media, but rather robots censoring content in ways, like not having it appear on social media pages of users and other methods that are difficult to discover and even realize it’s taking place. At times anarchist media appears to suffer from the performance, the influencers, a constant quest for “likes”, the accelerated pace of the Internet and how this social media is digested that certain groups frame all commentary within, instead of on their respective media projects.

Recent alternatives to the Big Tech social media companies have sprung up with a Mastondon instance being hosted on kolektiva.media and the Anarchy Planet project creating an instance of Pleroma called a.nti.social. Both of these spaces can interact with each other and are very similar to Twitter, however the servers and data are cared for by the anarchists maintain the infrastructure. The Anarchy Planet project also host a video platform via PeerTubes at the domain anarchy.tube and kolektiva.media has an instance too, where anarchists can share, watch, comment, and live-stream content to the world. While the technology is controlled by anarchists, the reach to larger audiences that some projects might be aiming for is difficult to match outside the large corporate social media platforms, but again the impact of this vs. that is never easy or perhaps even desirable to measure. It would be great to see more anarchists utilizing actual anarchist infrastructure for their anarchist media projects.

Anarchist media not being controlled by Big Tech is important for creating a space for the future of anarchist media. So, how are anarchists starting their own media projects and outlets? In the past there has been the tendency to again, dump everything on social media and then within a couple of hours, everything has passed, and once it’s off the front page, it might be gone “forever.” One effect of social media on anarchist media seems to have been that anarchists have somewhat forgotten about “report backs.” Anarchist report backs give us an idea of what is going on around us and provide a space to share ideas, tactics, strategies, and information with each other. This information could be important immediately or years down the road to see, where we have come from. In the IndyMedia days, there were many “hubs” of anarchy and these more local groups reporting on and sharing texts regionally that have largely disappeared as communication became more centered around Big Tech. For a while and sit unfortunately happening, some anarchists strictly organize over platforms like FaceBook, because of the ease and existing connections already formed there, instead of putting effort towards a more sustainable method of communication. Getting back to local counter-information projects like the recently created Jersey Counter-info project, which bills itself as “Anarchist News and Analysis from so-called New Jersey.” Finding the niche and what your media project values, while perhaps even creating connections, formal and informal collaborations, and networks to help support each other or those aiming to become the media.

Anarchist media can also get easily stuck in the mud of the MSM outrage cycle. Constantly reacting to what the MSM is doing, instead taking a more thoughtful laid-out approach to anarchist ideas within popular culture. There are also anarchists who work within the MSM, crafting stories adjacent to anarchist ideas and practice, but is this media work – being paid to write about anarchist stuff being valued higher than other anarchist praxis or is it somewhat necessary today to have well-known anarchist writers participating within MSM? Without a doubt, reading MSM texts by anarchists of non-anarchist happenings in throughout the world is much more delightful (hopefully) than reading non-anarchist authors. Related, a project of anarchists reporting on the MSM news from an anarchist perspective would take a lot of effort and work to create, but would be exciting to see. Perhaps there are some anarchists out there in the world interested in such things who can plug into the current anarchist infrastructure or create their own for such a project. While Anarchist Agency, an anarchist public relations project, is something along these lines, it appears to be limited to specifically sharing information about when anarchists make the MSM, instead of actually reporting on world events from an anarchist lense.

With friends like these

It’s challenging to create the projects that anarchists want to see in the world while working within the capitalist system we live in. Funding projects for a way to pay for paper, computers, electricity, and other materials isn’t easy and historically anarchists have often had little money, let alone capital to share outside of their own existence. Many anarchists have little to no money or even bank accounts to think of such things and successful long-term anarchist projects not only take time, but resources.

A lot of projects have turned to crowd funding or yearly fundraisers to support their projects. Sometimes, these crowdfunding attempts go terribly wrong. While not specifically anarchist, the example of Commune magazine, “a popular magazine for a new era of revolution” comes to mind. They launched a KickStarter campaign is a good example and drew in over $65kUSD to help support it’s publication and then after a handful of issues, the magazine collapsed. This professionalization of the so-called anarchist media with people getting paid and making a living off anarchist ideas is one of my least favorite developments in the radical media discourse. Anarchists have also learned a lot over the last few years with some livestreaming or filming anarchists in the streets, often to the detriment of anarchists everywhere, and delight of every government alphabet agency. When there are more press taking photos of one small burning garbage can, than anarchists in the streets, we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere along the garden of forking paths.

Another example of using crowfunding, yet more succesfully is that of CrimethInc. to help fund their projects. Recently, the CrimethInc. distroism headquarters burned down and everything was lost, but the ex-workers setup a gofundme and over $59kUSD was raised to help them get back on their feet, including one single anonymous donation of 10k! These popular ex-workers rely on their anarchist friends from around the world to catapult them the resources needed to make the next beautiful anarchist book, which has largely seemed to work in main part because their project has been so successful and influential over the years.

Other projects like Anarchy Planet have been funded largely by the individuals involved, working day jobs. This is in opposition to anarchists setting up monthly Patreon donations or ebegging some capital to help with their projects. As the Little Black Cart motto goes “real anarchists have day jobs” and they are struggling away 24/7 at work to fund the most beautiful idea. While this comes with it’s own trade-offs, funding outside of asking strangers on the Internet for money is important to consider, especially when these crowdfunding platforms can cut off the flow of capital at a moments notice. It’s amusing to see some anarchist media projects asking for all sorts of capital without ever having done anything or be known before, but at the same time, anarchists have to start somewhere. Certain anarchist projects like the Anarchist Black Cross Warchest or Firefund are aimed at supporting anarchists in trouble via networks created by friends and anarchists that are alternatives outside of Big Tech crowdfunding marketplace. A memory that has stuck with me throughout the years, of younger anarchist days when infoshop.org was very popular, yet would frequently go offline because of technological issues and then ask for money to help, go offline again, and eventually repeat the cycle. It almost seemed never ending and was more than frustrating for anarchists who used the website to share and comment on things. Anarchists have come along-way from this today, although technology can and will go wrong at any moment; the ever present problem of funding the anarchist media of the future is always a thorn in the side of the most well-thought out projects.

On the more technological end, some anarchist media projects have made use of the blockchain to collect and distribute capital. Bitcoin has been quite popular and setting up a wallet isn’t too difficult, but there are also some other options out here like Monero and Mobilecoin specifically focused on privacy. Of note, Mobilecoin is also supported via the Signal messaging application, although obtaining Mobilecoin is a bit of a process, but afterward it makes sending anonymous capital around the world almost like handing over some cold hard cash to someone in a dark allyway. Further into the blockchain and further away from anarchist ideas, there are decentralized applications (dApps) that are digital applications and programs that exist and run on the blockchain or peer-to-peer (P2P) networks outside the purview and control of a single authority. Related, there are also decentralized finance (DeFi) technology that removes the control banks and related institutions have over capital. It remains to be seen how anarchist praxis will borrow from these tools, if at all, but some anarchists are experimenting and participating in the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace as artists, leaving one to wonder if Mac from Evasion would have bought your NFT? Probably not.

Anarchist media repression

Since the dawn of anarchist media over 100+ years ago authorities have been trying to suppress these radical ideas from being shared and spread. Here are a few recent examples of anarchist media repression to briefly examine, of the many that unfortunately unfolded (A full report back of anarchist media repression throughout the past would a very informative read if anyone is willing to piece together, please message as I’m happy to help). Back in 2012, Ontario Provincial Police force (Canada) had their friends knock on the door of some Anews people, requesting that an article that was identifying undercover agents in Canada be taken down. It has been mentioned that Russia has sent a takedown request to The Anarchist Library English and Russian language project for a specific text, otherwise face banishment under the Russian Internet (the text is still on the libraries). Another more recent example, comes from Italy where anarchists were charged with creating, editing, printing, and distributing (also via computer) the anarchist paper “Vetriolo.” The charges include incitement to commit crime as communiqués within the newspaper called for “terrorism” and subversion. Alongside these charges, two counter-information websites roundrobin.info and malacoda.noblogs.org were taken offline by Italian authorities.

There is also the case of Toby Shone, an alleged system administrator for the 325 collective. In November 2020 they were arrested in the United Kingdom (UK) and charged with four counts of terrorism for the for the dissemination of information via the website 325.nostate.net. Operation Adream, as it is known is an attack by the British State in conjunction with European partners against anarchist direct action groups, counter-information projects, prisoner solidarity initiatives. The Operation is also the first time that anti-terrorist legislation has been used against the anarchist space in the UK.

Alites, Roufianoi, Dimosiografoi

Earlier in this text, we wrote of collaboration, building networks of friends and how often anarchist media is a shared effort across time and space. In the article “We need a strong anarchist media alliance” shared on Anews back in 2020, the writer ziq asks for other anarchist media projects to work together to help the larger anarchist network thrive via better integration, inquires about suggestions for achieving such things, and suggests that related projects working together will be more successful. Unfortunately it’s not only the state that stands in opposition to long-term anarchist media projects, but sometimes other anarchists as well.

Time and some success are two key factors for opening up the door to critique and of the many anarchist media projects around today, Anews has been no stranger to this. An important term to consider, is that of “bad jacketing,” which is when someone spreads rumors about someone else or another anarchist project to try and get them ostracized from a space. It’s meant to cause infighting and suspicion among anarchists, often directed towards specific individuals within the larger project and has been a serious problem over the years. This infighting often seems to be over influence rather than actually engaging honestly and in good-faith with anarchist ideas and critique. It would be nice to see a full-out denunciation from other popular anarchists media projects in support of those consistently thrown under the bus, but no one is holding their breath.

The coming anarchist media

The future of anarchist media looks a lot like the past, except with more technological advancements, whatever that might mean, especially for those anarchists with a strong critique of technology. It’s not groundbreaking to say that the advent of the computer has made the sharing of text online and offline much easier for people outside of big publishing houses and print shops, while at the same time bringing it’s own challenges.

Part of looking at anarchist media is looking at the infrastructure anarchists have and can build for each other. For example, online – some big anarchist projects pay for a cheap/inexpensive virtual private servers (VPS) from some corporate third-party company and run their website under those conditions. Many websites don’t exactly make it obvious how they are being hosted, while others do a better job of this. There are also a few anarchist or anarchist friendly projects that have built up their own infrastructure, maintain it all, and offer their services to other anarchists like Anarchy Planet and Autistici/Inventati which seems to host the popular noblogs, to name a few. Sometimes, being able to tell this can be kind of tough unless you are in the know, especially starting off, but would like to see more anarchists using infrastructure that has been built and maintained by anarchist friends for online content. This is why we work.

Over the last few years many new anarchist podcast projects have been planted and continue to bloom. It’s almost like the smuggling of cassette tapes into places unknown back-in-the-day to spread and share your ideas. Now all you need is a phone or computer to listen to all the anarchist podcasts, including many that are anarchist adjacent, reporting on events or reading texts of interest. There is the Channel Zero Network which is a collaboration of many of the popular anarchist podcasts that one can find all in one place, being broadcast on their website. Anarchists are also getting their content back onto the FM radio waves, just without all the swearing as some projects have their podcasts officially broadcast by the MSM. Does one have to tone it down to be broadcast on the MSM FM radio waves? While unfamiliar with the exacts of anarchist pirate radio, I wonder if these are tougher to setup today due to risk involved and difficulty of concealment from those wishing to turn it off. Somewhat related, DIY mesh networks across the rural/city landscape to allow for anarchist friends to freely access and share anarchist media. In Cuba, a place of heavy media censorship and limited Internet access, people have over the years distributed music, movies, books and other media throughout the country via the weekly package, which is often just a USB drive of the latest content shared around. Torrents and anarchist projects sharing their media or archives via torrents is something that was much more popular before the music and video streaming services came to be and everyone under the age of 30 forgot, or never learned what the word meant. There is also the non-anarchist example of Reporters without Borders using the popular video game Minecraft to build a library to house all kinds of censored journalism for reading in places where other outlets are difficult to access. Maybe someday The Anarchist Library will exist on a Minecraft server near you.

Outside podcasts, there has also been an uptick of anarchists making videos on platforms like YouTube. Sometimes these videos are just like a podcast, with only one image being displayed on the screen, but there are also anarchists talking with other anarchists over video face-to-face (f2f). SubMedia is coming out with a full-length documentary take down of FaceBook later this year. The metaverse or mediated virtual reality isn’t really a preferable place to see anarchist media one imagines, but perhaps in the future creating content there will be of importance for those using whatever the metaverse will become. Do I feel like a grumpy 90 year old waving a stick at kids for saying this? Yes, but also reasons.

Places like anarchy.tube and kolektiva.media are two websites that host anarchist video content from around the world. While not on anarchist infrastructure, much like the many YouTube anarchist content creators, TikTok has taken off in popular culture and word is there are some anarchists creating content via the platform. It’s going to be curious to see where these shorter content clips go in the future of anarchist media and if someone is going to really utilize it to gain a large viewership among the audience that mainly partakes in such things; for the kids (although, apparently many adults as well)!

Since the early 2000s and perhaps before there has been rumblings of a decline of print, although the pandemic has changed this in some regards. Specifically looking at anarchist print like journals, zines and new anarchist writers weaving together long-form anarchist texts, essays, and books. The distroism current, or the creation of small local projects distributing anarchist material and ephemera that seems to have gained steam over last couple years is a welcome addition to the sharing of anarchist ideas IRL and AFK. An open source designed by anarchists media app to share all the things, or maybe even just anarchist websites designing an app for Android and Apple phones to reach the masses? The problem is basically reinventing the website for some cheezy app now, or maybe not. Digression.

Logging out and AFK/IRL it’s encouraging to see the increase in distroism within the anarchist space. This has been especially evident on social media (Twitter) as the stream of many tables floats across the screen stacked with printed zines for those coming to the skate park later today. Distroism has a much more local vibe to everything and is the kind of regional, perhaps small town anarchist project that we so encouragingly support. Often times, all it takes is just one zine, one text to completely change the life project of someone, especially for the youth. Back when I was 15 years old, I found a copy of Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed (AJODA) and basically at that moment is where I trace a large part of my anarchist roots, a journal. I’ve heard many similar stories from strangers recently as I tabled anarchist texts and some shared with me what it was that started them down the anarchist path.

Related to distroism, but on a larger scale is that of anarchist publishers. Mentioned earlier in this text was an assertion that there are less anarchists writing book nowadays than just 10 years ago, possibly due to many things, but a big part seems to be how people digest media nowadays. The act of writing takes time and from my own experience is something that comes with that and practice. Anarchists are not getting rich off their texts and some writers like Peter Gelderloos have said how all the authors profits they make off some publishers (their new book published by Pluto Press) are directly funneled to friends in the field. For me, some of the most inspiring anarchist press projects are Little Black Cart, Contagion Press, and Detritus Books. There is also the longtime favorite, Black and Red Press by Fredy and Lorraine Perlman that is still operated by Lorraine to this day. An insightful book recently published about Black and Red Press and worthwhile for anyone interested in the history of anarchist meida is The Detroit Printing Co-Op by Danielle Aubert published by Inventory Press.

In the early 2000s and shortly after it was very common to hear about anarchist infoshops popping up around North America. All one needed to do was open up an issue of Slingshot to browse all the IRL infoshop spaces dotted across the landscape. Today, you can still find these listings over at Slingshot, but the moment of the infoshop meat space that was setup as a squat or through more official channels providing a distroism center, a place to hang out, read, and converse with friends and strangers has passed. Maybe, it will come back; there are still some really wonderful infoshops across North America, but appear to be much fewer and far between, and more adjacent to anarchist ideas that specifically using the word. It would be safe to assume that the pandemic these last years has been especially difficult for these spaces. Earlier on in the pandemic, as many people hunkered down with a good book to read, independent bookstores had a moment of success. There are also a few radical (anarchist adjacent) IRL bookstores dotted across North America. While I don’t see these as specific infoshops, as the exchange of capital for books is the main endeavor, they hold a place in the world to come of anarchist media.

Throughout time, the idea anarchy has been communicated by anarchists in ways that often found themselves at the forefront of the entire media landscape. The future of anarchist media is unwritten and one in which anarchists will need to find themselves in a space for conversation, dialogue, celebration, mourning, one of recording and documenting, strategizing and planning, organizing, and welcoming future friends to the most beautiful idea.

An incomplete glossary of anarchist media

A-Infos

https://www.ainfos.ca/
This is a long-term multi-lingual anarchist media project that has been around since 2001 with texts in various languages that focuses specifically on the “class struggle” and makes a specific note to decry other anarchists they disagree with in their about us. However, A-Infos can be praised for their longevity, even if upon visiting their website it feels like traveling back in time to the 1990s Internet of things.

The Anarchist Library

https://theanarchistlibrary.org
The Anarchist Library is an archive of all anarchist texts (or hopefully someday, however impossible that might be) that first went online back around 2007, it’s the much-loved English language library of anarchist texts and texts of interest to anarchists. The Anarchist Library project also features libraries in many other languages that all operate as separate projects, with hosting provided by infrastructure maintained by anarchists.

Anarchist News

https://anarchistnews.org
Anarchist News (Anews) has been online since 2004. It was created by Aragorn! largely as a place to share anarchist news along with anonymous comments that didn’t have the sectarian nature of what Infoshop.org moderator(s). The website soon gained traction as a place for content and commentary and soon became a well-known, despised by many, place for funny images with snarky rollers of anarchist news from around the world, with some pretty insightful and sometimes funny commentary, plus so much more! A goal of Anews is “to provide a non-sectarian source for news about and of concern to anarchists. It is also to provide a location for community moderated discussion about such news.” After many years of worker aka Aragorn! maintaining the website almost single-handily, reading every comment till the wee hours of the night in your time zone, they passed along the website to thecollective. thecollective is a group of individuals who now maintain Anarchist News, largely in the same spirit as when it was created back in 2004. The current slogan of Anarchist News is “We create the anarchy we’d like to see in the world.”

CrimethInc.

https://crimethinc.com/
The CrimethInc. Collective has been around since the early 1990s and has been a giant force in the anarchist media world. They have been and continue to be one of the most successful anarchist projects in North America (and the world). Their website features report backs and longer texts specifically from anarchists, although one can occasionally find some content there more in the leftist / antifa vain, to paint with a broad-brush.

Indymedia

https://indymedia.org/
Seattle 1999. Indymedia takes off across North America and the world, with far-flung places no longer isolated by the distances, only by what “indy journalists” could write next. Indymedia was an amazing source of news for a handful of years after 1999, where anarchists could “be the media” and share their own narratives outside the mainstream media. There are still some Indymedia websites going strong and publishing anarchist content today, but of those are few and far between. The rest of the Indymedia groups seem to have succumb to spam, more mainstream ideals, social media and other alternatives for individuals and groups to publish material online. It’s rare to see anarchist content shared on Indymedia first outside of a few locations in the world (for example Athens, Greece Indymedia).

Infoshop News

https://web.archive.org/web/*/infoshop.org
Infoshop News hold a very special place in my heart. As a very young, blissfully unaware of so many things, their collective published numerous texts and even featured some stickied to their front page essays by yours truly. 2001 anarchist media on the Internet was visiting Infoshop.org and reading the content and maybe even leaving a comment. Early on you could even post anonymous comments, however as with all great things – this soon came to an end. The Infoshop News collective soon started to closely moderate and censor anarchist comments they disagreed with or found out of place. The comments on the website went from a largely bountiful place of discourse to a much more closely manicured trail. Due to frequent downtime, very strict moderation of comments now only permitted to registered users, and an inability to work alongside other anarchists the Infoshop website soon became a land of ghosts. Up until a few years back one was able to visit Infoshop still and see that what little new content they posted wasn’t even anarchist material, but much more leftist focused. Infoshop URL is now dead and can only been seen via archive.org.

It’s Going Down

https://itsgoingdown.org/
It’s Going Down (IGD) launched in 2014, initially framing itself as a response to the “dreaded” Anews comment section. The website focused on action over critique with no comments on the actual website, but commentary outsourced to third-party website like FaceBook and Twitter. It grew in part out of the Ferguson rebellion and covers a board scope of content with more leftist texts/actions and antifa along with anarchist content over the years. The website has gained in popularity and become one of the main sources and reference points for anarchists in North America (and the world).

Little Black Cart

https://littleblackcart.com/
A small but potent distro with an eclectic collection, focusing on anti-political, nihilist, anti-state communist, anti-civ, and always anarchist content. Books, pamphlets, music, poetry, tee-shirts, and even a board game or two.

[Black Rose Anarchist Federation logo]

Your friendly neighbourhood anarchists

The Genesee River Rebellion(GRR) is a new quarterly publication from the Rochester Black Rose Anarchist Federation. It’s a large 4-page newspaper with 6 articles of varying length that we picked up for free from the distribution bin inside a local Rochester restaurant. There was a stack full of copies placed in the distro and it appears that there are stacks of this paper around a handful of local establishments for the curious reader to find. There also appears to be a subscription based model along with some other perks for those that signed up via the GoFundMe page, which accordingly raised around $1,500 of a $2,000 goal for printing costs, etc. Aesthetically, the local publication looks nice and it was exciting to find an anarchist newspaper circulating around in hand on our way to get some food. On the other hand, there are also some gripes about the publication and the ideas behind it. Below is a brief review of the new publication, along with some shared experiences from the Black Rose Anarchist Federation.

[Genesee River Rebellion]

The front page main article is titled “The Shit List: Dregs of Our City” which is a recap of the the top nine worst people in the Rochester area. Certainly a clever idea and one that holds a lot of potential (especially for making powerful enemies), but after reading the article what stuck with me the most was amount of poor language used to convey their otherwise critical message. The audience is getting these (almost) beautiful ideas and papers into peoples hands, unfortunately it also seems that the language used is quite poor and specifically poignant as a group. The school-yard insults, remarks about peoples appearances all seem distasteful and out of touch with the possible audience (building a mass movement?). Perhaps in the next issue, we can hear less name-calling and more from GRR about what it means to be an anarchist (especially in Black Rose) in Upstate, New York, their projects, and thoughts on the Federation. How is it to be done? One answer from GRR appears to be that “the world is bad, and here is how to fix it” possibly by subscribing to our quarterly newspaper and donating money to the organization.

[Genesee River looking towards downtown Rochester]

Some of the noteworthy “radical” lexicon used from the article follows:

To begin lightly, by describing Danny Wegman, CEO of Wegmans, a popular grocery store, as a “poverty pimp” and calling him “our own coked-up, Ferrari-driving, billionaire savior of Rochester’s poor!”. Then following up with Joel Seligman, President of The University of Rochester (U of R) who is described as an “over-sized fetus” and “1st among people who look like a Q-tip in human form.” It goes on to say that “Though it may be difficult to discern exactly where Seligman’s neck ends and his head begins” and finally finishes up by stating “It should come as no surprise that in order to pay for the vast quantities of warm milk he drinks before bed each night”. Bob Lonsberry, who is a radio talk-show host on WHAM 1180 AM is called out for his penis size, “Sources close to Lonsberry confirm that he is indeed compensating for something” and later described as “a man who looks like a human butt plug.” Howie Nielsen, who is the owner of Sticky Lips BBQ is told “fuck your boats! Oh, and the ribs at Sticky Lips suck.” Sande Macaluso, City of Rochester Marshal is described as having a “Hitler-esque mustache and sporting a big cigar” who is also a “living Garbage Pail Kid”. Maggie Brooks, the Monroe County Executive is called “a turtle-faced charlatan”. It goes on with Lyjha Wilton, a developer in Rochester by saying “If you still don’t want to hold him down and take a giant shit in his mouth”. And lastly, Bob Duffy, former Police Chief and Mayor of Rochester, etc is described as having a “jerk-off muppet face”.

This is an intriguing list of the rich and powerful in Rochester – and, aside from the “you’re an idiot” writing, there are solid points to be made about each individual. But, is this the kind of writing that is appealing to their audience and other anarchists? What is the common denominator between the anarchist audience and their non-anarchist friends? Is the general sentiment towards this “turned off” or “on”? For us, we’re out of lulz and unimpressed; reading and digesting abusive and insulting language masked up as anarchist critique is not something we like to spend time doing. Alas, the review must live on, so we read.

To others, this may seem funny and not an important aspect to focus on, but it makes their overall idea appear unsexy, immature, and a sad reflection of GRR. On a larger scale, this seems to be the trend of not only the local GRR group, but of the federation as well. While the bad-faith arguments, poor critiques, and lack of ability to have and build relationships among the terrible community has been a point of contention forever, it seems to be amplified by certain hanger-ons. It’s no wonder platformists in North America have such a bad reputation internationally as being some of the most reactionary, sectarian, and partisan “anarchists”. The common phrase from them sounds something like “they have absolutely nothing in common with us, they’re not real anarchists, so fuck ’em.” Too bad, so sad – as the pot signals the kettle, time for a coffee break.

[Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement]

Here is a quick rundown of the other articles: The Editorial: Tragedy in Orlando: An Anarchist Queer’s Response is a welcoming quick read about the the state, police, society, guns, violence, justice and LGBTQ. What if Pride Were Run by Anarchists? concludes that “an anarchist-run Pride event would be an anti-capitalist celebration of the struggles of all LGBTQ people. It would be designed to challenge the status quo of mainstream LGBTQ “rights” while calling forth the true history of Pride.” In First Edition: Storming the Bastille it sums up why they decided to release the newspaper on July 14th (national holiday in France much?). The Old World is Dying is a text about the prefigurative politics of building “a new world from the shell of the old.” It goes on to touch upon the strikes in France surrounding the new laws about the 35-hour work week, the Rojava Revolution, and the 2012 student strikes in Quebec. They also share some ideas regarding the overall practice of GRR – work call ins, tenant unions, rent strikes, and the Fight for $15. It was also mentioned that “we’re not just planning to relentlessly mock those power – as fun as that is – we’re going to share a vision for the world with all of you”, which does somewhat respond to our earlier question regarding the audience and future direction. And the last article Pigs in Shit is a very brief report-back from a recent Black Lives Matter demonstration in the City of Rochester that saw 70+ people arrested and a lot of attention from the community.

One last area to look at is the Online Anarchist Resources sidebar provided in the newspaper. Overall, it lists 13 websites and here are a few of the more polemical: AK Press who seem to be the mainstay “anarchist” publisher; while AK doesn’t have the best track record working alongside other anarchists over the years, they seemingly have improved a bit. Recently, they found themselves under fire during Schmidt-gate. Another link, Zabalaza Books whose mothership, Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) of South Africa have also found themselves caught up in the same controversy re: Michael Schmidt and the two AK Press authors who wrote the exposé. Thought Crime Ink is an anarchist non-profit that provides ephemera. Libertarian Communism A website that continues to have controversy surrounding it for being run / supported by cop-collaborators (see On Why Dr John Drury Is A Collaborationist Asshole & cop-out – the significance of Aufhebengate (2013)). Anarkismo of course. Anarchist Platform A WordPress site that hasn’t been updated since 2012. And finally, Common Cause, an organization that dissolved itself this past Spring (2016). A rather eye-opening list of links for the curious audience – especially those with little or no prior reference to anarchist ideas.

Anarchist media needs to exist and the GRR is a welcome addition to a sparse North America anarchist newspaper lineup, even if the “you’re an idiot” and overall party approach to anarchy-ism seems more grumpy and unattractive than revolutionary. One recent anarchist newspaper (+online) project particularly stands out for aiming above all of the ridiculousness, called The Blast. In the about us, they write: “For those new to the struggle we present some of the rich stories of what has come before us – tales of our gains and losses, of what is possible in the future and in our daily lives today. For those who have been here a while, we’d like to reimagine familiar issues with a critical eye while maintaining no (or at least shifting) sacred cows.”

How will the GRR respond to this review? Disastrously we imagine, as unfortunate it becomes when one looks at the GRR website “About us”:

Odds are, we’re just going to read your complaints aloud at a meeting and laugh at you.
– GRR

Real Anarchists Have Day Jobs

A brief visit with the Black Rose Anarchist Federation

Whilst I know there are many decent but mistaken individuals who pride themselves on their party membership I consider that the best job pro-revolutionary organisations do is to contain all the idiots in one place, permitting to everybody else the luxury of avoiding them. – Nihilist Communism

Around a year or so ago, I decided to attend a General Interest Meeting (GIM) of the locale Black Rose Anarchist Federation. I went because I was curious to meet and see what other anarchists in the area were working on. The meeting was very well attended for a city that isn’t known for having a bunch of wild-eyed anarchists. People were interested and the anarchist outreach game was on point as the meeting began in an old church, whose member(s) had invited the anarchists to use the space.

The presentation was dry, awkward at times, and not one that seemed to be overly appealing to the packed room of listeners, although many faces did continue on into the first part of the “integrating process.” This overall bland tone carried on into future meetings, discussions, and direction of the group, with at times showing life, but mostly seeming basic and at times even hostile to anarchist ideas. Since (or before) 1999, the platform in North America has gained a reputation of being the sectarian comrades you never wanted and unwelcoming to other anarchists. At the time of the GIM, Black Rose was around 1 year old, as it had previously combined various anarchist organizations throughout the USA into one group to rule them all. The north-east of the USA and North America, with the exception perhaps being Montreal, seem to really favour this platformist, syndicalist, and especifismo approach to anarchism (class / work). Why is that?

The most intriguing part of the GIM was their explanation and discussion of the platform vs. especifismo. A basic summary would be that the platform after the Russian Revolution (ATR) is like “hey, we lost” – how do we change our specific anarchist organization, tactics, and strategies to ensure we stop losing (A: federalism?). Especifismo has a huge overlap with the platform and appear quite similar – although over our short stay; it was explained to that Rochester Black Rose “isn’t actually a specific platformist or especifismo group, or even how the group describes itself”, but the alternatives and exacts were never quite clear enough. Organizationalism, social insertion, and other trademarks on the platform / especifismo always seemed to be the most stressed.

Previously, the group had started as Rochester Red and Black and then changed their name to Rochester Black Rose when they joined the new federation. Rochester Red and Black had been around a few years prior, mainly focusing on housing issues, education, and “political work.” They’ve since continued in other areas with some of the main projects being the Fight for $15, the IWW Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), and the new publication mentioned above called the Genesee River Rebellion.

As explained in the GIM, membership into the Federation would come after a 3-6 month integrating process. The process included attending the monthly General Assembly (GA), paying dues to the Federation, a monthly reading group, and overall participation in Black Rose. During this period, one was assigned a “mentor” or a standing member of the group. These mentors also had bi-weekly(?) or so meetings with the locale about their thoughts on their mentees. While we have a lot of “feelings” about the whole process, it mostly felt like a popularity contest amongst a closed clique of people who were already close friends. Curiously, our adoration was not as esteemed as some and we were eventually informed around 5 months in, the vote would be a big “no” to become a member in good standing. Ouch! As individuals interested in and working on anarchist projects, it felt a bit awkward and sad to have such a hard time building lasting relationships with other anarchists that live only a few blocks away.

So, what happened? Well, a lot over the course of those months, although we’ve also known some of them for years prior and have attended their workshops, conferences, and meetings on a number of previous occasions. However, it was mostly over recent discussions, readings, and observations that changed our mind about working alongside this locale of the Black Rose Federation. For those so interested in building the mass movement of community, affinity, and solidarity together – life seemed far away. Discussion of this and other concerns were never really actualized or received genuine replies. The responses we did receive didn’t seem to come from people who were interested in having good-faith arguments, working with other anarchists, or possibly seeing life outside the blinders. Along with their unwillingness to have us, the departure was just as much on our end. After everything, we somewhat quietly left the group and went back to doing nothing. The next time we ran into our “mentor” was at a music show after they were coming back from the local Bernie Sanders rally, where they may have also just given a speech.

Some of the forks-in-the-road we encountered and are willing to share here are as follows. Facebook was used to organize pretty much everything. Within Facebook, it’s possible to have “secret” groups and this is how the majority of integrating and standing members communicated and shared information with each other. Of course, nothing is illegal and the type of anarchism that the Black Rose Federation is associated with is largely public, above ground organizing. Still, it was tough to take seriously and understand why not use other more anarchist friendly alternatives to communicating and sharing? The answer seems to lay somewhere in-between it’s convenient, everyone had a Facebook account; and the naive, we don’t care if our enemies can see everything we’re talking about. Even after Occupy, the Arab Spring, and other uprisings greatly aided by social media – it has been tough to take seriously people who organize specifically over it. Google was also used to keep track of supporters, membership, and dues. From these Google files, which everyone could see, we can get a more personal view of members finances. How much do you make? Check the anarchist spreadsheet and do the math. Whose supporting us? It all seemed a bit intrusive, especially in an anarchist organization where things are more-often-than-not open and accountable, but especially revealing for those who are tasked with monitoring and destroying anarchist organizing. Sometimes we make other peoples jobs way too easy.

Most (repressive, dividing, and controlling) State activity works by identifying individuals and relating them through organisational structures, all membership organisations, therefore, are built with flaws present from the outset which the State is able to exploit, usually to the detriment of the whole “movement”. (Look at the film, The Battle of Algiers.) –Nihilist Communism

Another fork-in-the-garden-of-irregularities is that of the relationship between the union staffers and the Federation. The North Eastern Federation of Anarchist-Communists (NEFAC) was often criticized for having various union flags waving at their demonstrations, metaphorically and real, and it was often difficult to tell where the line was being drawn by the anarchist participants and their union day jobs. During our brief stay with the Federation, this issue seemed to surprisingly come up a few time as disagreements between the various locales in Black Rose. Of course, anarchists have all kinds of jobs and work just like everyone, along with a strong past and present of being involved with struggles of the syndicalist nature, however bringing your liberal-leaning union / job into an anarchist organizations practice became a point of contention. A story related to us, was that in one anarchist meeting, support papers for the local social justice organization were handed out that made it feel like you were being recruited. In other times, anarchists were being asked to do the volunteer work for the main project of the locale – the Fight for $15; while a few within the locale got paid a salary for working on it via their day job. A rather weird repulsive dichotomy and one that seems to be becoming a more acknowledged issue within the platformist struggle. If only we too had an anarchist army to do our day job! Yes, these gripes were certainly not all we encountered in our stay, but a few we felt comfortable briefly mentioning here; we could go on and perhaps down the road we can find a way to write some meaningful words towards this end.

Until then, why write this? This brief review is simply a way of looking back and can hopefully be understood as a work of care, as in we care because we’re talking about you. We still live in the city and work on (different) anarchist projects and aren’t interested in creating more drama or frenemies; there is already way too much of that. What we hope and aim for is extending a warm and welcoming hand to other anarchists in the region and the larger anarchist space in general. There are some lessons to be taken away about how anarchists create and maintain long-term working projects, friendships, and the world we’d like to see. Anarchists don’t need a nation-wide Federation to organize and spread anarchist actions, we especially don’t need groups like GRR ridiculing other anarchists and their projects for their opposing beautiful ideas. Of course, it’s not possible to do what is to be (un)done with everyone in the terrible community. Our projects need to be fun and a reflection of the large, healthy, and vibrant international anarchist space we desire.

Rochester Black Rose on The Anarchist Library

[the end]

Capitalist Crisis and Anarchist Economics, a talk by Wayne Price on August 20th, 2013 in Rochester, New York at the Flying Squirrel Community Space

Last Tuesday I attended a talk by Wayne Price on the Capitalist Crisis and Anarchist Economics which also served as a entry point for his newly published book The Value of Radical Theory: An Anarchist Introduction to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy hosted by “your friendly neighborhood” anarchist organization, Rochester Red and Black. I must say, they were friendly and the Flying Squirrel is a pretty nice place for Rochester to have. I also picked up a copy of the his new book, but haven’t read past the first fifty pages yet, although the introduction has so far, been the most interesting. What follows is more of a look into his talk and some questions I had before and afterwards.

As anarchists, we are against state and capital, yet we are also not immune to the society we live in. We have to work for a living in order to survive and pay for food and shelter; some of us may even want some luxuries like books, bikes, the occasional keyboard to play, and maybe even more. The point being is that just because we are in opposition to civilization, we still live under it and more often than not have to play by their rules, while attempting not to comprise our ideas. Anarchists and economics are often like oil and water, they don’t mix well and as Price wrote – outside of perhaps Proudhon there is barely any sense of “anarchist economics.” This is were the ideas, formulations, and systems of Marx and Engels come into play with their importance in Price’s opinion. And onwards: Just as the Russian revolutionaries in 1917 asked, how is it to be done, this anarchist economics?

Price began his talk by stating that he is retired (from what he didn’t say) and that his family is in the same boat as all of us, experiencing the economic crisis with layoffs and difficulty finding meaningful jobs. He stated that he was an anarchist, of which kind or type he also didn’t say, although I have always thought of him in the class-struggle anarchist vain. He also went on to say that he is not a Marxist, yet he is open to some of their ideas as being valid. His basic speech was that society is historical and built upon commodities that are often useless, cycles are necessary for the health of the capitalist system, and that the panic has turned into the crisis. Profit is the goal of the capitalists, rather than use, as he described the analogy of the hammer – the capitalists make them, but will never use them. Price also talked of how capitalism fails to plan ahead, which brought to mind the old story of the grasshopper and ant. Although is this not planning ahead necessarily true?

According to Price, capitalism has been in decline since after World War II. This can be seen in the creation of the Bretton Woods system, which lead to the International Monetary Fund and what was called the World Bank, both of which aim to stabilize business as usual. Overall, I was more than a bit disappointed in his talk because I felt like everything he mentioned could have also been discussed in a Political Science college somewhere. It was almost as if he completely left out the anarchist economics half, and instead choose to talk to the large group in a general history leading up to the crisis. And on to the question and answer we went…

Why would anyone want a new society? For the most part, the answer is that they don’t. So what should we do as anarchists? Organize! But, around what? Price mentioned strikes and supporting them, supporting workers, taking over factories, and having worker run co-ops “from the bottom up, run by the workers.” He also mentioned that many of these alternative ideas are still within the system, like for example co-ops still being under the capitalist market.

One of the more heated questioning and answering of topics came when Price used the term “terrorism” to describe anarchist sabotage. It almost started to look like the Crimethinc. / Chris Hedges debate up in there. Perhaps instead, Price should have used the often anarchist term of propaganda of the deed (POD) to describe his distaste for it instead of the catch all often government term of terrorism. It turns out, Price is not in favour of small group POD, and instead believes that we need to win the “battle of ideas” (again this sounds like a military term from Iraq and Afghanistan). In the end, Price’s answer was that you can’t stop capitalism without a “mass movement” to end it.

And what about anarchist economics? Well, someone asked if he could define anarchist economics and talk about it in the context of his book, however he stated that there were “major issues” but – he wasn’t going to touch upon them. In Price’s defense, the question and answer had already gone on for quite sometime (with no one else asking this!) and it was a super hot night outside in the city. Although, he did offer some keywords as the next question also touched upon the title of his talk. He stated that the basic principal is that “no one exploits anyone else” and that exactly how no one really knows because we’re anarchists, and have many different ideas. He went on to mention that certainly PARECON was possible, but it has “issues” and that we need to experiment to see what works.

On a last note, Price often used the term “democracy” in discussing these anarchist alternatives and it would have been great to hear more of a critique of democracy from him or his specific ideas on the subject. Inside of me, I couldn’t help but cringe while thinking of the JM Barrie from Peter Pan (1928) quote: “Every time an anarchist says, “I believe in democracy,” there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.”

Comments:

Anarchists must say what only we can say…

Submitted by Soviopath (not verified) on Wed, 08/28/2013 – 16:20

This is uninspiring and uninspired. It’s not clear to me why anarchists should feel compelled to devise some kind of economics department or promote a singularly anarchist train of thought about economics. In the case of Marx, capitalism has realized the gist of the Manifesto’s political program. (Even if through a glass, darkly.) In the mainstream there is a considerable number of people who regard economics as a weird department of pseudoscientific knowledge.

What’s even more baffling is this promotion of anarchist economics, from what I can see in this summary, demonstrates no real deviance. There’s effectively been no break at all with the gist of far left ideology which still finds Marxism, or at least Marx, as its flagship. 

Self-managed labor: Does the rationally planned ownership of industrialism, manifested in workers’ ownership, signal the domination of the past by the present, as Marx believed? Can all of the dead labor of our world be successfully selected and rehashed based on utilitarian planning guided by principals of a humane society? This is the pound of flesh premise of self-managed work: Capitalism’s relations of exchange are an artificial fetter on our really existing plenty, and the parasitic host can be beaten away from the delectable bounty of 150 years of industrialism by the hands that labor to make it. But how much do we expropriate from the expropriators and how much do we sacrifice? Who will mine the rare earths for your mobile phone? Ostensibly, self-management does not dispossess itself of involvement in the necessities of labor but promotes an even greater involvement in work than is currently existing. Some would repudiate this altogether and contend that labor itself should be abolished as it is now practicable to do so technologically. Marx may have contended this as well. (http://therealmovement.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/david-graebers-much-needed-discussion-of-bullshit-jobs/)

More likely is that the threshold of workers’ demands, manifested as self-managed industry, is in fact a demonstration of their dependency on work. It is a signal of panicked and irresolute action by men who are only accustomed to a single way of living: tending the machines. This was perceived decades ago after May ’68. Workers’ ownership precipitates a harried, circumscribed involvement in the market by laborers who previously would’ve only been physically subordinate to their work. The domination of life by dead labor is real, and now it might be said that human agency only comprises a fraction of social relations. This would be my understanding, anyway. So I’ve suggested three paths here without going into a lot of detail, which apparently is more than can be said of the talk you went to.

Anarchist Economic is Oxymoronic

Submitted by anarcho-structu… (not verified) on Tue, 09/17/2013 – 11:55

An anarchist economics, if you ask Graeber, would be oxymoronic. In any case, he should say something like that if he were to be consistent. I haven’t read much from Graeber except his hokey online articles, but I get a sense he would agree here. If anarchism is to be the ethical side of revolutionary praxis, then a formal economics has already been presumed as impossible. A black bloc that smashes a busniess front is not to be concerned with the damages incurred but by the ethical imperative that drives the attack. The problem anarchists regularly face is in the simple fact that damages are indeed incurred and it behooves organizers to understand the implications of this. I read an account of a black bloc attacking a locally owned Shell station justifying the attack with the state of affairs in the niger delta, yet it was difficult for me to connect all the dots to that station specifically. Furthermore, some feminists were complaining that the place sold porn but I believe it was some strippers’ sock puppets from a nearby club. Apparently they were set up all pro with vpn’s and shit, but that’s a tangent. The tragedy was that the Shell took such a hard hit, a month later the place had shut down and a month after that the 7/11 took over. Now I’m not sitting here saying it is the anarchist’s job to be choosing between Shell and 7/11 but that the situation could have been handled better more conscious of the finances. But more to the point, an anarchist economics, if anything at all, has to be an economics ethics, and thats just hard with the accusations of liberalism and opportunism everywhere. Its like anarchists are always trying to start something but aren’t sure why because their ethics aren’t informed by a formal system. It only takes enough to know that the capitalist system is not one of free exchanged but always maintained and regulated through violence. Once that realization comes to light it is simply a matter of what to do but that is hardly simple. Finance capital harasses because it is on the wrong side, I can’t say more but its obvious why I have to cut this short. As usual, pull out, contort, rethink, read and reread etc. The priest is still sour apparently. We are still hearing the disturbing noises and left only with anger because we are either not with who we want to be or alone. That too is an economic problem.

Just from your review…

Submitted by Assaf Koss (not verified) on Wed, 09/18/2013 – 16:24

I understand that the more important topic Price was trying to touch on is, how to get anarchist ideas to work in practice; in reality and soon.

I agree that we should all focus on what we can actually do to improve our statist situation. What I disagree with is the idea that we should fix this statist condition with another state-like organization that enmasses anarchists. Might as well call for an anarchist army, to be so off the mark.

If I could suggest my own opinion, in regard to practicality, that it is possible to have a lot of influence, without being an organized hoard. Or, in other words, that we could all pinpoint personal and small-group tactics that work for our common adventage. I like to see it as a sort of shared “anarchist strategy,” which includes in itself all those small entities, that I then call “immediate tactics.”

Other than that, I completely agree with you that watching out for keywords, such as “terror”, “democracy” and “fight,” is critical for discussion. Some perspectives are innately oxymoronic when it comes to anarchy, regardless of the good intentions of the person.

Wayne Price comments on review

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 09/19/2013 – 00:23

Wayne Price has responded wilth a comment on Anarchist News dot org, which I’ve taken the liberty to copy and paste below:

“Rocinante’s” account of my talk in Rochester gives me some idea of how it came across to at least one person in the room. I wish she (?) had asked more questions, during or after the talk; we might have cleared up some things (such as what kind of anarchist I am!). Some comments:

(1) The point of my discussion of the nature of the historical period of capitalism was this: to argue that socialist-anarchism is not just a nicer, more attractive, more moral goal than capitalism, but that it is necessary, since capitalism is in its epoch of decline, heading for destruction of society and ecology.

(2) I did not equate all anarchist actions with “terrorism.” I did warn that many, even most, people would see even nonviolent small scale actions as terrorist (incorrectly), would not get the point, and just see them as more problems of our society. Sometimes this is all we can do, but we need to find ways wherever possible to build popular, mass, movements, from labor struggles to anti-fracking efforts (there will be no lack of issues in this period).

(3) “Democracy” is used in two ways: as an ideological coverup for the existing capitalist state or as a goal of a free, self-managing, society. I do not want to quibble. Many anarchists might object to “democracy” but are happy to use “self-management,” which seem to me to be synonyms. Anyway, like Goodman, Goldman, Bookchin, Tucker, and others, I regard anarchism as the most radical form of democracy.

http://anarchistnews.org/comment/28202#comment-28202

do you intend anarchism as goal-oriented organization?

Submitted by emile-copy-paste-a (not verified) on Thu, 09/26/2013 – 23:58

Emile, infamous anarchist news dot org commentor replies to Wayne Price (copy and pasted from @news by curious reader http://anarchistnews.org/comment/28747#comment-28747  ):

you say;

“Democracy” is used in two ways: as an ideological coverup for the existing capitalist state or as a goal of a free, self-managing, society.”
you further say;

“I regard anarchism as the most radical form of democracy.”

do you therefore intend that ‘our goal’ should be a free, self-managing anarchist society?

i ask this because, in my view, ‘working towards a better system of self-management’ is ambiguous as to what is intended by ‘self-management’ [there is the destination-oriented self-management and the journey-oriented self-management].

our European destination-oriented culture is inherently anthropocentric and it screws up the common living space in which ‘self-organization’ is inherent.
‘democracy’ as a ‘system of self-management’, as it developed in Europe, incorporated the notion of the human organism as a ‘independently-existing thing-in-itself’, as in Christian religious myth, as individual units made by God. humans were NOT seen as interdependent participants in an unfolding ecosystem with inbuilt self-organizing capability.

that is the history of our now globally dominating European culture and it is very unlike the form of ‘organizing’ in the indigenous aboriginal anarchism which understands man as inextricably bound into the transforming web-of-life.

as we know, european culture man, believing he was a God-given thing-in-himself, rejected the ‘in-the-now’ journey-oriented philosophy of indigenous anarchism, … and decided that it would be necessary to ‘put someone in charge’ and ‘whip the world into shape’. of course, european man’s anthropocentric goals and objectives had no idea of how human actions would impact wolf, bear, grasshopper, and the tiny ones like microbes, and frankly, european man didn’t give a damn. this was likely due to Christian religious belief [acknowledgement of inhabitant-habitat interdependence is not found in the Bible];

“God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” – Genesis 1:28

this ethic of subjugation of ‘lesser things’ by ‘greater things’ [the christian value hierarchy was God, angels, man, animals, plants, minerals as in St. Augustine’s ‘Civitate Dei’] was part of the ‘self-management program’, and the categories of man and animals was further divided up placing aboriginals and brown and black skinned people farther from the image of God [white males made God in their image] and thus destined to be a follower rather than a leader in humanity’s ‘self-organizing’ initiatives.

the animating source of human activity, in the European mind conditioned by noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar, is ‘intellection and purpose’. this is inherently ‘goals-oriented’,… HUMAN goals-oriented. what these human intellection and goals-oriented actions have been doing is to screw up the environment [everything below the apex of the control-center hierarchy]. this anthropocentrist social dynamic, since it jumpstarts from the human intellect, has no idea how the actions it precipitates will impact others who are not in the inner circle of intellectuals and enforcers. Europeans did not sit around in a ‘talking circle’ so that everyone could share their experience, apart from in romanticized folklore such as ‘the knights of the round table’.

‘organization’, in European cultural terms meant ‘determining what happens’, while, in indigenous anarchist terms, ‘organization’ referred first and foremost to the relational web-of-life that one was included in, which was NOT the product of ‘what humans decided to do’.

in fact, European man had ‘no idea’ of what would actually ‘result’ from his actions since their actions were designed to determine European man’s anthropocentric ‘wants’, and the ‘collateral damage’ has been enormous because we live in a relational space, and it is impossible to act without impacting others woven into the common relational web. in fact, the more remote one is from ‘mover-and-shaker central’, the more one is going to be whipped about like the last man on the skaters game of ‘crack the whip’, wolf and bear to the extreme.

‘democracy’ has been an anthropocentric self-management scheme that has been the source of massive ‘collateral damage’ not just to the environment but without influence on the intellectual central directives due to the human intellect having no idea of the full relational implications of human actions. as mcluhan pointed out, it takes a whole community to raise a factory, and many contribute whether they like it or not, who are not mentioned in the glorious plan.
that is why indigenous anarchists do not use their intellect as the primary driver of their ‘organizing’. what sense is there in that, if one doesn’t know the implications of one’s intellect directed actions?

the indigenous anarchists use the talking circle or ‘learning circle’ as the primary shaper of their collective behaviour. in the circle, one flips from ‘head voice’ to ‘heart voice’ to share actual feeling experiences. the centre of the circle is understood as the point of synthesis where the diverse multiplicity of experiences come into connective confluence so that ‘what is happening’ is given by the coherency in how all these experiences relate. The learning circle thus emulates the quantum physics compliant communications theory of Gabor, which similarly suspends all filtering of noise [one would have to know the truth in advance to identify ‘noise’] and extracts information from coherency in the synthetic/confluence of a diverse multiplicity of unfiltered signals.

comparison of European organizing model and Indigenous Anarchist organizing model;

1. the European understanding of self-organization is where a collective works together to determine a desired result. the goals and objectives are ‘in charge’ of coordinating individual and collective behaviours. [powerboater model]

2. the indigenous anarchist understanding of self-organization is one in which the participants acknowledge they are included in a dynamic that is greater than their own actions, and so must share with one another what they are personally experiencing and let this inform their collective actions. goal oriented initiatives are secondary to, and informed by the ‘learning circle’ understandings.

[the (2.) approach to organization comprehends systems sciences pioneer Russell Ackoff’s point that ‘analytical inquiry into a local system that looks at what it does,…. Must be informed by synthetical inquiry into the relational suprasystem it is included in and answering some relational need; i.e. it acknowledges that the system and its relational suprasystem are in ‘conjugate relation’].

the difference between the two is clear. in (1.) the operatives believe that they can know and determine the results of their actions, while there is no such assumption in (2.) and the ‘learning circle’ is to gather input as to what is really going on [what people are actually experiencing from all sources of influence], so that this can inform their continuing actions.

as mcluhan points out, if you want to construct a factory, the only space you can do it in is one that is already occupied [whether or not with humans] aka the ‘suprasystem’ or ‘community’, … and so ‘construction’ amounts to ‘destruction’ of what is already ‘in place’, as far as physical structures go. more fundamental than the change-out of physical structures is the transformation of the operative relations in the community/suprasystem. the European mind may model what happened in the CONCEPTUAL terms of an organized initiative to CONSTRUCT some new physical structures, but the physical reality is the transformation of relations in the community dynamic that are the deeper source of such structures and which rebuild them if they are damaged or destroyed.

So what’s the point?

the point is that our European conception of ‘organization’ has been in terms of ‘what things do’ so that ‘organization’ translates into ‘coordinated doing’ in which goals and objectives are ‘put in charge’ of an operating collective.

this is very different from indigenous anarchist organization which does not assume that we can know the results of our actions since we are woven into a relational web of interdependencies. that is why goals and objectives oriented actions are demoted to secondary status. for example, the powerboater and sailboater analogy is one where the former is purely destination-oriented [goals and objective oriented] while the latter acknowledges that power and steerage derive from the relational suprasystem one is included in, and so puts balanced/harmonious journey into precedence over destination, acknowledging that the relational suprasystem one is included in is a greater determinant than the actions of the systems that are included in it.

you say;

“I regard anarchism as the most radical form of democracy.”

but what do you mean by that? without elaboration it stands there as an empty platitude.

in your prior statement you describe democracy and thus anarchism [a form of democracy] as; ‘the goal of a free, self-managing society’, … BUT it is still not clear what you mean by ‘self-managing’. is it type (1.) or (2.)

if everyone is free to ‘do their own thing’, believing that their actions determine a knowable result, and seeing themselves as independently-existing beings with the God-given right to their own independent pursuit of happiness, then we are in the fictional reality of the European mind conditioned by noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar that is the source of massive collateral damage or ‘incoherence’ [Bohm]. we are ignoring the physical reality of Mach’s principle;

“the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat at the same time as the dynamics of the habitat are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants.”

however, if everyone acknowledges that they can’t know the results of their actions due to being woven into a relational-spatial web of interdependencies, then such people will naturally evolve some form of ‘learning circle’ to understand how one and other [including animals, plants, oceans etc.] are affected by the nexus of influences they are experiencing that are infused into the common relation space that is conditioning their behaviour..

at present, the dominating mode of organization is (1.), the goal oriented mode of the European mind where the centre of authority and centre of intellectual direction tell the masses that those at the control centre ‘know what they are doing’ [they are more or less informed by the masses] and they explicitly predict what will be the results of their control-centre jumpstarted actions. of course their predictions are superficial; e.g. the U.S. intellectual control centre said they would remove saddam and, if one wants to take that noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar construct LITERALLY, they did, but in the process, they shook the web of interdependencies and their actions radicalized thousands of muslims who are now mobilizing to bring down ‘the American Satan’. for those who believe that the ‘poles’ of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are real rather than secondary phenomena induced by polarization, the end game is nothing other than mutual annihilation.

at sovereign state level, there are 193 of these intellection and purpose directed self-managed organizations in the world [thousands more on other levels and billions on the individual person level], all of which fall into the habit of the European mind [which recruited and backed them] that insists on a God-given right to equality, independence and to their individual pursuit of happiness, as if everyone were living in a non-participating absolute space and absolute time reference frame/operating theatre.

it is taken for granted that you don’t favour representative democracy which predominates in the world at present even though those that do consider it a form of ‘self-management’. but what do you mean by “…anarchism as the most radical form of democracy.”?

is it still organization (1.) that puts intellection and purpose based goals and objectives ‘in charge’ of coordinating individual and collective behaviours? [powerboater style]

or are you advocating organization (2.) that acknowledges that we are included in a suprasystem dynamic greater than our own actions and so must share with one another what we are each personally experiencing and let this inform our collective actions. goal oriented initiatives being secondary to, and informed by the ‘learning circle’ understandings.

indigenous anarchism is type (2.) and it is this form of organization that impressed Engels and Marx and the founding fathers of the U.S.;

“To Engels, Morgan’s description of the Iroquois [in Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society and The League of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois] was important because “it gives us the opportunity of studying the organization of a society which, as yet, knows no state.” Jefferson had also been interested in the Iroquois’ ability to maintain social consensus without a large state apparatus, as had Franklin. Engels described the Iroquoian state in much the same way that American revolutionaries had a century earlier: “Everything runs smoothly without soldiers, gendarmes, or police, without nobles, kings, governors, prefects or judges; without prisons, without trials. All quarrels and disputes are settled by the whole body of those concerned. . . . The household is run communistically by a number of families; the land is tribal property, only the small gardens being temporarily assigned to the households — still, not a bit of our extensive and complicated machinery of administration is required. . . . There are no poor and needy. The communistic household and the gens know their responsibility toward the aged, the sick and the disabled in war. All are free and equal — including the women.” — Bruce E. Johansen, Forgotten Founders

there is much talk of ‘anarchist organization’ but almost never a clarification of what sort of organization that implies.

i.e. which type of organization is your ‘anarchism’? is your “…anarchism as the most radical form of democracy.” still in the (1.) mode?

Anarchist Economics

Submitted by Wayne Price (not verified) on Fri, 09/20/2013 – 21:39

I don’t know whether David Graeber believes that “anarchist economics” is oxymoronic, since he is an anarchist and has written on economics (see his big book on Debt).  I do know that he is strongly for the idea that “democracy” is consistent with the concepts of anarchism–one of the areas where I am in complete agreement with him.  

My point about anarchist economics is that this is sometimes used to mean a vision of a post-capitalist, post-statist, post-revolutionary economy.  Anarchism has a great deal to say about this (and I included a chapter in my book discussing this).  But at other times it is used to mean an analysis of how present day society (capitalism) is functioning and is likely to function in the future.  Here anarchists have little to say.  I am sorry but this is simply the truth.  Mainly there is either bourgeois econommics as taught in the universityies or there is Marxist economic theory of some sort.  I have come to the conclustion that Marx had the best overall conception of this second sort of “economics.”  Good anarchists may disagree with me. Some may read my little book and still disagree or others just don’t want to explore what might be learned from Marx (due to his faults which led to eventual Stalinism).  It’s ok with me.

To Assaf Koss, I am not for a state-like organization.  I am for nonstate organizations, voluntary, radically democratic, decentralized, and federative.

wayne price comments some more from @news

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 09/24/2013 – 01:35

Wayne Price has also responded on @news with a different comment, of which I’ve also taken the liberty to post below [“MG” means Mister Grumpy, a frequent @news commentor]:

To Assaf Kass,
I have to say that I do not understand your question about “how do iyou equate or intermingle anarchism with a prefabricated social order?” There are things about this society which I find abhorent and vile, particularly its basic structure and dynamics. But there are other things which I like and want to see more of, such as self-organization, self-management, independent thinking, technology used for human and ecological purposes, and human solidarity.

To MG, who writes, “some of us aren’t even interested in building a new society; instead we are busy trying to find ways of irreversibly destroying the existing one.” Don’t worry then, because capitalism is on the road to self-destruction, through economic collapse, nuclear war, or ecological catastrophe. You will get your masochistic wish. Some of us, however, believe that the alternatives are “socialism or barbarism” (Luxemburg) or, better yet, “anarchism or annihilation” (Bookchin). We don’t want annihilation. We want anarchism and are willing to work for it.

http://anarchistnews.org/comment/28375#comment-28375

Welcome to my first ever blog post on Anarchy Planet, this is going to be pretty sweet. The plan  is for this to be a dreamy cornucopia of sorts,  including  – but not limited to critiques and reviews of anarchist journals, zines, art, music, and books. Occasionally, there will also be some homemade writing from yours truly, like short stories and other explorations of experience.

Looking forward to it, and always welcome constructive feedback.

Salud!

The salutary words of the machine, and the fresh air of the street made the worker think. He felt a world collapse within his mind: those of his prejudices, of his preoccupations, of his regard and devotion for tradition and for laws. Shaking his fist, he yelled:

“I am an anarchist! Long live Land and Liberty!”

– an excerpt from The Worker and the Machine by Ricardo Flores Magón