From: "Dave Coull" <coull2-AT-btinternet.com>
Subject: RE: Infoshop.org Survey - Last chance to take it!
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 08:55:12 -0000



I wrote

 
>> One of the problems with surveys such as this one
>> is that they can conceal more than they reveal. 
>> For instance, I once saw a survey which sought 
>> to categorize anarchists as "anarchist-individualist"
>> or "anarcho-syndicalist" or "anarchist-communist"
>> etc. The categories offered as mutually exclusive
>> choices revealed far more about the folk setting
>> the questions than they did about those answering. 


and Chucko comments


If you don't like the choices, fill in the "other" box 


I have no intention of filling in the "other" box
because I have no intention of taking part in this
or any other similar survey. I think it is, from
an anarchist point of view, a deeply flawed exercise,
although it may prove of use to some other folk.

I wrote


>> Here in Scotland, some folk (not including me, 
>> at least not to begin with) decided to set up 
>> an e-mail list for active anarchists interested 
>> in organising together, and they quite rightly decided 
>> to limit this to class struggle anarchists. Yet that 
>> most basic and obvious of categories didn't even appear 
>> as one of the possible answers in the survey I saw, 
>> and my guess (knowing just how woolly-headed Chucko 
>> is) is that it didn't appear in _his_ survey either. 


and Chucko responds


> Look, I'm not all that conversant with the different 
> flavors currently worshipping in the anarcho-communist 
> church. 


Which kind of misses the point. 

My guess was right, wasn't it? The survey doesn't ask 
about whether or not those surveyed regard themselves 
as class struggle anarchists, does it?

I have been actively involved in or with the anarchist 
movement for about forty years now. Well,  _intermittently_  
actively involved, some times more actively than others. 
Absolutely NOBODY, nobody at all, keeps up the same 
high level of activism for forty years. During all of 
that time, I have known folk to use the term "class 
struggle anarchists" as a general term to include any 
anarchist who saw what they were involved in as part 
of the class struggle. And I  _know_  it's not just 
used like that in this country. Like I said, the categories
offered in surveys such as this one reveal far more
about those setting the questions than they do about
those answering them. 


Dave Coull