Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 09:00:56 +1000
From: "dr.woooo" <dr.woooo-AT-nomasters.org>
Subject: [postanarchism] Fwd: could you fwd this to post-anarchism?




----- Forwarded message from Fydd <ffyddless-AT-yahoo.co.nz> -----
    Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 00:26:01 +1200 (NZST)
    From: Fydd <ffyddless-AT->
 Subject: could you fwd this to post-anarchism?
      To: dr.woooo-AT-nomasters.org

hi dr woooo, could you plse fwd this to post anarchism
list for me? its a reply to S (i read his/her message
in the archives - thanks for the link). i dont wanna
subscribe to the list, i dont like the spoon server
much at all.

cheers fydd.

*************

Hello, i’m not subscribed to this list but was alerted
that S. replied to my message via the love and rage
list (autonomist list in oz), so here’s my reply.
Basically I agree with Richard’s reply, and he has
covered most of the points I would wanna make. I hope
my reply is not too unpalatable...

>From owner-postanarchism-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU 
Mon Jun 23 13:03:04 2003
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 10:02:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: spencer <spencerpdx-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [postanarchism] Fwd: Re: Race Traitor:
"Abolish the White Race"

"this is a bit weird. to stick my neck out: new
> social movements 
> such as women's lib, gay lib, the ecological
> movement and so on 
> simply failed."

S writes: <they have in no way failed. gender equality
in the
industrialized world is a far, far cry from what it
was only 50 years ago. you are seriously going to tell
me that the gay rights movement has "failed" in
achieving a large measure of equality and acceptance
for sexual minorities, and done it in only 30 years?>

nope, but you are judging these movements from
different criteria than I. I admit i woz being
provocative when I said I thought they had failed. By
failed I mean “failed” to *fundamentally* change
patriarchy, racism, homophobia and so on. I mean
patriarchy and widespread ecological destruction still
exist don’t they? Sure, things are much better for
many women since 50 years ago, but since the
international ruling class counter-offensive of the
1980s the position of working class women, ethnic
minorities and gays is much worse I believe, and
ecological destruction has worsened as well. 

I should have made my criteria for judging “failure”
more explicit.

"i would
> prefer to see a 
> praxis that is revolutionary & class based (class
> here defined in a 
> broad way a la the autonomists) but not class
> reductionist, and 
> recognises both the autonomy of women's, gay,
> indigenous, ecological 
> movements from class -- yet at the same time
> recognises their crucial 
> interdependence with class, that you cant struggle
> for one without 
> struggling for the other." 

s writes: <i believe that oppressive systems such as
those based
on gender, sexuality and environmental domination are
NOT "interdependent" to class, and that you DEFINITELY
can struggle for one without struggling for the other.

in fact, the history of political change shows this!
it's nothing but empty leftist rhetoric to mouth that
these struggles are integrally interlinked. the place
that economic struggles have, of course, are unique in
that that affect everyone, regardless of their
positioning otherwise, and in that way that are
"linked" to issues such as gender... but i reject that
they are _integrally_ linked. to me, this is just
another way of giving lip service to "new social
movements" (i hate this term, it is inherently marxist
and anti-anarchist) and then going right back to a
class reductionist view.>

um, for sure I agree that these movements can be
independent of class struggle, but I don’t think its
empty rhetoric (i’m not a leftist BTW, but an
ultra-leftist anarchist commie) to say they’re
integrally interlinked. It’s very much a political
reality that these struggles are interlinked. For
example, it’s no coincidence that new social movements
(I use this term not to piss you off, but coz its
quicker than writing out “2nd wave feminism, gay,
ecology, indigeneous etc movements”) emerged in a time
of intense working class self-activity in the late
1960s up to the mid 1970s. 

Indeed, autonomist marxists like George Caffentzis
argue that the multifarious new social movements of
the time were mostly expressions of both unwaged and
waged working class discontent (which you may view as
class reductionist, but it contains some truth). Many
of struggles of the period were led by working class
ethnic minorities and women. Working class
African-Americans were the most rebellious section of
the American working class from the early 1960s.
Anti-racism or women’s liberation are not strictly
transclass issues.

" retreat from class
> thesis a la Bookchin"

S writes: <what Bookchin are you referring to? class
is totally
central to Bookchin - he is a Old Leftist! (not to say
i don't like his stuff, mind you).>

for me, all of Bookchin’s works. to me, Bookchin’s
work is based upon a version of the Marcuse/Gorz
thesis “farewell to the working class” based upon the
false assumption that workers have been hopelessly
dominated by capitalists and bedazzled by the
spectacle and all that, and thus workers have become
passive objects. thus bookchin looks to the
counter-culture (in Post Scarcity Anarchism), to new
social movements (in Toward an Ecological Society and
others) and more recently to the transclass municipal
citizen as the agent of revolutionary change. To
paraphrase Bookchin: in Toward an Ecological Society,
p. 241 he claims the alleged “one-sided condition” of
bourgeois domination under capitalism means that the
working class can no longer be considered a
revolutionary force.

Thus I don’t see much of a class perspective in
Bookchin’s works.

S writes <Fydd, maybe we just have a disagreement over
the idea
of "revolution" here.. you think there will be this
old-style leftist revolution, where the oppressive
system (capitalism/the spectacle/patriarchy/the world)
will be overthrown by a political struggle, and then
everything will be different afterwords?>

nah, I think a radically different world is present
somewhat in the here and now. its present in the
multifarious ways in which people constantly rebel and
refuse in the workplace, community and home. it’s
present in the tendency to defend the commons from
further enclosure in anti-borders, anti-GE,
anti-privatisation and anti-capitalist struggles (the
“commons” is a trendy word and it means somefink like
the common wealth of the world), and in the “communist
tendency” exemplified in free beaches, parks, roads,
bridges, water, open source software etc which have
been made freely available on the basis of need in
many countries. In a sentence: commons-ism is a
movement, a practical tendency, and not a programme or
ideal to be put in place after the revolution.
revolution is just this tendency speeded up and
brought out into the open more.

<i think there is this world here, which we are in,
and
it simply constantly changing, as it moves along and
us with it/as part of it/creating it, and we react and
respond to it..>

this sounds quite dialectical! for sure, that’s what I
mean by “refusal” above. revolution to me is a product
of people’s individual and collective self-activity
speeded up, not of abstract economic forces. and
communism to me is not a universal panacea or utopia
to cure all ills, or a “natural” human condition or
tendency, but a historical tendency that is itself
subject to constant change and modification.

<there are radical changes, but lets leave
"revolution"
to the Christains. As Ernst Bloch points out, the
first "political utopia" in history is St Augustine's
Heavenly City.>

if you mean by “revolution” the imposition of a fixed,
dogmatic programme for sure. plus the Leninists of
course.

Fydd.




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