Problems with libcom

[Raw SslaC]

I just read a bit in prol-position #1 about the Laing/CTRL stuff. And saw them mention that you'd been invited to other sites but declined. They only paraphrased your reasons for this in one sentence (the reasons prol gave were reasonable enough, but also clashed with, for example, the EuroMayDay action), so was wondering if you'd elaborate on it.

Euromayday was NOT a wombles action but came out of people involved in the precarity group, there was about 40 people involved before the action as we could only include people that we knew in the logistics due to possible police intervention. In terms of comparisons with Laings there is none. We weren't their to support a specific workers struggle but a general anti-work/solidarity to people resisting work...etc. As you would have read the follow up statement www.precarity.info it explains it a bitmore what happened. The important thing about actions like that is that they are only as succesful as what it inspires afterwards and the activity which follows. Saying that we leafletted about 400 people a week later including all the workers in Tescos and had an amazing response with people.

Again, it is a shame that boards like these (or even libcom) doesn't allow ANY debate on a comradely level, that 6 months later, that action is still being explained....very sad as only thru debate can ideas develop..but anyhow

raw

 

[Col_Buendia]

Well, Revol, y'see if you'd just let go of the bile, you'd have a half decent point in there. I don't think the Wombles (imo) fetishize their autonomy. And I think that they are more than aware of the particularities of their situation, but perhaps from Belfast you have had more experience of dealing with them than I have had.

It's not a competition, Revol, we're supposed to be fighting the same thing, aren't we? Can we not allow a variety of tactics and struggles to be employed without sneering at those who think differently than us?

 

[Raw SslaC]

I think you'll find that post merely points out that the WOMBLES who so value their ability to resist the imposition of work should remember the paticularities of their situation, and how it is a rather previleged position within the proletariat.

What are you on about? No not JUST the WOMBLES but NORMAL people aswell resist the imposition of work, everyday, even whilst working!!! And I have never said that it is somehow "privileged"!!??!

I do not fetish work, rather I detest it, I just recognise that it will not be overthrown by people dropping out to organise social centres.

No one has said that is how work will be overthrown. we have never suggested that it will.

Rather i would hold that it is the WOMBLES who fetishise their suppoused autonomy and fail to grasp that their so called social centres are no more autonomous than a workers tea room, and probably alot less radical.

There is a degree of autonomy that is created within self-management/self-organisation whether it is in the work place or in the "community".

 

[revol68]

Well, Revol, y'see if you'd just let go of the bile, you'd have a half decent point in there. I don't think the Wombles (imo) fetishize their autonomy. And I think that they are more than aware of the particularities of their situation, but perhaps from Belfast you have had more experience of dealing with them than I have had.

It's not a competition, Revol, we're supposed to be fighting the same thing, aren't we? Can we not allow a variety of tactics and struggles to be employed without sneering at those who think differently than us?

The sneering at the wombles is based on my own personal experiances of similar hair brained muppets in Belfast. I'm just extremely fed up with the activist mentality which is continously fighting another cause after another cause. The activism becomes an end in itself.

I think people should basically start fighting back against their own particular issues, issues they can actually effect before running off to the next batch of summits or networking some other fucking grassroots gathering which has fuck all basis in the class and seem to multiply quicker than Ecoli.

Which is what really pissed me off about the Euro May Day thing, it was such a good issue, but yet the WOMBLES only model of organising was for an abstracted activist action, such a wasted oppurtunity. I mean a serious May Day programme aimed at retail work would have been good, people sharing experiances, surveys of retail workers, and organising meetings by and for retail workers.

What is not good is a bunch of headhuncho WOMBLES organising it all from some sordid lil squat and then getting the canon fodder to come later.

Tell me why did they bill it as about retail workers, when it was actually to do with making a piss poor cover of some Italian autoreducionaze?

 

[Col_Buendia]

The sneering at the wombles is based on my own personal experiances of similar hair brained muppets in Belfast.<snip>

Well, we're back on the bile, and I'm not here to defend the Wombles, Raw and the rest can do that much better than I could, so I'm not going to answer your sneerings at them. But I would just ask you to reflect on the sentence above. Speaks for itself, really.

And when you write "I think people should basically start fighting back against their own particular issues", is yours the Wombles, for I wonder where you direct the rest of your energy?

 

[revol68]

Well, we're back on the bile, and I'm not here to defend the Wombles, Raw and the rest can do that much better than I could, so I'm not going to answer your sneerings at them. But I would just ask you to reflect on the sentence above. Speaks for itself, really.

And when you write "I think people should basically start fighting back against their own particular issues", is yours the Wombles, for I wonder where you direct the rest of your energy?

your quite correct the WOMBLES are one of mine but only as a sub section of activist muppets, for 5 years i bit my tongue and even tried lying to myselg that it was going somewhere. The retarded anti work politics that seem to imagine people work cos they can't see through the propaganda, the cause junkies running after another fix, the meeting freaks chasing another fucking networking group.

People who think a squat is actual an autonomous zone, those who think anything DIY or Direct Action represents positive autonomy in itself, overlooking the fact that capital is not a homogenous mass that demands complete hierarchy, but rather a process that can accomdate and assimilate such non threatening actions, or marginalise them to the point of uselessness.

People who can't see that the role of the activist is really the reproduction of more hierarchies within the proletariat, the activists arise not from particular struggles of the working class, they do not engage in struggle in order to further the particular goals of the working class but rather to further their activism. They organise around abstract issues and then approach the particular.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I quite like revol's posting, although I'm not sure that Socialist Party members are the audience he's really aiming for. He wildly overstates his points and sometimes his style of argument seems a bit like he's trying to shoot someone in a crowded lift with a sawn off shotgun - blood and gore and screaming everywhere - but at it's core I think he's saying some pretty sensible things.

Some random thoughts about this thread:

1) Activist subcultures are at best a mixed blessing. They do provide an entry point for some people to more useful forms of politics but they also exclude far more people. It's in the nature of any kind of subculture to define itelf against what is perceived to be the mainstream.

2) Stunt actions have their uses, but exactly what people are trying to achieve has to be thought through.

3) Rebel Clowns and the like make my teeth hurt almost as much the kind of ageing hippies with hair down to their waists and long flowing skirts who want to recite their poems at anti-war meetings.

4) Lifestyle dropout stuff is not a political strategy and leads not inevitably but very often to backwards and elitist ideas about the vast majority of the working class.

5) All this "respect everyone else's tactics" stuff is just another way of arguing for a dictatorship of the stupidest. Everyone's actions effect everyone else in a struggle, on a demonstration or wherever.

 

[Col_Buendia]

Nice analogy, tho I don't want to be in the lift. And it feels a bit like it reading his posts.

My problem with this is that when one person takes up a position of struggle, it is a "drop-out". When 100 do it, it is an "action". But when 10,000 do it, then the number crunching leftists final admit that their revolutionary threshold has been passed and loftily bestow the honour of ideologically acceptable behaviour on that struggle.

The numbers vary but the threshold remains in the hands of those who hold the ideological stone tablets.

And my question is how do you get to the moment where the 10,000 decide upon resistance if you haven't passed a point where ten thousand individuals have taken that decision? Doesn't it start with an individual?

Therefore who has the right to draw the line between "lifestyle dropout stuff" and acceptable struggle?

 

[Col_Buendia]

5) All this "respect everyone else's tactics" stuff is just another way of arguing for a dictatorship of the stupidest. Everyone's actions effect everyone else in a struggle, on a demonstration or wherever.

Ya tacked that bit on as I was answering you, ya git!

FWIW, I didn't say "respect" everyone's tactics, I said allow. "Allowing" might only be as minimal as not shooting one's mouth off everytime another activist cropped up on the radar... discretion, valour, etc etc. Surely we are too few and too weak to waste our energies on endlessly sniping (as Gurrier said) and on demonstrating others' (perceived) failures?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

It depends what kind of activity you are talking about. For instance if there were 10,000 people willing to spend significant amounts of time planning and executing a mass shoplift, the first question that would spring to my mind is "couldn't you do something a bit more useful with that energy?". It's like a smaller scale version of the socialist argument about the Tobin Tax - if we were in a position to push through and enforce a worldwide tax on such financial dealings, we would be too busy doing much more drastic things to the world.

More generally, I don't think that movements build through a gradual agglomeration of people dropping out or making certain lifestyle decisions.

[edited to add - this is a response not to your post directly above but to your next one up from that.]

 

[revol68]

the issue isn't numbers it's about the sphere of organising.

If you live in an area and their is a real problem with underfunding of some social service or other you organise around it, even if it's just you and two mates to start with.

However activists seem incredibly apt at picking issues they have no hope of mobilising anyone outside the activist ghetto for, mostly cause the issues are quite abstract and have no foreseeable goal other than keeping some pricks social calendar busy.

Activists travel all over the world to fight issues that have real resistable results locally.

Activists get pissed off that not everyone has the time or inclination saving the world like they do, which is what leads to posts like RAWS about anarchists and work commitments.

 

[Col_Buendia]

the issue isn't numbers it's about the sphere of organising.

If you live in an area and their is a real problem with underfunding of some social service or other you organise around it, even if it's just you and two mates to start with.

Quite. So the Wombles are based in London and seem to focus much of their activity in London. Perhaps you'd like to look again at posts 109, 116 and 121. I haven't got any reason to suppose Monte & Raw are making this up, so from what I see there you have Tesco workers, Heathrow workers and also Gate Gourmet (not mentioned in those posts). Not exactly what you would describe as an "activist ghetto", is it? But fuck it, you've got me defending the Wombles, and I'm not interested in that. I just still don't see why you've got such spleen for them, given that you already admitted that you don't know them and your anger was based on "similar muppets" that you'd met in Belfast. That's ludicrous.

 

[gurrier]

The sneering at the wombles is based on my own personal experiances of similar hair brained muppets in Belfast. I'm just extremely fed up with the activist mentality which is continously fighting another cause after another cause. The activism becomes an end in itself.

So, let's get this straight. You are writing right-wing, slanderous lies for public consumption about a group of anarchists who you know nothing about based on your experiences with a completely different group of people in a different country. That's fair.

I think people should basically start fighting back against their own particular issues,

Unless that issue is how shit work is, or environmentalism, or opening up disused space for public use, or pretty much anything that involves doing something.

issues they can actually effect before running off to the next batch of summits or networking some other fucking grassroots gathering which has fuck all basis in the class and seem to multiply quicker than Ecoli.

The last grassroots gathering was in rossport due to the fact that many of the people involved were heavily involved in the amazingly successful campaign among the rural working class and small farmers which faced down shell and completely halted their construction for a whole year and then succeeded in getting the 5 farmers released from prison after a huge nationwide campaign. I think it's harder to find an issue where people have had a real and measurable effect.

The comment about 'multiplying like e-coli' is particularly strange. Doesn't this say a teensie little bit about the types of thing that motivate people?

 

[sovietpop]

Nice analogy, tho I don't want to be in the lift. And it feels a bit like it reading his posts.

My problem with this is that when one person takes up a position of struggle, it is a "drop-out". When 100 do it, it is an "action". But when 10,000 do it, then the number crunching leftists final admit that their revolutionary threshold has been passed and loftily bestow the honour of ideologically acceptable behaviour on that struggle.

The numbers vary but the threshold remains in the hands of those who hold the ideological stone tablets.

And my question is how do you get to the moment where the 10,000 decide upon resistance if you haven't passed a point where ten thousand individuals have taken that decision? Doesn't it start with an individual?

Therefore who has the right to draw the line between "lifestyle dropout stuff" and acceptable struggle?

good point. Revols problem is that he is tired of the activist stuff, but the sort of mass politics he'd prefer doesn't exist. And we have to suffer his frustration. I'd agree with him that there is limits to activism, but sometimes (maybe these times?) that's all that is possible - and you are faced with the choice of doing something or nothing. Revol has chosen nothing, but I don't see it making him particularily happy, and I don't think see it as a choice that is coming up with any solutions to the problem. For instance, the approach to May Day he outlines is interesting, but it is also a straw man to suggest that it is an approach that other groups wouldn't be interested in or would be hostile too. Revol loves his straw men so he does.

btw, here's an article written by a chilean comrade, in which he suggests an alternative strategy to activism. I found it quite thought provoking (btw, English is not his first language, so some of the phrasing is a bit arkward, but I hope that doesn't stop people looking at the ideas)
link

 

[Taxamo Welf]

The last grassroots gathering was in rossport due to the fact that many of the people involved were heavily involved in the amazingly successful campaign among the rural working class and small farmers which faced down shell and completely halted their construction for a whole year and then succeeded in getting the 5 farmers released from prison after a huge nationwide campaign.

A friend of mine was involved - a WSMer

 

[Raw SslaC]

Revol: you want to believe that we're that because accepting that we're not is gonna destroy your opposition. The EuroMayday thing is very interesting since you slagged it off before it actually happened, you and the libcom-ites closed down the debate. We wanted to do so much more for mayday but didn't have the people, so we settled for an action/stunt as well as the 10,000 leaflets distributed to get the ball rolling. from small things...etc

 

[Col_Buendia]

btw, here's an article written by a chilean comrade, in which he suggests an alternative strategy to activism. I found it quite thought provoking (btw, English is not his first language, so some of the phrasing is a bit arkward, but I hope that doesn't stop people looking at the ideas)
link

LOL, well when he wrote

nothing can be discarded in the mad zoo of Anarchy

he obviously hadn't read Revol's posts!

 

[gurrier]

Some random thoughts about this thread:

1) Activist subcultures are at best a mixed blessing. They do provide an entry point for some people to more useful forms of politics but they also exclude far more people. It's in the nature of any kind of subculture to define itelf against what is perceived to be the mainstream.

But I don't think anybody here is at all interested in creating a sub-culture as such. As soon as any group of people with a strong common interest that is not widely shared within the working class come together, they create a sub-culture of sorts - whether they like it or not and whether they want to define themselves against the mainstream or not. For example, I have heard several people describe socialist youth social events as "the weirdest thing I was ever at".

2) Stunt actions have their uses, but exactly what people are trying to achieve has to be thought through.

I doubt whether anybody anywhere would disagree with this (and I certainly don't get the idea that the wombles for example don't put thought into things).

4) Lifestyle dropout stuff is not a political strategy and leads not inevitably but very often to backwards and elitist ideas about the vast majority of the working class.

Once again, I don't think anybody at all would disagree with this.

5) All this "respect everyone else's tactics" stuff is just another way of arguing for a dictatorship of the stupidest. Everyone's actions effect everyone else in a struggle, on a demonstration or wherever.

I sort of agree, but the problem is when revol uses a fantasy caricature of people's tactics based on total ignorance of their reality in order to smear them.

 

[888]

Again, it is a shame that boards like these (or even libcom) doesn't allow ANY debate on a comradely level, that 6 months later, that action is still being explained....very sad as only thru debate can ideas develop..but anyhow

True. Can people please try and fucking grow up? Ever heard of tact or diplomacy? When I first saw this thread I was going to say that the main two problems with libcom were Jack and revol68, but since I'm so tactful I decided not to. Oops.

 

[Col_Buendia]

To Sovietpop: good article, but it seems to me to be saying the same thing as Bakunin, when he argued that (his) anarchists would have to be "the invisible centre" of the revolution.

I've tried my hand in a very small way at this in the local Social Forum, without (obviously!) disguising my own politics, and one of the most rewarding results of it was that the "non-aligned" types, greenies, general misfits etc () seemed very attracted to the processes that the anarchos were proposing (in the face of sternly voiced opposition from more trad lefties). I like the phrase about "leadership of ideas", that works for me. Ta for the link.

 

[montevideo]

always fond of "everyone who has anything to say, come forward & shut up" myself.

 

[rednblack]

I don't really know enough about ye to say too much, but one thing that does strike me as a fairly serious problem is your isolation. Although it's not necessarily your fault, it seems to me that you are very isolated from other anarchists and politicos. This has allowed the police to act the bollox with you to a considerably annoying extent.

right - because of gurrier's largely excellent posts i've returned to the thread - just to say, i don't think the wombles are that isolated from other anarchists far from it - the two that post here just happen to have a number of personal and political differences with others who post here...
sure i've got plenty of political problems with them myself, although not ones i'd discuss on a public message board - but i would and do work with them where possible, and so do most other anarchos in london

 

[catch]

Can't see where they mention euromayday but that had nothing to do with anything

No they don't, I did. And it should.

In terms of comparisons with Laings there is none.

In both situations activists entered high profile (in different ways) workplaces, and did things that would have caused serious problems for staff if they'd done the same thing. I think there's plenty of comparison, however most of them are unfavourable in terms of Euromayday.

Euromayday was NOT a wombles action

Monte has posted here about the Laing action, you advertised EuroMayDay on both forums around the time and defended it at length iirc. Let's deal with rawslacc and montevideo's views - since it's you two who are on this thread. I'm not interested in a long discussion about which group owns what action, although I suspect that will be used to deflect any criticism of either.

To test the water we organised a public workers meeting (couple of us & a couple of workers from kings cross) to see what the level of support would be. It was obvious from that there wasn't the same level of militancy or self-organisation at heathrow. Plus some reckoned the unions had a word, we leafleted the newham hospital site as well, excellent response on the ground, but little or no workers willing to self organise. Shame really. Exchanged contact details so if things do start looking up.

In this case, people were sounded out, and despite the requests to intervene, because "there wasn't the same level of militancy or self-organisation at heathrow" they were turned down, same with Newham.

We weren't their to support a specific workers struggle but a general anti-work/solidarity to people resisting work...etc.

Yep and that's my problem with it. You're prepared to intervene in someone's workplace uninvited and unnanounced because you're "anti-work" but not prepared to intervene in workers' struggles who've invited you because they're not "self-organised enough". Those are contradictory perspectives, and unless you see each 'action' as isolated from everything else, they're irreconcilable.

There's a hint on the precarity site as to what euromayday was really about:

The police will always attempt to stop Mayday and any other action we do, and continually attempt to destroy the movements we try to create. What is important is how we react and resist their repression, and to never give up. Mayday this year was a great example of people acting together in solidarity in the face of police aggression, and of our continued determination to take our struggle to the streets and communicate with people.

So another set-piece confrontation with the police, but in an area which you hoped might give you a few more minutes before they turned up.

On the precarity page about that action, at the end there's a list of links/statements including "*Keep posted for future flexmob actions." but nothing about Tesco workers in struggle at all. Since that's on the front page I see no reason why information on the TESCO strikes in Ireland aren't linked to for example, unless they're simply considered much less important than 'actions. What it confirms is that the primary focus of that event was on reinventing set piece confrontations, and had fuck all to do with precarious workers. I'm amazed you refer to it to back up the action since it confirms just about every criticism that's been made.

There's nothing on that site about the leafletting, but doing it a week later almost guarantees that the same people won't read the leaflets - TESCO workers do shifts ffs, wasn't that one of the reasons for choosing it in the first place?

Again, it is a shame that boards like these (or even libcom) doesn't allow ANY debate on a comradely level

yeah I know, ...runt litter...

very sad as only thru debate can ideas develop..

Look forward to a comradely one about these two actions then. And a retraction of your censorship smears.

 

[montevideo]

a

 

[Raw SslaC]

To Catch:

In both situations activists entered high profile (in different ways) workplaces, and did things that would have caused serious problems for staff if they'd done the same thing. I think there's plenty of comparison, however most of them are unfavourable in terms of Euromayday.

With the Laing stuff we held meetings with people working on the site, followed their meetings for weeks, met with loads of people working their and were asked to do the banner drop from the cranes. It was impossible to consult ALL 700 workers, mainly because NOT all 700 workers were actually in a collective struggle though they were all equally facing this new contract. I'm sure if it was a united work force then other forms of resistance would have emmerged, indeed that was the aim.

With Euromayday, Tesco's was picked because of various reasons. 1) It was symbollic of an industry which is at the forefront of work/exploitation in post-fordist capitalism. It is also a place were 10,000 of people gravatate and spend their money (1 in 8 pounds are spent at Tescos). It is also a public place, its open 24 hours and therefore presents a place were people go on masse - like the pub, cinema, gym...etc. For this it is as much OUR space, OUR workplace, as it is the workplace for the workers (in a collective sense).
So to do such an action, which was to OPEN the place up, to realise certain social tensions that EXIST whenever any pin-stripped bully boy sticks a price tag on a product, and to rupture it so new experiences can be developed and shared i.e. if the place was looted, it will be a glimpse of an experience/emotion that IS revolutionary for what it is, in an impure/contrictadory way but more importantly having a social characteristic that has a communicative value, that has a dynamic to resonate with many proletariats in the locality it was held.

So big aims, we tried, and considering the people involved were very new (that again encompassed the people, the "ordinary people" of au pairs, shops workers, barmaids, unemployed, students, community workers...etc) it was an action that was successful, not interms of realising its aims, but of having a collective intention, communicated to people who ARE NOT politicos that go on Urban or Libcom, with dozen of conversations, arguments, discussions over THIS issue of NEW working conditions. These experiences can only be conveyed if you were actually there and involved and speaking to people.

Also in relation to the leafletting and Tesco Dublin thing, well considering people work (and shop!) on shifts we came back EXACTLY a week later at the same time and WE DID WHAT WE COULD DO. The precarity group is going thru a re-analysing period and things have gone very quite, website hasn' been updated (it was last updated after Mayday for the purpose of communicating what happened). Now some of us are involved in doing surveys (enquiries) with cleaners on the underground and canary wharf, there is plans for a re-design of the website (and hopefully a name change...BTW the "p" word is useful to discuss things as it defines a certain situation/category that relates much more to modern capitalism, we however do not fetishise it like some peope on these boards do).

Raw

p.s. catch: "the censorship smears?" well I like libcom admins to retract the smears put on WOMBLES over the past 1 year and half including the allegations spread about certain individuals via private emails (available on demand to whoever wanted to read then!!)

 

[flickerx]

Do you all realise how pathetic this looks from the outside?

I am on the outside of all this - and yes it looks pathetic.

As I said in some previous post a couple of months ago (something to do with the Clowns, maybe), all this extremely bitter internecine flaming between micro-left groups makes me wholeheartedly disbelieve in the possibility of anarchism or libertarianism "working" in a long-term, real-life, mass situation. If the people on this board are claiming that society or the "masses" etc are capable of self-organisation and autonomy, it doesnt really set any sort of positive example or working model to look up to seeing you all at each others throats.

But that post was ignored... I imagine this one will be too.

 

[JoeBlack]

As I said in some previous post a couple of months ago (something to do with the Clowns, maybe), all this extremely bitter internecine flaming between micro-left groups makes me wholeheartedly disbelieve in the possibility of anarchism or libertarianism "working" in a long-term, real-life, mass situation. If the people on this board are claiming that society or the "masses" etc are capable of self-organisation and autonomy, it doesnt really set any sort of positive example or working model to look up to seeing you all at each others throats.

I'd actually draw an opposite conclusion and I've been through more than a few nasty spats.

Basically this sort of stupidity happens when you have a weak movement that isn't acheiving very much - particularly if it had ambitions and they were defeated or have stagnated. In that context individual big mouths whose only role is to give out about everyone else can look important and can get an audience. And because there are no significant achievements to point to (which would expose them for what they are) even the sensible people are forced to waste time refuting them.

If you have a large movement that is going somewhere the individual nuts will be unimportant and ignored. Often they will simply be embarrassed into silence - the sort of behaviour some are exhibiting here almost never crops up from the same people at a 'real life' meeting because of the instant feedback of a crowd of people looking at you like you were a nut. Even activists with serious mental health problems would not behave in such a fashion at a union meeting or a residents meeting.

In other words I neither expect not have I found in my experience that the sort of behavour you find here occurs in (even tiny) mass movements.

BTW a thought that has passed through my mind a lot lately. It's ironic that those who go on most about how embarrassing parts of the anarchist 'movement' are themselves the MOST embarrassing feature of the movement 'online'. I don't like the clown thing (for example) but I'd much sooner my neighboors associated me with that stupidity that with people who can't conduct a political discussion without throwing a constant and unending tantrum. One at least is explanable as what a group reckons is a clever strategy - the other looks, sounds and often has the content of a four year old who has drank too much coke.

ps - Nigel it's probably helpful to realise that what you are seeing here is a childish equivalent of what the Sparts are to trotskyism. Like a stopped clock they may also be right twice a day but taken as a whole their influence is totally negative and damaging to the movement. And so its often worse when they appear to be saying something similar to what you might say yourself because you really do not want to be associated with their method in other peoples eyes.

 

[revol68]

Haven't the leadership of ideas got any Union Executive elections to be supporting, I mean it's not quite as sexy as the ole national liberation but even the Shinners have given up on that ole bollox.

Seriously Joe I don't go to shit like the Grassroots anymore because I find it very hard to bite my tongue at some of the utter shit that is said, nevermind the very nature of these networks which are nothing more than a rounding of the troops.

I've got better things to be doing with my free time.

 

[JoeBlack]

To Sovietpop: good article, but it seems to me to be saying the same thing as Bakunin, when he argued that (his) anarchists would have to be "the invisible centre" of the revolution.

I think modern western anarchist has gone very soft on just this question. If the revolution is not guided by 'anarchist'* ideas then what sort of ideas do we expect it to be guided by. We've seen enough revolutions to know that the idea that no ideas will be of influence is nonsense - social democracy, leninism, nationalism are all ideas that have been 'accepted'** in revolutions as offering the best way forward.

The issue is not whether we think a succesful revolution needs to be influenced by anarchist ideas - at this point in history we know that has to be the case. The question is how we can achieve this.

Actually I think Bakunin was surprizingly close to the right answers on this - see http://www.struggle.ws/rbr/rbr6/bakunin.html

The older articles by the same author Workers Without Bosses - Workers' Self-Management in Argentina
http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=627
and
Anarcho-Communist Organization & the Needs of the Present
http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=382

are also very relevant

* I mean anarchist ideas here in the broad sense of libertarian communism (incl some marxists) rather than necessarly the ideas held by any one anarchist organisation.
** accepted always included suppression of other ideas but this was only possible because - at leat for a brief period - most of the working class accepted these ideas.

 

[Pickman's model]

If you live in an area and their is a real problem with underfunding of some social service or other you organise around it, even if it's just you and two mates to start with.

of course, you'd have to make two friends first...