gurrier said:
But I don't think anybody here is at all interested in creating a sub-culture as such.
Hopefully not, but I think that much in the way of sensible criticism has been raised of people who are immersed in a subculture and whose activism is on terms only accessable to / involving / understood by / of interest to others in that subculture.
This is an argument which anarchists are having now, but that's not because it is specific to the anarchist brand of activist politics. A few decades ago substantial sections of the Trotskyist movement (in say Britain or France) or the Maoist movement (in say France or the US) were heavily into squatting, set piece rucks with the cops and the like. The LCR even managed to get themselves banned after a particularly ferocious outbreak of cop-fighting. Many people in the IMG were "lifestylists" to an extent that would make even your average Womrade do a double take.
It's not that dropout stuff doesn't have its advantages, in terms of attracting a certain pool of people, but it inherently repulses more than it attracts and it tends to develop into nasty and counterproductive elitist attitudes about the general "sheep" of the rest of humanity.
gurrier said:
For example, I have heard several people describe socialist youth social events as "the weirdest thing I was ever at".
My limited experience of Socialist Youth social events is that they seem to involve a big group of teenagers getting pissed and making awkward sexual advances at each other, much like any other big bunch of teenagers. Socialist Party social events tend to be more like weddings, with people of all ages drinking and dancing badly.
But your general point in so far as it is true is a *bad thing*. Any organisation does tend to develop a subculture, although to a much milder degree than that of the lifestylist milieu precisely because it doesn't involve an entire lifestyle. I don't know whether to flinch or laugh when I hear some enthusiastic new member using particular turns of phrase when they talk about politics for instance, turns of phrase which they've clearly picked up from others in the organisation.
gurrier said:
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).
Yes, but that's my fault for pitching the comment at a level of blandness which makes it seem obvious. What I meant was that too much activism goes on which (a) only appeals to other activists and (b) which even if the plan was to be completely succesful on its own terms would be utterly meaningless in terms of political strategy. What's the point in having a set piece fight with the cops for instance? What's the point in having a bunch of people shoplifting? What's the point in [insert particular favourite here]? I'm not in politics because its the most fun thing I could be doing with time. I don't give a flying fuck if something is "creative" or some similar bollocks. What I want to know is how does some action contribute concretely to my political goals.
The absence of thought I'm talking about isn't a lack of planning as far as carrying out an action is concerned, although that sometimes happens too. It's an absence of thought about what this use of energy, resources and time is meant to achieve.
I have a certain amount of sympathy for some of the sentiments expressed by revol, in so far as they can be disentangled from his amusing but needlessly abusive style. Where I disagree with revol and his co-thinkers is on how to deal with the existence of such activism.
Take summit protests for instance. Those who said that the G8 stuff in Edinburgh was a bad use of resources and wouldn't accomplish much were at least partially right, but I'd still advocate that people with class based politics go. Why? Because if activists whose politics we don't share want to spend their time and resources on assembling together a large crowd of people who are potentially open to our ideas, we'd be idiots to turn down the opportunity to talk to those people. I think that organisations like the SP in England made much better use of the Edinburgh events than most class struggle anarchist groups - seizing a chance to talk to and engage with large number of people, pre-filtered for left wing attitudes, and recruiting both organisationally and more importantly in terms of ideas. By contrast the kind of anarchists who might make similar arguments about class and useful activism (with the honourable exception of your crew) sat at home and sneered and wrote abusive comments on the internet. And for people who rightly criticise the lack of strategic thinking in some activist group's politics and behaviour, that doesn't reflect well on their own understanding of political strategy.
