The gap between theoretical arguments and lived reality

[emanymton]

There's little (no?) social movement here either, would you flee from here as well? How about that actual being some pretty poor level of social solidarity, from those that claim to give that a high level of importance, with those that can't, or don't want to flee? Not condemning those that do of course, but nonetheless for arguments sake. I'm not sure I completely agree but someone I know made the point that post-war it's not going to look very good for all the anarchists in long term building trust and belief in their politics if what they all did was piss off abroad and call for the fighting to stop!

I generally agree what we do has little or no impact on what happens in Ukraine - although I don't think that means it's completely unimportant what we think, say, and do. I also think it's a bit of irrelevance and cop-out and lets one take any position without accepting how that might impact of what's happening there, or what it might mean for similar stuff here. I think it's a position of detached ideological purity that isn't the position you'd take if you were actually there often. I mean maybe that's fine if it's to make a bigger political point, but that feels a bit grim tbh.

If by taking this strict position of NWBTCW means then you wouldn't answer a call for material support to those fighting the Russian invasion (as I assume it would) then it does have an impact (albeit very small) especially if you are then saying this to others. I mean I assume you think no weapons or support should be supplied to anyone in Ukraine fighting? And that they should stop fighting? Surely that is the practical implication of the NWBTCW position?

And in other circumstances you'd support fighting, but only if you judged the conditions to be 'right' with some forms of social movement/class struggle taking the lead/having social power? But if so isn't that some weird programmatic 'when the conditions are right comrade' thing, rather than accepting we make conditions through our activity, or that we just have to deal with the reality we find ourselves in and try to make it better as best we can? And have you seen what LPR/DPR was like to live in for the last 8 years, a Russian defeat is definitely going to be better for people and any left wing force in Ukraine than a Russian victory.

You're by default telling all those fighting they're 'doing politics wrong'. Again I think it's OK to say that to people, that's what much of all politics is. But the reality of not fighting and not winning (or at least not losing) is what you see having happened in Bucha for example now the Russians have been driven out possibly across the whole country. Yes, of course fraternisation, demos, etc etc. and I of course agree the anti-war stuff in Russia is brilliant and brave. But also why draw a line between those things as legitimate and politically OK, and then picking up a weapon to fight as well when appropriate? Is seems sometimes the strict NWBTCW position shares more with pacifism than it might like.

Not quite the same, but thinking about something I just posted on the main Ukraine thread.

I have spent my entire adult life opposed to NATO and US imperialism. It has never entered my head that I would want Nato countries to supply weapons to another country.

But when faced with a Russian invasion of Ukraine and an understanding of what Russian victory and occupation would mean I found myself supporting even wanting NATO to supply weapons.

Right now I feel 100% justified.


Also I have said this before but I am not sure we can really say out arguments don't matter. Its true they don't Right now.

But not long ago there was a possibility of a someone who is a big supporter of STW becoming PM. We don't know what the future will bring. The Arguments being had now and the positions people take now, might inform the position people have 10 years from now when they could matter.

 

[kabbes]

To step back a little, for me, this is part of the attempt to figure out the meaning of knowledge, truth and reality. Ontolological and epistemological (yeah, I said it. What?) questions that have been argued, unresolved, for thousands of years.

Some of the current disputes could be viewed through the lens of crude constructivism vs. crude positivism.

But, so what?, The point, as some guy once almost said, is not just to interpret the world but to change it.

I think the ”so what” is that many people stridently making assertions about what is ”really real” aren’t aware that the debate you refer to even exists. They’re so imbued with a positivist realist ontology that arguments based around the idea, for example, that discourse reconstructs reality moment by moment, situation by situation seem offensive because such arguments deny the “real” existence of their essential identity.

 

[hitmouse]

Thinking about it, I reckon some of this stuff (the Ukraine bit probably more than the trans bit, although maybe both) touches on one of the fundamental tensions in - certainly anarchism, but probably pretty much all socialist politics that has some aspiration to being democratic. On one hand, being a socialist means listening to people, taking them seriously, trusting that they can run their own lives and so on; on the other hand, it also involves defending many positions that are profoundly unpopular. As with the identity/lived experience stuff, I don't think there's a neat straightforward answer to this; if you're never prepared to make unpopular arguments and always just say what you think people want to hear, you end up with:

but then if you assume that what you already think is always right and you never need to listen to or learn from anyone else, you get:

So, again, it just comes down to making a case-by-case judgement of where you fall.

Also I have said this before but I am not sure we can really say out arguments don't matter. Its true they don't Right now.

But not long ago there was a possibility of a someone who is a big supporter of STW becoming PM. We don't know what the future will bring. The Arguments being had now and the positions people take now, might inform the position people have 10 years from now when they could matter.

Yeah, it feels like a bit of a cop-out - we live in a globally interconnected world, and there are ties between the UK and both sides in this war. Workers on the Medway Estuary and on Merseyside did something practical and material, and them London squatters might not have made Putin or even Deripaska shake in their boots, but what they did was a fair bit more direct and serious than just posting arguments on the internet or whatever. Likewise with those Italian dockers and the weapons for Ukraine - they're a long way from the action, but they still have a direct connection to it. Do we see their action as heroic and inspiring and urge workers here to emulate it, the way we would with the Merseyside dockers, or when Italian dockers did the same thing with Israeli weapons last year? Or would we instead say that those actions are misguided and counterproductive, and argue that dockers here shouldn't do the same thing?

 

[SpineyNorman]

On second thoughts probably not the time or place

 

[Rob Ray]

You mean like Kropotkin did in his less astute days. The reality was (and is) that before long you just end up calling for workers to head for the trenches to fight and kill their class brothers and sisters.

Trouble is there's both Kropotkin backing his illusory "better side" in a war between imperial blocs which sidetracked and decimated a living class struggle, and the Freedom of the 1940s, unknowingly advocating passivity in the face of the Holocaust, on the grounds of class struggle where no active class power existed. The eventual heroes of one were those who fought tooth and nail to get people out of the damned trenches. The heroes of the other liberated Paris.

 

[LDC]

Trouble is there's both Kropotkin backing his illusory "better side" in a war between imperial blocs which sidetracked and decimated a living class struggle, and the Freedom of the 1940s, unknowingly advocating passivity in the face of the Holocaust, on the grounds of class struggle where no active class power existed. The eventual heroes of one were those who fought tooth and nail to get people out of the damned trenches. The heroes of the other liberated Paris.

Is there anything written anywhere about Freedom and that position Rob Ray?

 

[Rob Ray]

There's some about the anti-conscription activities and pacifist connections of the Freedom group (among others) at the time - Albert Meltzer goes into a fair bit of detail in The Anarchists in London and I Couldn't Paint Golden Angels, but less about the active position on war within the collective. Our online stock of early War Commentaries is a bit sparse but you can get an idea of the initial viewpoint from the March 1940 issue and from December 1943, in which both the front page and bundled Anarchist federation Manifesto talk about their opposition to the conflict. From the Manifesto:

THE WORKERS ALL over the world are today plunged in the second imperialist blood-bath of the century. Of the many political tendencies which opposed the war at the start, the Anarchist Federation today stands almost alone in its apposition to the war, and to the real — as distinct from the pretended — reasons for which it is being fought.

It has remained consistent with its principles; adhering unswervingly to the path of working class struggle, it has supported none of the belligerent imperialisms. German and Italian Fascism have had their apologists; British and French Imperialism have had their apologists; Russian Totalitarianism has its apologists. A ll these are manifestations of class rule. Their policies are the policies of their ruling class, fighting as always for the maintenance of their privilege and power over the workers. The Anarchists have refused to take the side of any of them.

They had no way of knowing that just a month prior 'Operation Harvest Festival' saw the SS murder at least 42,000 Jews at Majdanek, Trawniki, and Poniatowa, and there really was a very palpable difference between the approach of the Allies and the Nazis, going far beyond what could be imagined through a purely anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist lens.

After that stage they tended to settle into a focus on supporting workers in struggle in the framework of the war (machinists striking for better pay etc) and tangential issues, then towards the end of the war shifted to a fairly brave position of encouraging soldiers, with a nod and a wink, to keep their arms ready to point at the ruling classes when the opportunity arose (leading to the War Commentary trial). Most of the writing about Freedom through that period tends to focus on the trial and split in the movement though.

 

[LDC]

Thanks!

 

[Kate Sharpley]

Is there anything written anywhere about Freedom

Not historical analysis but primary source from War Commentary, August 1940.
Tribunals and Political Objectors
"To join the Armed Forces of the Crown and to fight, either against the German workers or against (as is quite as possible) the revolting colonial workers, would be a betrayal of every principle I hold, insofar as it was not pure hypocrisy, since, with a gun in my hand, whatever oath of allegiance I might have taken would not force me to use that gun against what the State says is my enemy, rather than against what my reason tells me is the enemy."

 

[Shechemite]

I don't think self-identification for anything is a socially useful or defensible concept.

It’s also completely useless when dealing with those who have power over you and couldn’t give a flying fig how you self-identify.

 

[Pickman's model]

They had no way of knowing that just a month prior 'Operation Harvest Festival' saw the SS murder at least 42,000 Jews at Majdanek, Trawniki, and Poniatowa, and there really was a very palpable difference between the approach of the Allies and the Nazis, going far beyond what could be imagined through a purely anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist lens.

there's a widespread belief that people only found out about the holocaust after the war, or in its dying stages, and nothing could be further from the truth. for example, from the holocaust encyclopedia:

The United States and the Holocaust, 1942-45

Why did the United States go to war? What did Americans know about the “Final Solution”? How did Americans respond to news about the Holocaust? Learn more.

encyclopedia.ushmm.org

so while the specific operations might not be known, the fact that there had been and was most likely ongoing extermination activities by the nazis was known, and widely known, a year before the 1943 freedom which you quote

e2a: from the times, 30 june 1942

 

[smokedout]

It’s also completely useless when dealing with those who have power over you and couldn’t give a flying fig how you self-identify.

And isn't that the point, that denial of identity is a tool of the powerful - so you're not gay, you're just mentally ill, you're not a real Muslim because you don't pray to Mecca five times a day, you're not Ukrainian because Ukraine is Russia, you're not working class because you've got a smart phone, you're not disabled you can walk etc etc. Whilst recognising identities and respect for those identities are both to some degree socially produced I don't really see what useful purpose there is on insisting that things like sexuality, gender identity, religion, class, disability or even race must be socially and externally validated to be legitimate other than as a tool to oppress - even if that means there are occassions when someone's identities might be seen as eccentric given who they appear to be, or a malign attempt to fraudulently gain some advantage. That's the road to deciding all disability benefit claimants must be scroungers who deserve relentless state persecution and assessments on the basis that a very small number of claimants may act fraudulently or be resistant to work.

 

[friendofdorothy]

I have been struck by the way these are arguments that have no capacity to bring anyone round to your view. They'll have your own side nodding along but no one's going to go 'Oh my god, no one knows what a woman is anymore, I'd never thought of it that way!'

I filled in an international lgbt survey recently and was surprised that one of the questions asked for a definition of woman, with a tiny box to write your reply in. I didn't know what to say. I was annoyed that there was no definition of 'man' requested, it's like women still aren't human. humph.

 

[Koknbul]

I ground myself this way,
If my heart doesn't beat I'm dead.

A beating heart is a hungry heart,

Do you beat your heart ❤
Or does your heart beats itself ?