The most working-class anarchist group is...
- Thread starter ernestolynch
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Monte speaks for every anarchist on every issue, we are one we are anarchotron 
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
perhaps you might care to read what i think of other anarchists before you come out with yr ill-informed rc shit.Chuck Wilson said:
Pickman's model said:
Where are the thoughts of Chairman Pickman you miserable anarchist you ?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
and i'm not surprised.LLETSA said:
all you've moaned about is that w/c people either haven't heard of cw or the few people (fifteen years ago) you had met in some nameless pub in a nameless city or town who thought it an anarchist version of viz.
there are worse things to be described as, since viz has - on occasion - contained some hilarious political satire.
yr dreary complaint seems to be based on the lack of publicity in recent years, which is certainly different from the usual "i thought issue 73 was the last paper you produced" yammer.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
rednblack said:
Ta, at least you and catch have put their cards on the table . I wouldn't have any problems working alongside some of the posters on here but I can't understand the apparant need for the majority of self proclaimed anarchist posters on here to defend anything that is called anarchism when there is som much difference between you all. It appears, to an ousider, that 'unity' between anarchists is seemingly more important than actually thrashing out what is the best political path to take to achieve working calss rule. Perhaps working class rule isn't a priority for other anarchists?
I read somewhere that anarchism as a term is relatively new and replaced the concept of libertarian socialism. If that's true why don't those who are the latter ditch the term anarchism?
Pickman's model said:
much obliged, I can now be well informed and rc.
Pickman's model said:
I agree about Viz - it wasn't meant to be an insult. The point was that CW was taken no more seriously than Viz. Now it is my experience that people do not generally take Viz all that seriously. It won't be on people's minds in the forthcoming general election for example.
As for the 'yammer' you're bemoaning, I have no idea who does or doesn't say this kind of thing.
Chuck Wilson said:
you are definately right that working class rule or working class self organisation is not a priority for some anarchos (the lifestylists, treehuggers, many of the squatters etc)
afaik anarchism has been around since the 1860's as a term for what i believe in - i don't really know what the difference is between anarchism and libertarian socialism - but i do know that libertarian socialism is if anything laughed at more than anarchism by non politically active people as a phrase
i'd be happy with another term tbh - something like working class action, or hmm well workers democracy sounds too trotish...workerism?
Chuck Wilson said:
Don't think this is right.
My understanding is that in the years after the Paris commune (1871) the French state banned all anarchist organisations/publication so the anarchists who excaped the round up switched to calling themselves libertarians. I don't think that was suffixed at the time with either 'socialist' or 'communist' though.
Which term people use probably has a lot to do with history and a lot to do with global politics. Britain along with the US does seem particularly dominated by the sort of 'punk thing' - not because the 'punk thing' is particularly strong but because the organised movement is weak, fractured and so almost invisible. In a lot of other countries this wouldn't be the case.
I use the term 'punk thing' above as IMHO its more of an accurate snap shot of where the problem is then 'squatter'. Squatter can mean a huge variety of different things right down to the mass occupations by demobilised soldiers after WWII. Squatting is just about space and I don't see anything in particular that makes buying or renting space abstractly politically better then simply taking it.
Chuck Wilson said:
No insitutionalised authority/leadership maybe. No structures - that's absolute bollocks. Did Monte actually say that? FFS.
rednblack said:
The only problem I have with 'working class rule in working class areas' is that I think the only effective way for that to happen is via popular direct democracy in those areas. I don't think it can be achieved in the sense of 'rule by a few members of the working class in elected positions representing the interests of the rest of the working class' - which could be an interpretation of that phrase.
Mainly because those elected positions are only one part of power within the local and national state - it doesn't address the bureaucracies that have as much or more control over the running of a council as the councillors do, and there's no elections to the leadership of businesses or management positions. So putting energy into electing councillors, who have limited effectiveness even if they're in a majority on the council, just seems like a waste of resources.
I think the only way federated directly democratic institutions can be achieved is by consistent community work. Having been out with Hackney Independent surveying a couple of times in the past two weeks, and hand delivering newletters before that, those things are useful as a way of getting information (for feeding into campaigns and producing publicity, and obviously giving information to people as well), but more importantly, it's an excuse to meet and talk to people face to face you otherwise wouldn't. Hopefully it'll lead to more people thinking about how their situation could be improved, and taking collective action if things come up.
What concerns me about it though, is I've now met more people who live on one or two estates in Haggerston/Hoxton than I have people who live in my own street in Clapton in the past year, plenty of those people, in the same block, might not have spoken to each other either. That's by no means a permanent situation, but it's one which individual canvassing doesn't necessarily solve long term if the main goal is to get elected - if the concern is to get individuals to vote for an organisation which will represent them better, it's not that important (or at least it's of secondary importance) whether they're discussing issues amongst themselves and taking collective action. Now that doesn't mean I don't think it's a much more honest way of taking part in representative democracy than other examples, but I don't think it'd lead to a radical directly democratic movement that locates power within communities in opposition to both the state and capitalism.
However, say it got to a situation where there were regular public meetings on local issues, with contact and co-ordination between different neighbourhoods, then it's quite likely that people would suggest the best way to impose the decision of the community on the borough council (for example), would be to elect someone to the council to replace an unrepresentative councillor. In that kind of situation, I think this comes closer to a kind of municipal delegate democracy (if it's a mandated and recallable councillor), even if the position is nominally a representative one - if the purpose is to take power out of the council itself into the community. So I'm not 100% against participating in elections in all circumstances, but I don't think it can be done the other way round - i.e. electing a councillor and then suddenly seeing mass participation in local direct democracy. And London mayoral or parliamentary elections, I don't see any way those institutions could be brought within a grass roots movement of the kind I'd like to see. Doesn't mean I'm not prepared to work with people who think the opposite, but I'd consistently argue for anarchist forms of organisation - open and without fixed positions of authority - to work towards aims that I think are pretty common.
I also wanted to say that I think propaganda, discussion sites and networking organisations are important. Already said it on this thread but I wouldn't be here talking to you (or just starting to get involved in practical political activity) if it wasn't for a couple of books on anarchism in my school library and the networking/social potential offered by enrager and the AF. If these ideas aren't discussed and publicised (even if everyone agrees that there could be big improvements in the publicity), no-one's likely to find out about them. With such a small number of people, it makes sense to try to get hold of (politically) isolated individuals, and also to argue for certain kinds of activity with people who are already politically active. So Freedom (bookshop and paper), AK press, Organise and Resistance and other newsletters, papers, journals, shops, sites etc. are important in terms of winning people over intellectually and outside the very small geographical boundaries that we necessarily have to work in. Having sources of information on current and historical working class self-organisation and the ideas behind it is as important as the activity itself - neither can be effective without the other.
i agree with that as well - i'd also like to see on top of that a loose network of working class community action groups (or whatever you want to call them) that can provide support for those who want to get involved in community stuff but don't have any local groups already in existance - it wouldnt be exclusively anarchist, but could involve anarchists and would have a website and mailing list so people could keep in touch with eachother and space for people to share their xperiences and to debate about which tactics work better
i'd like to see one for workplaces as well for that matter
i'd like to see one for workplaces as well for that matter
Yeah, it'd be great to have that. Hopefully the June 10th conference will go some way towards forming that.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
montevideo said:
*Concrete* in both senses. The more I've asked about this the more I've got a lot of not particularly coherent but quite impressively wordy sentences back.
What I am asking for in relatively unambiguous english are the answers to questions like:
What sort of society are you aiming at?
How do you think we can get there?
What social forces, organised in what way and doing what, in other words?
So far I have been genuinely unable to decipher if you are saying either:
A) You are aiming for a classless, stateless, socialist society. We will get there through a working class revolution, which will require mass political action, organisation and insurrection. In the course of the struggle to reach that point we should organise in federations etc. This as I understand is (in very simplistic terms) the position of organisations like the WSM and the AF, and in a syndicalist form SolFed.
B) You believe that the most important political action involves living your life in a particular way, which may include collective action, and which does include rejecting the authority of the state and so on.
C) Something else entirely.
Pickman's model said:
And by the way, I never said that the discussions with people who hadn't heard of CW were in a pub - others keep bringing that up. As I said, they were people I used to work with and the conversation was an ongoing one. It was in Manchester, as if the place makes any difference to the point being made.
As stated before, nowadays I never discuss CW with anybody because I don't meet anybody that's ever heard of it. Believe it or not, they are very very much in the majority.
Attica's pseudo-sociological meanderings (1)
Is this the Big Reply that was so long in coming then?
Yes, I probably did imply that you think that stickers are a guide to action in my first post about CW if you want to be pedantic. However, I went on to explain in a subsequent post that all I meant was that the small number of people that I knew who had ever heard of CW knew about it from stickers on lamposts and graffitti on walls. Only for you to bring up the (irrelevant)point yet again. Such is life.
As I've said to Monte, I fail to see how what I have said amounts to 'gossip.' For gossip to take place there has to be interest in the subject on the part of those doing the gossiping. The people I mention were not interested in CW nor in the intrigues of the left as a whole. Like most people. They merely mentioned it in passing. I was the one who used to keep the conversation going. It was a useful way of discussing the issues of class, racism and so on. In fact, to a large degree I defended you from their misplaced assumptions regarding what you were about.
Nay lad, I didn't 'describe declasse individuals' at all. I described conversations I had as a semi-skilled factory worker to other semi-skilled factory workers. How would you know who 'me and mine' are? I wouldn't mind betting that the people I associate with on a daily basis better reflect in their attitudes the mood at large among the working class than those you do. Could be wrong but it's just a feeling you give me. And in this you are not alone among lefties.
'Every serious author'? Bit of an abstract statement, isn't it? Care to elaborate? Not that I need 'every serious author' to tell me that most prisoners are from working class backgrounds. Who does? And nowhere did I describe them all as 'lumpen and violent'. What I asked in response to your naive statement was how does fetishing prisoners make for 'a class composition that pisses on you and yours' or whatever it was you said. And then I went on to point out that far from sharing this fetishisation, most working class people would ask what an individual prisoner was inside for and conclude that there was little else to do with the violent and anti-social element. Notice that nowhere do I say what my own answer would be, nor that CW shouldn't send papers to people in prison? But if you doubt the way I claim that most working class people think on the matter, like I said, ask around.
Attica said:
Is this the Big Reply that was so long in coming then?
Yes, I probably did imply that you think that stickers are a guide to action in my first post about CW if you want to be pedantic. However, I went on to explain in a subsequent post that all I meant was that the small number of people that I knew who had ever heard of CW knew about it from stickers on lamposts and graffitti on walls. Only for you to bring up the (irrelevant)point yet again. Such is life.
As I've said to Monte, I fail to see how what I have said amounts to 'gossip.' For gossip to take place there has to be interest in the subject on the part of those doing the gossiping. The people I mention were not interested in CW nor in the intrigues of the left as a whole. Like most people. They merely mentioned it in passing. I was the one who used to keep the conversation going. It was a useful way of discussing the issues of class, racism and so on. In fact, to a large degree I defended you from their misplaced assumptions regarding what you were about.
Nay lad, I didn't 'describe declasse individuals' at all. I described conversations I had as a semi-skilled factory worker to other semi-skilled factory workers. How would you know who 'me and mine' are? I wouldn't mind betting that the people I associate with on a daily basis better reflect in their attitudes the mood at large among the working class than those you do. Could be wrong but it's just a feeling you give me. And in this you are not alone among lefties.
'Every serious author'? Bit of an abstract statement, isn't it? Care to elaborate? Not that I need 'every serious author' to tell me that most prisoners are from working class backgrounds. Who does? And nowhere did I describe them all as 'lumpen and violent'. What I asked in response to your naive statement was how does fetishing prisoners make for 'a class composition that pisses on you and yours' or whatever it was you said. And then I went on to point out that far from sharing this fetishisation, most working class people would ask what an individual prisoner was inside for and conclude that there was little else to do with the violent and anti-social element. Notice that nowhere do I say what my own answer would be, nor that CW shouldn't send papers to people in prison? But if you doubt the way I claim that most working class people think on the matter, like I said, ask around.
The Black Hand
Unclean
Ryazan said:
Try putting these in the right order if you can - EKANWR 
The Black Hand
Unclean
Letsa said this -"I described conversations I had as a semi-skilled factory worker to other semi-skilled factory workers. How would you know who 'me and mine' are? I wouldn't mind betting that the people I associate with on a daily basis better reflect in their attitudes the mood at large among the working class than those you do. Could be wrong but it's just a feeling you give me. And in this you are not alone among lefties.
'Every serious author'? Bit of an abstract statement, isn't it? Care to elaborate? Not that I need 'every serious author' to tell me that most prisoners are from working class backgrounds. Who does? And nowhere did I describe them all as 'lumpen and violent'. What I asked in response to your naive statement was how does fetishing prisoners make for 'a class composition that pisses on you and yours' or whatever it was you said. And then I went on to point out that far from sharing this fetishisation, most working class people would ask what an individual prisoner was inside for and conclude that there was little else to do with the violent and anti-social element. Notice that nowhere do I say what my own answer would be, nor that CW shouldn't send papers to people in prison? But if you doubt the way I claim that most working class people think on the matter, like I said, ask around."
I live in County Durham, my town is a working class town, in an area with a huge mining tradition. I dropped off and picked up my son from a skool in this town, associating with working class people who are as stereotypically working class as they come... There are no anarchists in my town that I know of... Who has the most privileged positon? WHo associates with 'anarchists'? Fuck me, this is bullshit, who speaks with privileged voice crap. Far better to engage in struggles WITH people first and discuss issues in a concrete situation then i think...
The feeling you give me is a typical one of the 'arrogant know it all lefty Leninists'... You generalise from your own assumptions that are felt to be better than others... oh dear.
Your patronising assumptions are glaring for all to see, nowhere will you find anything where I fetishise prisoners. They are one particular struggle sector, although encompasssing many issues, and hence many smaller struggles... You described anti social prisoners in the manner I quoted, you didn't quantify the statement, but it was made in such a way that you were writing off the majority of prisoners as anti social, and i disagree with such a position. AS I mentioned over 90% are inside for property offences, mainly of a short term nature...
'Every serious author'? Bit of an abstract statement, isn't it? Care to elaborate? Not that I need 'every serious author' to tell me that most prisoners are from working class backgrounds. Who does? And nowhere did I describe them all as 'lumpen and violent'. What I asked in response to your naive statement was how does fetishing prisoners make for 'a class composition that pisses on you and yours' or whatever it was you said. And then I went on to point out that far from sharing this fetishisation, most working class people would ask what an individual prisoner was inside for and conclude that there was little else to do with the violent and anti-social element. Notice that nowhere do I say what my own answer would be, nor that CW shouldn't send papers to people in prison? But if you doubt the way I claim that most working class people think on the matter, like I said, ask around."
I live in County Durham, my town is a working class town, in an area with a huge mining tradition. I dropped off and picked up my son from a skool in this town, associating with working class people who are as stereotypically working class as they come... There are no anarchists in my town that I know of... Who has the most privileged positon? WHo associates with 'anarchists'? Fuck me, this is bullshit, who speaks with privileged voice crap. Far better to engage in struggles WITH people first and discuss issues in a concrete situation then i think...
The feeling you give me is a typical one of the 'arrogant know it all lefty Leninists'... You generalise from your own assumptions that are felt to be better than others... oh dear.
Your patronising assumptions are glaring for all to see, nowhere will you find anything where I fetishise prisoners. They are one particular struggle sector, although encompasssing many issues, and hence many smaller struggles... You described anti social prisoners in the manner I quoted, you didn't quantify the statement, but it was made in such a way that you were writing off the majority of prisoners as anti social, and i disagree with such a position. AS I mentioned over 90% are inside for property offences, mainly of a short term nature...
Attica's pseudo-sociological meanderings (2)
As I said, it's a bit hard to believe that this is the Big Reply that was so long in coming, Attica. Are you the one who used to go on about aiming to be the next EP Thompson?
Stop letting your emotions run away with you and read what I said if you insist on replying. If you read that post again you will find that I did not say that I was impressed with anybody reading the Morning Star or Socialist Worker. What I said was that those who were politically conscious took those papers more seriously than they took Class War. What are you on about with your 'full employment/ Fordism'? In 1990? Were you in suspended animation between 1979 and then? Some of the people I worked with back then were on temporary contracts. It was all we could do to get them in the union, so precarious did they find their postions to be and so bad was the local job market. Read it again - it was the late 1980s, not the late fifties. But I don't know what you're going on about this 'full employment/ Fordism' stuff for anyway. It might all be very interesting but nowhere did I hold it up as being the basis upon which political work should be carried out. At least that's what I think you're saying because the last sentence of your first paragraph (above) is gibberish.
You'll find that if you read other posts of mine I've been arguing with Leninists about the non-organised working class, as opposed to the waning organised labour movement, being the basis of any re-emerging working class movement. Class War is to be applauded for recognising this before many others did. However, it has nothing at all to do with what I said. What I did was to state the facts of the situation that I experienced then - and those were that those who were most entertained - entertained as they might be by a telly programme or a football match or whatever, that is - by CW were those that were less politically conscious. It did not, in my experience, politicise them in any way, because it did not come over as being a serious attempt to do so. And nowhere did I say that they liked CW -what I said was that some of them thought it was mildly funny. Those who were more sussed out politically and therefore had a better grasp of what you were attempting to do, did not take CW seriously either. You might wish that I could tell you otherwise but I can't. And where did I state any details of 'what I approve of politically?'
In actual fact, contrary to what you so desperately assert, it is you that stands on common ground with the Trots. Your posts ooze with a desire, shared by so many of them, to not see the working class as it actually exists, but to invent one that fits in with your own dogma. Perhaps that is why you choose to dress up your assertions in all this stilted pseudo- sociological jargon. Why don't you try and put forward a convincing argument which actually addresses what I said rather than hysterically putting words in my mouth, and do it in plain language? EP Thompson was a lot more readable than you are.
Attica said:
As I said, it's a bit hard to believe that this is the Big Reply that was so long in coming, Attica. Are you the one who used to go on about aiming to be the next EP Thompson?
Stop letting your emotions run away with you and read what I said if you insist on replying. If you read that post again you will find that I did not say that I was impressed with anybody reading the Morning Star or Socialist Worker. What I said was that those who were politically conscious took those papers more seriously than they took Class War. What are you on about with your 'full employment/ Fordism'? In 1990? Were you in suspended animation between 1979 and then? Some of the people I worked with back then were on temporary contracts. It was all we could do to get them in the union, so precarious did they find their postions to be and so bad was the local job market. Read it again - it was the late 1980s, not the late fifties. But I don't know what you're going on about this 'full employment/ Fordism' stuff for anyway. It might all be very interesting but nowhere did I hold it up as being the basis upon which political work should be carried out. At least that's what I think you're saying because the last sentence of your first paragraph (above) is gibberish.
You'll find that if you read other posts of mine I've been arguing with Leninists about the non-organised working class, as opposed to the waning organised labour movement, being the basis of any re-emerging working class movement. Class War is to be applauded for recognising this before many others did. However, it has nothing at all to do with what I said. What I did was to state the facts of the situation that I experienced then - and those were that those who were most entertained - entertained as they might be by a telly programme or a football match or whatever, that is - by CW were those that were less politically conscious. It did not, in my experience, politicise them in any way, because it did not come over as being a serious attempt to do so. And nowhere did I say that they liked CW -what I said was that some of them thought it was mildly funny. Those who were more sussed out politically and therefore had a better grasp of what you were attempting to do, did not take CW seriously either. You might wish that I could tell you otherwise but I can't. And where did I state any details of 'what I approve of politically?'
In actual fact, contrary to what you so desperately assert, it is you that stands on common ground with the Trots. Your posts ooze with a desire, shared by so many of them, to not see the working class as it actually exists, but to invent one that fits in with your own dogma. Perhaps that is why you choose to dress up your assertions in all this stilted pseudo- sociological jargon. Why don't you try and put forward a convincing argument which actually addresses what I said rather than hysterically putting words in my mouth, and do it in plain language? EP Thompson was a lot more readable than you are.
Attica said:
Who said anything about you 'speaking with a priveliged voice'? Not me. I never mentioned privilege. I'm sure you must have come across the type of political activist that takes the assertions of those that he spends most time with as being more typical of large sections of society than they actually are. I'll take your word for it that you are alone as an anarchist in a working class town and that you sometimes rub shoulders with people who work for a living on the school run, but your posts come across as being the product of somebody who views society as he'd like it to be, rather than how it is.
What are 'stereotypically working class people' by the way? You must know because you are the one who keeps using the term.
You don't think you were fetishising prisoners? Read your first intervention into this thread where you put them at the forefront of 'a class composition that pisses on you and yours.' (A class composition of what exactly you did not say.) And no, I didn't 'write off a majority of prisoners as anti social.' As I say, read the posts again. You'll find that what I said was that you seem to be stating that sending papers to prisoners makes you somehow more proletarian than others ('a class composition that pisses....') I said that I'd wager that most working class people, far from sharing this apparent attitude, would look at what a prisoner was actually inside for before making a judgement, and that they would be likely to be hostile to the violent and anti-social. I did not attempt to give any breakdown of the prison population whatsoever. As I say, the posts are there to re-read, so I don't know how many times I have keep pointing this out.
The Black Hand
Unclean
LLETSA said:
And your posts come across as being the product of somebody who views society as he'd like it to be, rather than how it is.... No i wasn't fetishising prisoners, never, that is the product of someones brain who wants the world as he sees it rather than how it is. As for class composition, i was on about the actual struggles that were participated in, involving prisoners, whose class composition pisses on you from a great height...
And I'd rather talk about REAL ideas in real struggles rather than stuff you carry on asserting/repeating that gets us nowhere.
The Black Hand
Unclean
LLETSA said:
Reply to para 1 - i did not date Fordism, I was talking about the class consciousness you appeared to share with SW and the Morning Star. The last sentence you refer to as 'gibberish' makes perfect sense to me too - so have another go with it.
reply to para 2 - Well we disagree and have different experiences...
Reply to para 3 - You were very well taken apart by montivideo, this para deserves the same. The 'stilted pseudo- sociological jargon' is infact basic Marxism, something that the British left you are apart of doesn't understand. The radical traditions of the working class in Italy are so much more impressive than ours. Contrary to the patronising attitude of lefties like you, who thinks the working class is blameless and 'can break free if', I think it takes 2 to tango, the British working class does share some responsibility for its political fate... Finally I have NO common ground with Trots, and you do (there we disagree again)...
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