The most working-class anarchist group is...

[LLETSA]

Attica: Badder than Old Nick

Sounds more Denis Wheatley than E P Thompson.


Cheers - Louis Mac

No no: Noddy is obviously tuffer than the devil.

 

[The Black Hand]

No no: Noddy is obviously tuffer than the devil.

Wipe the saliva off your chin loser

 

[The Black Hand]

And where, may I ask, did I outline my views regarding 'my own worth'?

Yes, I suppose you're right, Noddy, I do indeed consider myself The Voice of the Working Class. Anybody reading my posts would be able to discerrn that. He said with typical declasse leftist arrogance to a member of the real working class, whose kids go not to school but 'skool', and who participates in real class struggles with those of a class composition that pisses on you and yours from a truly great height (the roof, Durham jail.) Not to mention the stereotypical working class. And, most importantly of all, has grasped that standing outside prison gates clutching some copies of an obscure publication means that he alone has recognised who the working classest element of the working class are.

EP Thompson - your successor rides forth (even if it's only on the 'skool' run.)

You certainly need some self criticism, and you are in denial regarding your endless self promotion of your own worth too... I never, nor would i ever say, that one struggle is the priority, and therefore no one conception of working classness is the most typical... There are multiple working class consciousnesses, and many particular class struggles...

 

[LLETSA]

You certainly need some self criticism, and you are in denial regarding your endless self promotion of your own worth too... I never, nor would i ever say, that one struggle is the priority, and therefore no one conception of working classness is the most typical... There are multiple working class consciousnesses, and many particular class struggles...

Self Promotion? ("Of my own worth" no less!)

Well you said it TBH/Gangsta/Toys in the Attica. 'Stop stealing my name! Look everybody! Look editor! Look at me! Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!'

And who started this argument about 'one struggle being the priority'? I've never commented on anything along those lines anywhere on this board.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

You certainly need some self criticism, and you are in denial regarding your endless self promotion of your own worth too... I never, nor would i ever say, that one struggle is the priority, and therefore no one conception of working classness is the most typical... There are multiple working class consciousnesses, and many particular class struggles...

Do you really mean that in the midst of the miners' strike for example you couldn't have found it in your vocabulary to say that it was the priority at that time...not even to yourself and a few of your mates...how very strange?

Cheers - Louis Mac

 

[The Black Hand]

Do you really mean that in the midst of the miners' strike for example you couldn't have found it in your vocabulary to say that it was the priority at that time...not even to yourself and a few of your mates...how very strange?

Cheers - Louis Mac

If that was the struggle I was engaged in at the time it would certainly have been my priority... However, that doesn't mean other struggles were not as valid to the people they concerned...

 

[LLETSA]

What is a 'declasse', and where can I buy one?

Ever thought about Kleeneze?

We got one from their catalogue and have never stained the carpet since.

 

[swarthy thug]

Originally Posted by ernestolynch
What is a 'declasse', and where can I buy one?

Tim westwood at a adult youth club (socail center)

 

[ernestolynch]

Welcome back thug - he broke his cherry! Importantly - he never ratted on no-one.

 

[swarthy thug]

Welcome back thug - he broke his cherry! Importantly - he never ratted on no-one.

I lost my cherry at the back of the youthie(soacil center),next to the faded brit skin mags with moss over it ,a pair of used pantys and a calor gas canister.GREAT DAYS GREAT DAYS.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

If that was the struggle I was engaged in at the time it would certainly have been my priority... However, that doesn't mean other struggles were not as valid to the people they concerned...

That's very po-mo of you...how does that degree of relativism fit in with a class based view of the world?

Cheers - Louis Mac

 

[montevideo]

I lost my cherry at the back of the youthie(soacil center),next to the faded brit skin mags with moss over it ,a pair of used pantys and a calor gas canister.GREAT DAYS GREAT DAYS.

you have a suspciously indepth knowledge of these things. What was his name?

 

[swarthy thug]

you have a suspciously indepth knowledge of these things. What was his name?

Whos name? what where when.

 

[LLETSA]

what real test would this be? Simply repeating vague & imcomprehensive assertions doesn't really work does it?

If you really can't imagine what a real test of anarchism or any other brand of radicalism might look like then I don't know what to say.

Really I don't.

 

[montevideo]

If you really can't imagine what a real test of anarchism or any other brand of radicalism might look like then I don't know what to say.

Really I don't.

which is the point, you don't really say anything do you?

 

[LLETSA]

LLETSA,

Since you've not disagreed with either mine or rednblack's posts on this thread, am I to assume that you agree with them? And if you do disagree could you say in what way your own politics differ?

Sorry for the delay in replying - I thought I'd get the fun out of the way first....

What I meant was that, in contrast to most of the other anarchist posters, who reacted like the Keepers of the Faith, you and rednblack explained how you try to apply anarchism to the kind of political practice pursued by the IWCA, which is basically what I agree with. In my view, working class politics is back to square one in any case and what the IWCA is engaged in is proving to be the only route out of the cul-de-sac, even if it is only small beginnings. As is evidenced by the fact that they are the only group from a left-wing background winning significant support from the non-organised working class. When people are supportive of that kind of work I personally don't care what political label they give themselves. Overall political philosophy and programme is not, in my view, what is most important at the present time.

 

[LLETSA]

which is the point, you don't really say anything do you?

How many more times? With every utterance I make I am speaking directly for the working class. With its multiple class compositions and consciousness's and prison rooftop protests.

 

[catch]

LLETSA, I think consistent community work is very important, but also have some very strong differences of politics with the IWCA - at least with various bits of their published literature and Joe Reilly who used to post here and started an even worse thread on anarchism than this one believe it or not, Louis Macneice, the only remaining poster who admits to be involved with the IWCA (someone correct me if I'm wrong) seems very reasonable though.

My main concern, is that by mainly focusing on council housing, they appear to define class by (loosely) consumption of housing, limiting their constituency (and in terms of the IWCA proper I think it is seen very much as a constituency) to a small subsection of the working class. Not that I don't think social housing is important, and it's definitely a potential way to politicise people, but it's not even the worst form of housing IMO (private bedsit accommodation gets my vote, at least on a cost/quality ratio), but people who live in bedsits are less easy to locate (fair enough), and don't make up an electoral block (not fair enough). Most of what HI's doing at the moment is council housing related as well, which I know from experience is as much to do with limited resources as anything else, so perhaps that's why, and it's difficult to tell unless it develops more.

 

[LLETSA]

LLETSA, I think consistent community work is very important, but also have some very strong differences of politics with the IWCA - at least with various bits of their published literature and Joe Reilly who used to post here and started an even worse thread on anarchism than this one believe it or not, Louis Macneice, the only remaining poster who admits to be involved with the IWCA (someone correct me if I'm wrong) seems very reasonable though.

My main concern, is that by mainly focusing on council housing, they appear to define class by (loosely) consumption of housing, limiting their constituency (and in terms of the IWCA proper I think it is seen very much as a constituency) to a small subsection of the working class. Not that I don't think social housing is important, and it's definitely a potential way to politicise people, but it's not even the worst form of housing IMO (private bedsit accommodation gets my vote, at least on a cost/quality ratio), but people who live in bedsits are less easy to locate (fair enough), and don't make up an electoral block (not fair enough). Most of what HI's doing at the moment is council housing related as well, which I know from experience is as much to do with limited resources as anything else, so perhaps that's why, and it's difficult to tell unless it develops more.

Could it be that threads about anarchism end up being so bad mainly due to the over-reaction of too many anarchists to the slightest bit of criticism? That's what happened in this one, a thread in which serious questions are only asked of anarchism as far in as page four.

You might have answered your own criticisms of the IWCA/HI in your last sentence. They do, after all, have to start somewhere. Plus, isn't there a section on their national website that deals with much of this?

 

[catch]

No, frankly, with that particular thread it's because he was a loonspud. I put forward my reservations about the practicality of running for council office - that even if you get in the bureaucracy is so entrenched you'd not be able to do much - and he said "you can't criticise the bureaucracy of the council unless your a councillor" or something like that, then proceeded to repeat it like a mantra.

In fact this thread has probably been more heated than it should in part due to the inane crap that was posted on "Does Anarchism Have a Future?".

 

[swarthy thug]

Is that the same joe riley who rights those good arcticles on the red action website?.

 

[catch]

I'm not familiar with the quality of his articles on the RA site (which I shall go take a look at at some point, along with the IWCA site again), but I am familiar with his continued posting of unsubstantiated assumptions and misrepresentations here:

Joe Reilly

Join Date: May 2003
Posts: 573
Does anarchism have a serious future?
As idelogies go, anarchism is as old as the hills but has never made a difference anywhere, and looked at objectively, never looks likely to. At a fairly basic level it is theoritically incoherent; not sure that the state has power by virtue of the economic system or whether it is the other way round.

Even in the 21st century it seems most comfortable defining itself against rival ideologies that are either dead or discredited. While theory is all about the high moral ground, practice is often grubby 'ends and means' stuff with hostility and fear of the 'other' the heavily pronounced and self-serving rationale.

Or as Raymond Chandler once put it: 'Once you identify with an ideology, you don't own it - it owns you.'

All told anarchism does not have much of a past. So does it have much of a future?

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=96291&highlight=anarchism+future

 

[The Black Hand]

That's very po-mo of you...how does that degree of relativism fit in with a class based view of the world?

Cheers - Louis Mac

NO, there is no degree of relativism, just anti hierarchical egalitarian working class politics. Recognising that imposing struggles upon people because it is 'the priority' (a la Leninism/RA/IWCA) is not the way forward. Rather we need many struggles working with each other in solidarity, and that is the kind of class consciousness that can start winning the class war again... a totalising class consciousness as I have mentioned before.

 

[The Black Hand]

Again, i do not see anarchism as an end, a goal, the ultimate solution, but a method in which we work.


If we are to recognise class as one of relationship, not only one we have towards the means of production but with every other person who exists, so class articulates itself through a commonality of experience, by means in which common interest is sought & identified, both between ourselves but also towards those whose interests are antagonistic & in opposition to ours. This happens through experience, awareness, realisation & ultimately self-acknowledgement. I am working class not because i choose it as a category but because of the sum total accumulation of my experiences. People experience class culturally, politically, socially & intellectually, but it is experienced as a relationship. Class then is not a position we hold, but one we live through.

This above is what I believe. And to develop it further, and paraphrasing EP Thompson, and Karl Marx;

'people make history through moral choice, but they do not do so exactly as they please, they make it in conditions inherited and transmitted from the past'....

 

[The Black Hand]

Is that the same joe riley who rights those good arcticles on the red action website?.

There are no good articles on the Red Action website.

but there are some on www.thecommoner.org

 

[kropotkin]

That is toss gangster, there are loads.
The attitude displayed by some of the RA types is shit, but some of their analysis was very good- and their commitment couldn't be doubted.

 

[The Black Hand]

Letsa - do you know anything about what happened at Attica in the early 1970's?

 

[The Black Hand]

That is toss gangster, there are loads.
The attitude displayed by some of the RA types is shit, but some of their analysis was very good- and their commitment couldn't be doubted.

Sorry, it just doesn't do it for me, i don't subscribe to their narrow world view.

 

[swarthy thug]

That is toss gangster, there are loads.
The attitude displayed by some of the RA types is shit, but some of their analysis was very good- and their commitment couldn't be doubted.

Not a member of ra just contributed to the site,same with lettsa.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

NO, there is no degree of relativism, just anti hierarchical egalitarian working class politics. Recognising that imposing struggles upon people because it is 'the priority' (a la Leninism/RA/IWCA) is not the way forward. Rather we need many struggles working with each other in solidarity, and that is the kind of class consciousness that can start winning the class war again... a totalising class consciousness as I have mentioned before.

I'm not talking about the imposition of heirarchies; that's your imposition on my post. It is much simpler than that; what I'm refering to is the ability to make choices and the willingness to explain why you've made the choices you have, with an eye to getting people to join you in making similar decisions...like saying the best way to beat the poll tax was not to pay it and explaining why. Without these you are a relativist...although I can see why you wouldn't want to acknowledge this.

Cheers - Louis Mac