Urban v's the Commentariat

[Pickman's model]

jacobian

you say that bookchin is arguably a marxist; you say guerin is arguably a marxist. yet they both considered themselves anarchists. on what basis do you consider you know their politics better than they knew them themselves? for someone so very unsure of his own political beliefs you seem very ready to attribute labels to dead people who'd have rejected them when they were alive. you don't say who you've read on revolution, for example you don't refer to pataud and pouget's 'how we shall bring about the revolution'. you were ready enough above to share your reading. why not do so again? and what's wrong with eclecticism - you say it as though it is a bad thing. there's many socialists let alone anarchists who could learn a thing or two from charles tilly's 'from mobilization to revolution' or goldstone's 'revolutions: theoretical, comparative, and historical studies'.

as for anarchist anti-statism you seem to think that all anarchists should be all the time anti-state. yet this is counter-productive. should anarchists in the here-and-now object to or support cutbacks to social services on the basis of opposition to the state, however defined? or should anarchists rather defend the gains made by working people? you seem to think the former. in addition, the provision of things like roads, postal services, street lighting do not require a state - workers or otherwise - to provide them: but they do require some cooperation and coordination. these are not beyond the wit of the working class. likewise, questions of public policy could be made, as they are now, on the basis of negotiation. only in an anarchist society there would be no corporate interests influencing decisions. you seem to me to want to over-intellectualise a lot of things, whereas - in the words of clay morrow - path of least resistance is always best, right? there is no need for big complex decision-making processes or bodies where a simpler way would work.

i'm left rather confused not as to why you're not an anarchist any more but why you ever considered you were one. it seems to me more a label you wanted to attach to yourself than any genuinely held belief.

 

[Pickman's model]

On what evidence do you base this claim? I've read widely on the history of anarchism and anarchist theory. I've read Black Flame, Anarchy's Cossack, The Slow Burning Fuse, many books on the Spanish Civil War, the Especifismo tradition, virtually everything by Kropotkin, works by Proudhon, Luigi Fabbri (who I still think is cool), Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma Goldman, Berkman, Rudolph Rocker, Malatesta, de Paepe, Cafiero, Bakunin, Abraham Guillen and many others.

It's not the case that I don't find the strategic vision credible because I don't know what it is. I think the continual attempt to raise tactical questions up to the level of principle is a very primitive attempt at theory and is ultimately unconvincing, yet it is a virtually constant feature of anarchism. Again, you've resorted to attacking me personally and my supposed ignorance rather than dealing with the problems I discuss.

In my opinion:

a) anarchists are wrong about decentralisation
b) they are wrong about the idea that horizontalism can be absolutely universally applied
c) they are wrong that structural questions of democracy can take the place of politics
d) the syndicalists, dual-organisationalisalists, anti-organisationalists and unitary-political-economic (SolFed, AAUD/E) are all fundamentally wrong in dispensing with the mass *political* party approach.
e) they are wrong to blanket condemn the use of elections
f) they are wrong in the obsession with direct action while virtually ignoring the importance of soft power

Now sometimes anarchists are right about these things, but in so far as you are arguing with anarchists it's a constant battle to just have a reasonable position on them, whereas with most socialists it's not such a hard slog making the orthodoxy of anarchism inherently stultifying.

you are right that in some of the issues (a-f) you identify there should be more flexibility. but anarchists shouldn't be involved in d) as a mass political party entails a mass political bureaucracy and entails a great imbalance of power. and you are i think confused in your f), on the basis that no one i knows fetishises direct action - direct action is a tactic, not a strategy. soft power - the power of persuasion - is of course commonly used by anarchist groups as they have no real hard power. anarchists are right about a) however, as if you are going to minimise institutional power then you can't have monolithic structures. maybe horizontalism cannot be absolutely universally applied. but that's no reason for abandoning making every effort to avoid the creation of power structures. i would be interested if you could expand on what you mean by 'politics' in c.

 

[rekil]

"I think no platform must be reserved for people engaging in actual fascist campaigns". Technically Stephen Lennon and the EDL aren't fascists tbf.

 

[J Ed]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/22/this-isnt-feminism-its-islamophobia?CMP=twt_gu one of LPs most dishonest articles yet. Equating opposition to Islamist sex segregation which I can assure her, with pictorial evidence, exists to being a member of the BNP. Yasmin Alibahi-Brown's opposition is motivated primarily by a pure and primal race hatred.

Also, yeah men drinking together is exactly the same as women being forced to sit separate from and behind men and being prevented from speaking.

Men who think that women shouldn't be seen or heard or even be at university will be thrilled with this know nothing apologism. Penny you are a twit.

 

[butchersapron]

Off off off with the fairies, just crazy bizzareness:

For decades, western men have hijacked the language of women's liberation to justify their Islamophobia. If we care about the future of feminism, we cannot let them set the agenda.

Hands up - who here thinks they have a single thing in common with someone who could write this. Who could?

 

[J Ed]

Yasmin Alibahi-Brown, Maryam Namazie, Polly Toynbee, Chuka Ummuna - will someone please save us all, and our misogynist segregating friends, from these hooded white supremacist men?

 

[butchersapron]

What's maryam done?

 

[toggle]

where in the fuck do i fucking start on that shit?

 

[J Ed]

Well she refuses to be segregated so I think she may have joined the BNP

 

[butchersapron]

This is an english lit grad

I have spent weary weeks

This is a lie:

But demanding that feminists of every race and faith drop all our campaigns and stand against "radical Islam" sounds more and more like white patriarchy trying to make excuses for itself: "If you think we're bad, just look at these guys."

This the next line:

It's the dishonesty that angers me most.

 

[J Ed]

http://www.onelawforall.org.uk/we-will-continue-our-fight-against-gender-apartheid-at-universities/

Pragna Patel has also joined the BNP why can't all these Muslim women understand that they need to shut up like Laurie suggests?

 

[J Ed]

She is being torn apart by Muslim women on twitter and admitted that the article was totally based on another article and that she had done no research of her own and is now asking Muslim women criticising her to look over an amended text...

Incredible. People pay her to write. People pay her to write. As a regular. She is an adult and she is being paid to come out with this shit.

 

[brogdale]

She is being torn apart by Muslim women on twitter and admitted that the article was totally based on another article and that she had done no research of her own and is now asking Muslim women criticising her to look over an amended text...

Incredible. People pay her to write. People pay her to write. As a regular. She is an adult and she is being paid to come out with this shit.

So shit. Perhaps she'll do a piece on the muslim M&S till operatives next.

 

[Bakunin]

She is being torn apart by Muslim women on twitter and admitted that the article was totally based on another article and that she had done no research of her own and is now asking Muslim women criticising her to look over an amended text...

Incredible. People pay her to write. People pay her to write. As a regular. She is an adult and she is being paid to come out with this shit.

Paid by the turd.

Her sort could probably sell shit by the bucketload. Oh wait, they already do.

 

[toggle]

She is being torn apart by Muslim women on twitter and admitted that the article was totally based on another article and that she had done no research of her own and is now asking Muslim women criticising her to look over an amended text...

Incredible. People pay her to write. People pay her to write. As a regular. She is an adult and she is being paid to come out with this shit.

that's a standard thing with her. she writes crap without thinking, then gets someone who has a clue to edit it into something vaugely making sense for her.

there's some interesting stuff in the attacks on the expectations islamic cultures can have of women, and the attraction attacking that has for the far right. but despite her protestations, she is using this issue to gain attention to her. If she was more interested in the debates than self promotion, then this would have been a good place for her to give coverage to the views of muslim feminists. rather than writing shit and then backing off when they told her she was a fucking arse.

but fuck that, no attention for anyone but her.

 

[J Ed]

I'm going to start writing about Sinhalese linguistics, I don't know anything about it but I'm gonna do it and call myself a specialist. I'm going to call people who specialise in the subject racist and I will do 10 minutes research and then let everyone know what I reckon. Then when the specialists in the subject who I have called racist criticise me I will ask them to help me amend the article, which I will be paid for and they won't.

 

[butchersapron]

That was a pretty racist article. And i'm not messing.

 

[caleb]

Yasmin Alibahi-Brown, Maryam Namazie, Polly Toynbee, Chuka Ummuna - will someone please save us all, and our misogynist segregating friends, from these hooded white supremacist men?

Without wishing to racialise it further, by the standards of "intersectionalists" (or whatever), the willingness of a white woman to ignore the voices of women of colour because they aren't saying the right thing says it all.Of course, the intersectionalist / privilege lot on twitter were rightly full of support for Southall Black Sisters recently - good - but I wonder what they'd make of their line on Islamism.

 

[butchersapron]

Without wishing to racialise it further, by the standards of "intersectionalists" (or whatever), the willingness of a white woman to ignore the voices of women of colour because they aren't saying the right thing says it all.Of course, the intersectionalist / privilege lot on twitter were rightly full of support for Southall Black Sisters recently - good - but I wonder what they'd make of their line on Islamism.

In think we both know what they should logically say. I think we both know what they would in practice say. They are a result of the post 911 islamifocation of all left-wing politics. And today, the boosters of it. Not muslims. It's a polarising racialsing non-racist racist agenda and dynamic. They're like choudrey, Muslims must get sick of telling them to shut up or saying they don't speak for them.

The guilt is just dripping off them.

 

[agricola]

Yasmin Alibahi-Brown, Maryam Namazie, Polly Toynbee, Chuka Ummuna - will someone please save us all, and our misogynist segregating friends, from these hooded white supremacist men?

Did anyone else read the start of this sentence and expect the end to be "... your boys took a hell of a beating"?

 

[rekil]

No doubt to save @PennyRed from further punishment, @guardian has closed comments on her gender segregation apologia:

 

[butchersapron]

I think PD needs a segregation watch dept.

 

[rekil]

If the new statesman recognised the NUJ and allowed its smartest writers to negotiate better rates, LP wouldn't be pressurised into churning out any-old-shit-will-do rubbish like this that unfairly forces her to expose her own prejudices and class privilege.

This is why we (I mean the PD hammer squads) are going in.

 

[butchersapron]

I think the latest (and in all honesty it's the worst thing i've read from her) has only further cemented the commitment. Breaking downs the walls. Not of heartache/heartbreak but actual class segregation.

 

[rekil]

I think the latest (and in all honesty it's the worst thing i've read from her) has only further cemented the commitment. Breaking downs the walls. Not of heartache/heartbreak but actual class segregation.

 

[Bakunin]

The commentariat: Seldom news that's fit to print, mostly shit that isn't.

 

[butchersapron]

I think the culture dept needs a re-cap

 

[barney_pig]

you may recall that when i asked you what the limitations of anarchism are you directed me to a blog post. i am responding to that blog post, and as it contains a lot of stuff about your claimed political trajectory i have referred to such. i was expecting a list such as you've provided here. but - as magnus magnusson said - i've started so i'll finish. i don't consider your conversion narrative convincing as a) you don't really say what you were converted from; b) pretty much everyone i've met who became an anarchist became an anarchist in their teens or early 20s. octave mirbeau shows there are exceptions to this rule, but nonetheless it is, to say the least, rare ime for someone to become an anarchist as you outline your experience; c) it has been an emotional rather than a deliberate conversion for people in my experience. as for your reading, you had not referred to it throughout the portion of your blog i have thus far responded to. all i can say is your blog showed imo scant signs of an awareness of anarchist theory so far. back to the blog.

I became an anarchist in my late 30s, after two decades as a Leninist.

 

[Pickman's model]

I became an anarchist in my late 30s, after two decades as a Leninist.

yes. but your conversion was part of a coherent political trajectory in which personal experience and the encountering of new ideas combined to bring you to anarchism, not some vague notion of operating outside the electoral system

 

[butchersapron]

Salma Yaqoob thinks laurie's piece on why everyone else is a racist was 'spot on'.