Why anarchism as a method of action doesn't work.

[dennisr]

*listen* > its jesus, he's weeping

 

[TremulousTetra]

ResistanceMP3 said:↑

​

Precisely, the SWP are guilty of having plenty of members, period. Imagine SW party members voting in an organisation they are part of.... Packing means having the temerity to vote.​

No, it doesn't, it means mobilising the membership to deliberately manipulate the outcome of a meeting

ROFL you are fucking mad. How can anyone vote without intending to deliberately manipulate the outcome by voting against those who wish to manipulate the meetings outcome in another direction.?

SW organise, to vote the way THEY believe will best further our shared aims.​

Even when that means doing so in order to destroy a coalition?

nobody was destroyed. The vast majority went into respect, a coalition. Some of them remain there.

IE > SW claims the same freedom​

Oh Jesus! Stop making up these fictitious SWP members will you? SW DO ORGANISE, to vote the way THEY believe will best further our shared aims.​

"Fictitious"?

fictitious yes. I don't believe any comrades has said any such thing to you, it's ridiculous. Of course, SWP DO organise their interventions. Would you expect, socialist's to behave like anarchists?

So are you saying to me that if anarchists had the majority of members of an organisation, they wouldn't vote in the way which they believed would further our shared aims?​

You're kind of missing the point there. Anarchists don't do entryism.

I know, you're too busy doing your own thing. but that wasn't the question.

Fuckwit..

 

[TremulousTetra]

So, you pulled me up for saying that the SWP is vanguardist, and suggested that I got the idea from VP. Whereas, in fact, you acknowledge that the SWP is a vanguard party. What was your point, again?

I didn't ask you to define it, I asked VP. Plus, your definition wasn't really a definition of of vanguardism, it was just a glib statement of fact. So I made an equally glib, joshing.

RU VP's glove puppet? translates as;, I didn't ask you


go on admit, you don't know. your just repeating what the big boys have told you say. .translates as; that's not definition


pssss, dont believe everything VP says.translates as, I accept that the SWP are a vanguard party by their definition of it, not the definition of anarchists ESP VP

I mean, I'm guessing you intended your response to be somewhat humorous, I was trying to respond in kind. humour doesn't always translate in a serious conversation

 

[TremulousTetra]

*listen* > its jesus, he's sweeping

And Rmp3 has the shovle.

you are the one who said there was no point controlling the Socialist Alliance. You proved SWP had no motive.

You deny they wanted to create a mass WORKERS party?

 

[krink]

Ehem! 13 pages.

but where is the quality? try harder, try-hard.

 

[TremulousTetra]

but where is the quality? try harder, try-hard.

never mind the quality, feel the width

now WTF was that?


ETA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Mind_the_Quality,_Feel_the_Width

 

[eoin_k]

Couldn't agree with your more. A terrible waste. A grossly flawed method.

Did you deliberately miss read my post or are you just thick? I couldn't care less what you think about November 17th.

 

[TremulousTetra]

Did you deliberately miss read my post or are you just thick? I couldn't care less what you think about November 17th.

ye, fair play to you, you are one of the few who gave a reasonable response, and so you deserve better than that.


I think I admitted somewhere back in the mists of this thread, my original post was not clear, and what I really was opposed to was substitutionism [not sure whether you are familiar with the term in the way the SWP uses it]

I think I also acknowledged in response to your first post to this thread, that socialist have been guilty of actions similar to the one in the original post, substitutionism. [Did you see the one about James Connolly]

And so, overall, you are right, substitutionism by anarchists doesn't doesn't mean anarchism as a method of action doesn't work.


What I would say though is substitutionism as a method of action doesn't work, and as far as I can see is far more prevalent among anarchists imo. Is virtually all I see.

But again, fair play to you. The article you produced from class struggle anarchists seem to make an overall criticism of this kind of anarchist action, which I agreed with. However, I really struggled with it, because many of the foundations upon which these criticisms were based, were difficult for me to swallow.

Experts

By 'an activist mentality' what I mean is that people think of themselves primarily as activists and as belonging to some wider community of activists. The activist identifies with what they do and thinks of it as their role in life, like a job or career. In the same way some people will identify with their job as a doctor or a teacher, and instead of it being something they just happen to be doing, it becomes an essential part of their self-image.

The activist is a specialist or an expert in social change. To think of yourself as being an activist means to think of yourself as being somehow privileged or more advanced than others in your appreciation of the need for social change, in the knowledge of how to achieve it and as leading or being in the forefront of the practical struggle to create this change.

Activism, like all expert roles, has its basis in the division of labour - it is a specialised separate task. The division of labour is the foundation of class society, the fundamental division being that between mental and manual labour. The division of labour operates, for example, in medicine or education - instead of healing and bringing up kids being common knowledge and tasks that everyone has a hand in, this knowledge becomes the specialised property of doctors and teachers - experts that we must rely on to do these things for us. Experts jealously guard and mystify the skills they have. This keeps people separated and disempowered and reinforces hierarchical class society.

A division of labour implies that one person takes on a role on behalf of many others who relinquish this responsibility. A separation of tasks means that other people will grow your food and make your clothes and supply your electricity while you get on with achieving social change. The activist, being an expert in social change, assumes that other people aren't doing anything to change their lives and so feels a duty or a responsibility to do it on their behalf. Activists think they are compensating for the lack of activity by others. Defining ourselves as activists means defining our actions as the ones which will bring about social change, thus disregarding the activity of thousands upon thousands of other non-activists. Activism is based on this misconception that it is only activists who do social change - whereas of course class struggle is happening all the time.

ETA, I'm going to go back and try finish article off now

 

[TremulousTetra]

Of course the myriad sects of the Leninist left have never been politically irrelevant glee clubs whose members burn themselves out engaging in irrelevant ineffective activism. Whereas no anarchists have ever been contributed to effective mass actions on the basis of class struggle. Fact!

One of the strengths of many 'Anarchists'* over the sort of politics you represent is their ability to apply this sort of critique to their own practice in periods when I can only imagine the likes of you indulging in self congratulatory, delusional rhetoric.

Take this text published in the wake of June the 18th, one of the high water marks of 'Anarchist' activism in recent decades:

http://www.eco-action.org/dod/no9/activism.htm

* The inverted commas are an attempt to acknowledge that a lot of class struggle Anarchists have been critical of the sort of activism you are trying to critique for a long time. Also a lot of people who think that the activist scene shouldn't be completely dismissed as irrelevant and might be worth some (critical) engagement don't necessarily think of themselves as Anarchists or use theoretical tools from an Anarchist tradition to make sense of their politics.

good link eoin.a very very good article, with much food for thought. Thanks.

 

[ViolentPanda]

*listen* > its jesus, he's weeping

That grinding sound you hear is Marx gnashing his teeth, and the odd gibbering noise is Bronstein pulling his hair out and dribbling.

 

[TremulousTetra]

why defend such appalling mistakes then? (i am being generous by using the term 'mistakes') why defend it by misrepresenting the views or wishes or hard work of other organisations? - work the SWP destroyed again... - work which put the longer-term interests of the wider working class ahead of the short-term interests of our own organisation.

you still haven't explained to me what the real position I misrepresented was, what was the agenda the SP had for the Socialist Alliance?

 

[TremulousTetra]

That grinding sound you hear is Marx gnashing his teeth, and the odd gibbering noise is Bronstein pulling his hair out and dribbling.

what right did Marx have to interfere with the working class?

 

[TremulousTetra]

Nice bit of selective editing there in post #367.

something you never do?

I haven't claimed that choosing to work with the working classes "automatically" does anything.

You've already shown, by talking of "working with", showed yourself/your organisation to be outside of "the working-class",

Clearly contradictory statements.

There was me convinced I'd made it abundantly clear.

Perhaps you really are as stupid as some posters claim.

You say that the SWP says "the emancipation of the working class has to be the act of the working class".
Yes?

You say this not very long after coming out with (w/r/t your perception of anarchists, and how "socialists", which of course is your code for the SWP, are so much more, well, socialist than anarchists) "Whether anarchists like it or not, there is a democratic will of the majority. Those who concentrate on the actions of the collective,those who see the emancipation of the working class being the act of the working class, seek to work with the working-class, even when the will majority goes against what they believe would be best for the movement as a whole [ie the real world me]"
See those bolded words? "With the working-class"? You've already shown, by talking of "working with", showed yourself/your organisation to be outside of "the working-class", and yet there you are, trying to influence the working class as to how/when/why they emancipate themselves.

The SWP are not, for the most part, of the working classes. Who the fuck are they to interpose themselves between the working classes and their emancipation?
I'll tell you what they are: Another bunch of leeches looking to gain power through stepping on the working classes. No more and no less.

Full quote. How have I shown myself to be outside the working class.

and have you got a link to the actual post where I said socialist, and you say I meant by this socialist worker?

and even if I accept your premise, which I don't, that socialist worker and not of the working class, why does this negate them promoting emancipation of the working class by the working class? Apart from your moral indignation, is in any logical reason they could not facilitate?

 

[Pickman's model]

Clearly contradictory statements.

your posts are full of them

 

[Pickman's model]

what right did Marx have to interfere with the working class?

what, you mean 'what right did he have to interfere with his maid'?

 

[ViolentPanda]

RMP3, why do you keep repeating yourself? Do you think that if you repeat your inanities often enough they'll become more meaningful?

 

[Pickman's model]

ye, fair play to you, you are one of the few who gave a reasonable response, and so you deserve better than that.

what he deserves, as do we all, is a firm commitment on your part that you'll stop posting.

 

[TremulousTetra]

what he deserves, as do we all, is a firm commitment on your part that you'll stop posting.

Ignore my posts, as simple as you.

 

[TremulousTetra]

RMP3, why do you keep repeating yourself? Do you think that if you repeat your inanities often enough they'll become more meaningful?

you were the one whining about my editing your post, I quote the full thing and you're still whining.

as pickmans would say, explain or stfu. also still no link to my alleged comments about Vanguardism?

 

[Pickman's model]

you were the one whining about my editing your post, I quote the full thing and you're still whining.

as pickmans would say, explain or stfu. also still no link to my alleged comments about Vanguardism?

so where's the link i asked for?

 

[Athos]

good link eoin.a very very good article, with much food for thought. Thanks.

That article stresses the importance of not fracturing ends from means. And of trying to live freely now, rather than making freedom contingent upon some far off event i.e. revolution. And of the impossibility of one group delivering freedom to another. The same points which, when I made them, didn't receive the same reception from you.

 

[Poo Flakes]

This thread is a metaphor.

 

[Pickman's model]

This thread is a metaphor.

a metaphor for how shit rmp3's politics are

 

[chilango]

I rarely post here as well. Got fed up with VP's dogmatism and willful misrepresentations.

If you can't cope with a few narky anarchists how you gonna cope arguing your case with "the working class" who may often be a lot less "on your side" than VP is?

You never answered my question re. Seattle by the way...were you involved in any of those protests?

 

[Pickman's model]

He's not very good at dealing with questions

 

[chilango]

I know.

...but what's the harm in asking again.

and again.

 

[Pickman's model]

If I had my way we'd be putting these questions to him in a rather different environment

 

[chilango]

What? a on orderly meeting where the speaker gets to pick pre-arranged questioners with the answers all leading neatly to a single, simple conclusion?

 

[chilango]

 

[Pickman's model]

What? a on orderly meeting where the speaker gets to pick pre-arranged questioners with the answers all leading neatly to a single, simple conclusion?

I was thinking more of the inquisition