Sunday, August 31, 2014

Anarchist Uselessness

The shit-head "slumberjack" typed a comment on a discussion I started over at EnMasse. I thought about finishing my critique for it over here where I could have more control over things. And, actually, because for the second time, I'm pretty sour on EnMasse. "EnMasse" has now degenerated to about ten people, of at least five of whom I have no interest in whatsoever.

This includes the incoherent, pompous blow-hard "slumberjack." I thought his/her comment on that one thread offered some grist for the mill, some telling examples of where and how anarchists go off the rails. But, upon searching for his/her comment, finding it, and re-reading it after a couple of week's passage of time, it seems there was really nothing to it at all. It's not worth all the selective copying and pasting and formatting.

Why don't I just say this: That what is needed is a positive, constructive agenda that people can understand and, if they choose, rally around. (For example, my "Workers as Citizens.") What is useless is either being a solitary, incoherent nut-case, typing your observations for nobody in particular and imagining that at some indeterminate point in the future, everything is going to fall into place and a better world, that you, yourself have no real idea of, will arise. Or, when you're not doing that, you join together into small collectives of activists who bite the heads off of any passers by who express sentiments that haven't reached the empyrean heights that your group has. Keeping your group nice and small and manageable gives you the tactical flexibility to respond to losses of meeting spaces, zero resources and insignificant ability to impact things. Hmmm. Should all five of you get arrested at an anti-poverty event or at an anti-war rally? Hmmm. Decisions, decisions.

Perhaps it's just that it's early, or perhaps it really is the case that when I try to put myself in the head-space of any of these shit-heads, eventually I feel that I'm swimming in murky water, leaving the range of sunlight, and there's just a black, unimportant unknown that I'm moving towards.

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