Ravachol
21st April 2010, 20:59
Excellent article from Aufheben #15 on the roles of theory and practice and their inter-related nature. Closely related to the subject of 'the role of revolutionaries' as discussed elsewhere on this forum.
Theoretical criticism and practical overthrow are...inseparable activities, not in any abstract sense but as a concrete and real alteration of the concrete and real world of bourgeois society. (Karl Korsch; as cited in Aufheben inaugural editorial, Autumn, 1992)
The small group of people who first produced Aufheben back in 1992 had already been involved in a number of different struggles for some time before we even thought of publishing a magazine. In particular, the struggle against the poll tax (1989-1991) brought us together as a group of comrades, though some in the group had been active together from as long back as the miners’ strike of 1984-5. The poll tax riot of March 31st 1990 was the biggest riot seen in London for a century, and it prompted the formation of a small group of like-minded people around the particular issue of support for poll tax prisoners. Meeting regularly, thrashing out our strategy in relation to the leftist-dominated official national anti-poll tax movement, jointly producing newsletters and leaflets, and participating together on pickets, demos and riots, we found an increased convergence in our ideas, as well as an interest in developing these ideas further, beyond the limits of anarchism and Marxism as we knew them.
...
(continue reading...) (http://libcom.org/files/Theory%20and%20practice%20-%20recent%20struggles%20in%20Brighton.pdf)
Theoretical criticism and practical overthrow are...inseparable activities, not in any abstract sense but as a concrete and real alteration of the concrete and real world of bourgeois society. (Karl Korsch; as cited in Aufheben inaugural editorial, Autumn, 1992)
The small group of people who first produced Aufheben back in 1992 had already been involved in a number of different struggles for some time before we even thought of publishing a magazine. In particular, the struggle against the poll tax (1989-1991) brought us together as a group of comrades, though some in the group had been active together from as long back as the miners’ strike of 1984-5. The poll tax riot of March 31st 1990 was the biggest riot seen in London for a century, and it prompted the formation of a small group of like-minded people around the particular issue of support for poll tax prisoners. Meeting regularly, thrashing out our strategy in relation to the leftist-dominated official national anti-poll tax movement, jointly producing newsletters and leaflets, and participating together on pickets, demos and riots, we found an increased convergence in our ideas, as well as an interest in developing these ideas further, beyond the limits of anarchism and Marxism as we knew them.
...
(continue reading...) (http://libcom.org/files/Theory%20and%20practice%20-%20recent%20struggles%20in%20Brighton.pdf)