the social horizon of post anarchism

[bcbm]

http://voidnetwork.blogspot.com/2012/01/social-horizon-of-post-anarchism.html

[black magick hustla]

ugh, "post"

[o well this is ok I guess]

ugh, "post" bro don't act like you're a stranger to pomo and poststructuralism and shit

[black magick hustla]

bro don't act like you're a stranger to pomo and poststructuralism and shit

i am a bonehead i have a bsc in astrophysics idk whats that pomgerade juice

[Jimmie Higgins]

ugh, "post"Ok I read the article. First, the best insights are not "post" anything or even new, most of it has been a part of anarchist and Marxist thinking for a long time, they just present it in new po-mo language. The state and capitalism are connected - wow, no anarchist or Marxist ever conceived of that!

The rest seems, literally, useless: we are developing and discussing theories and Egypt is an example of this, but not connected to us developing these ideas or theories. So why are you even bothering to develop these theories if it just happens anyway?

Most radical trends should see Tarhir as a confirmation of what we've been arguing for so long in a period of low-struggle. As an unorthodox Trotskyist I see it as a confirmation of the way struggles spread outside national boundaries and are part of a larger process, among many other echoes that anarchists and other Marxists would agree with such as the following. Marxist theory finds echos in Egypt and 1848. Most anarchists should see this as an echo of their ideas as well.

Yes, the nature of this society compels people to fight back - often spontaneously (although there was clearly a lot of organizing and movements prior to Tarhir which allowed Egyptian protesters to know that their struggle would end with bloody repression if they did not push forward and allowed Egyptian workers to quickly seize the time and begin striking and organizing - which is just to say in my opinion "spontaneous" doesn't mean automatic or reflexive as I think some on the left use that term). This is taken for granted by classical Marxists and anarchists and it's the starting point for our different ideas because we all agree that people do and will revolt against this system and have an interest to do so... the divide is where do we go from there and how can these periodic revolts actually win and change society?

Most non-Stalinist and non-reformist Marxists argue that from revolts workers should organize themselves and try and destroy the system and workers should reorganize society themselves so that we can then get rid of classes and any need for even a democratic proletarian state.

Many anarchists argue that from revolts workers should work together and destroy the system and not try and have workers reshape society, but just immediately have a classless stateless society.

This article seems to suggest that revolts happen and in the meantime consciously radical workers should just challenge their own ideas while maintaining squats and communes and the like. To me it seems like this already exists so they aren't really providing anything, just analyzing the class struggle as it exists already and then saying that that backs up their theories.

That's just my impression from reading the article,not my difinative take on any tendencies or whatnot, so if people have a fuller sense of what they are arguing I'd like to get a clearer sense - even if I still end up disagreeing, it would be helpful.

Maybe I'm letting the "post" color my reading as well. I typically see "post-" and translate it to "anti-". Like Post-Marxism, post-anarchism seems to try and take the traditional thought and language of a radical traddition and remove the centrality of class struggle from it.

[hatzel]

I can't be bothered to read the article because for some reason my browser keeps crashing every time I try to but I see it's a conversation with Saul Newman and to be honest that's not a good sign. I mean yeah maybe he wrote a couple of half-decent things but he's too much about floating around in the Academy trying to justify the premise of a 'postmodernism'-inspired 'anarchism' and not enough about actually making any practical, tactical or strategic contributions to anything. As such he's kind of had his day, he's demonstrated the viability of such a synthesis, and now it falls to other people to actually do it. Anyway, two things I feel I could address...


The state and capitalism are connected - wow, no anarchist or Marxist ever conceived of that!

On the contrary 'postanarchists' generally criticise such a simplistic viewpoint, particularly if we understand this connection as it is often considered by anarchists and Marxists alike. The general consensus amongst 'postanarchists' is that 'classical anarchism' is reductionist inasmuch as it believes the abolition of the state will inevitably cause all other hierarchies to collapse, whereby anarchic socialism will 'naturally' flourish. Marxists, on the other hand, are seen as equally reductionist for their believing that the fall of capitalism, the changing of economic and class relationships, will have the same effect. Of course this isn't a hard-and-fast rule, and many anarchists and Marxists have taken considerably more nuanced approaches to the issue; at the same time, many have found themselves 'crossing the line' between the two, with many anarchists, for example, adopting a strongly Marxist analysis - I have seen the phrase 'Marxists with a black flag' used amongst 'postanarchists' to refer to such people.

Irrespective of whether or not the 'classical anarchist' and/or Marxist currents are as reductionist as is implied (though I may be inclined to believe otherwise, I have no problem asserting that many anarchists and Marxists have themselves been guilty of such reductionism as individuals), 'postanarchists' would argue that the simplicity of such an analysis of state vs. society or capitalist vs. worker renders them impotent, instead adopting a more Foucauldian approach to the question of power and its functioning in society, whereby it is realised that there are multiple intersecting axes of oppression - along with, of course, multiple sources of oppressive power, - thus problematising the elevation of one as the 'primary' oppression off of which all others feed, and questioning the simplistic approach often associated with radicals, 'get rid of the state and the rest will figure itself out' or 'end class society and everything'll be cushty' etc. They demand considerably wider-reaching activity which challenges all these disparate relations of power.

That said, there should be no surprise that there are similarities between 'postanarchist' and 'classical anarchist' ideas, for two reasons. The first is that 'postmodernist' thought was, of course, largely developed by those who had been spat out of the back of '68, who had come through anarchist and Marxist circles before coming to push at their edges. As such 'postanarchism' is as much a reintegration of these radical ideas back into the movements they found too stifling as it is a drastic step beyond.

The second reason concerns the 'postanarchist' project itself; as already stated, early 'postanarchists' like Newman were predominantly concerned with demonstrating the possibility of synthesising 'postmodernist' and 'anarchist' currents. Additionally, however, they sought to argue that such a project was necessary, that 'classical anarchism' had to be remedied. As such the images of anarchism offered in these early texts were often caricatures, made to expose the weaknesses of 'classical anarchism' whilst casually ignoring a number of its thinkers and many of the ideas within in. Now that 'postanarchism' has begun to take off, it is no longer necessary to prove the need for it quite so ferociously. Therefore, many 'postanarchists' would now claim that there are returning to anarchism's roots, reinvigorating it as the anti-Modernist (or at least Modernism-sceptical) project they claim it always was, rather than rejecting it. As such, thinkers like Goldman and Landauer are increasingly given prominence as representatives of 'proto-postanarchism,' whereas the early 'postanarchists' were all to happy to ignore their contributions for the sake of criticising pre-68 anarchism as a whole, which was, one could argue, a necessary compromise during the birth of the 'movement' (though I do not feel this is an appropriate word) - it is, however, no longer necessary.


This article seems to suggest that revolts happen and in the meantime consciously radical workers should just challenge their own ideas while maintaining squats and communes and the like.
I feel it is necessary to point out that 'postanarchists' generally reject the distinction of 'activist' or 'radical' or such from the rest of the population, or even the categories of 'anarchist' and 'non-anarchist.' As such it seems unlikely many would adhere to such a practical distinction between the actions of 'the people' and the actions of (for the sake of the discussion) 'consciously radical workers,' which are necessarily interconnected.

[o well this is ok I guess]

i am a bonehead i have a bsc in astrophysics idk whats that pomgerade juice man what would postmodern astrophysics be like

[black magick hustla]

bro don't act like you're a stranger to pomo and poststructuralism and shit

to add on this its not so much that i am "antipomo" (pomo doesnt exist, its a derogatory term), but that people posture some sort of novelty when they add "post" to something. i mean, you know how many "post marxists" exist in university? do you know any names? probably not because whatever they said was either tautological or uninteresting. non of anarchists people read call themselves "post anarchists", invisible committee doesnt call itself "post communist".

[blake 3:17]

you know how many "post marxists" exist in university? do you know any names?

Laclau and Mouffe.

[black magick hustla]

Laclau and Mouffe.

" a type of post-marxist political inquiry drawing on Gramsci, post-structuralism and theories of identity, and redefining Left politics in terms of radical democracy."

sounds boring as fuck

[black magick hustla]

man post structuralists sound all novel and interesting and shit but always postulate the most stereotypical and overused solutions. "radical democracy" was invented by slave owners in greece more than 2k years ago.

[black magick hustla]

I feel it is necessary to point out that 'postanarchists' generally reject the distinction of 'activist' or 'radical' or such from the rest of the population, or even the categories of 'anarchist' and 'non-anarchist.' As such it seems unlikely many would adhere to such a practical distinction between the actions of 'the people' and the actions of (for the sake of the discussion) 'consciously radical workers,' which are necessarily interconnected.

this is probably why a lot of insurrectos have no understanding of substitutionism and voluntarism. there is such thing as an activist millieu and an anarchist ideological ghetto, no matter how some dumb people in some college argue that they are part of the "people". activism is the highest stage of alienation and a lot of insurrectos can get their head over this. invisible committee was an advancement because they finally started to understand this, although what they do is still activism even if they claim otherwise.

[Jimmie Higgins]

On the contrary 'postanarchists' generally criticise such a simplistic viewpoint, particularly if we understand this connection as it is often considered by anarchists and Marxists alike. The general consensus amongst 'postanarchists' is that 'classical anarchism' is reductionist inasmuch as it believes the abolition of the state will inevitably cause all other hierarchies to collapse, whereby anarchic socialism will 'naturally' flourish. Marxists, on the other hand, are seen as equally reductionist for their believing that the fall of capitalism, the changing of economic and class relationships, will have the same effect.I'd argue that this is a anti-radical straw-man of the academies.

As in claims of reductionism in marxist economics, I think some of this general tendency comes out of a need to justify the novelty of what people are trying to publish or draw attention to. Historians similarly dismiss the idea that history and the development of society is the story of how people organize themselves to meet their needs and desires (labor) - but historical materialism is not simply that everything is motivated directly by obvious class confrontations and struggle, but that's just the basic underlying mechanism. In Capital Marx goes through the broad strokes and then illustrates a bunch of examples of how these basic economic ideas function in real life - and none of the examples play out as simply as the formulations, they are all complicated by many different factors.

Base and superstructure is also cited as reductionist and again, I don't think the concept was ever supposed to be that X specific event or institution happens directly because of the capitalist/feudalism system. Sexism continues to persist and in it's modern form because of the organization of society - does that mean that profit-making automatically means

So are things like psychology and culture and so on factors? Yes, of course they are, but they are not the fundamental motors of why wars happen or why this or that happens. Academics like Gramnsci (I think because he wrote his famous works in code under fascist censorship and therefore is as garbled and jargon-y as contemporary academic writing - and because then you can talk about his ideas about culture and divorce them from the politics that led him to these observations) but he was an orthodox marxist who was mearly exploring theses so-called reductionist ideas about connections between class and modern states.


Irrespective of whether or not the 'classical anarchist' and/or Marxist currents are as reductionist as is implied (though I may be inclined to believe otherwise, I have no problem asserting that many anarchists and Marxists have themselves been guilty of such reductionism as individuals), 'postanarchists' would argue that the simplicity of such an analysis of state vs. society or capitalist vs. worker renders them impotent, instead adopting a more Foucauldian approach to the question of power and its functioning in society, whereby it is realised that there are multiple intersecting axes of oppression - along with, of course, multiple sources of oppressive power, - thus problematising the elevation of one as the 'primary' oppression off of which all others feed, and questioning the simplistic approach often associated with radicals, 'get rid of the state and the rest will figure itself out' or 'end class society and everything'll be cushty' etc. They demand considerably wider-reaching activity which challenges all these disparate relations of power.Again, I think this is a straw-man. I agree with you that there could be this issue on an individual level and maybe in some specific political tendencies or thinkers, but as a whole, more than 100 years of continuous exploration and writing and development on top of the basic concepts of marxist and anarchist thought (and responces to changes in the way capitalism develops) contradicts this claim of reductionism.

And I think this ideas of many intersecting sources of oppression or power is my basic disagreement with these ideas. If you think about a female customer service worker and who has power over her: you have her boss, her managers, the customers - then on top of that she has to face issues of sexism, elitism towards low-wage workers etc. These are all different issues but the fundamental connection is the way our society is organized and for what purpose.

Will racism and sexism and the prejudices of "the muck of ages" disappear with capitalism or the capitalist state overnight? No, I don't think any serious anarchist or Marxist argues this, the view is that you need to get rid of the underlying cause and reasons that these things persist or even grow in contemporary society... to believe that somehow racism and sexism exist autonomously from (or are only tangentially connected to) the way society is organized would lead directly to reformist ideas that, well, in that case we can get rid of racism and sexism under capitalism - we can get rid of elitism and so on without getting rid of capitalism since these are separate issues.

Its like with other theories. Does the fact that if you roll a ball down a hill from the same position and sometimes it starts bouncing, other times it rolls straight, while other times it rolls wildly side to side down a hill mean that we need to develop theories of post-gravity? Or do the basic concepts of physics help to explain the basic tendency while in real life there are countless factors at play to explain the specifics?

And modern society has many more (and actually actively changing) factors than a ball rolling down a hill. So if you can push a ball down a hill and it ends up in a different resting point each time, just think how complicated it is explaining changes and developments in society. What Marxism gives us (or anarchism, but since I'm a Marxist, I'll use that) is the possibility to look past all the billions of different effects and factors of society to the big picture whereas I think post-modern thought misses the Forrest for the trees.

[The Douche]

this is probably why a lot of insurrectos have no understanding of substitutionism and voluntarism. there is such thing as an activist millieu and an anarchist ideological ghetto, no matter how some dumb people in some college argue that they are part of the "people". activism is the highest stage of alienation and a lot of insurrectos can get their head over this. invisible committee was an advancement because they finally started to understand this, although what they do is still activism even if they claim otherwise.

Dude, just "doing something" doesn't make you an "activist".

I'm curious what your qualifications are to differentiate something as being an actual act of social war and just activism. I'm not a college student, not a wealthy kid, not an academic, or an anarcho-scenester, but if I go paintbomb a bank tonight thats somehow activism in your mind, not social war, why? Because I happen to have read Bonnano somewhere along the line?

If I smash a cop car its not substitutionist, I'm not doing it with the goal of leading the masses into action/replication of my action. (the RAAN approach) I'm doing it because I hate the police, and because it means that cruiser will be out of commission for at least a little while and it slows the ability of the police to do their job a minute amount.

[o well this is ok I guess]

to add on this its not so much that i am "antipomo" (pomo doesnt exist, its a derogatory term), but that people posture some sort of novelty when they add "post" to something. i mean, you know how many "post marxists" exist in university? do you know any names? probably not because whatever they said was either tautological or uninteresting. non of anarchists people read call themselves "post anarchists", invisible committee doesnt call itself "post communist". I dunno man "postmodernism" probably meant something when people regularly threw around words like "modernity" and shit. I honestly didn't notice pretentious post-pandering until I got into post-rock.