The End of Anarchy

[Walter and Theodor]

START COMMUNIQUE:

If George W. Bush wins the American elections next week, W&T will inevitably declare that anarchism is just too fucking optimistic, and that too many people are just too fucking stupid, and they belong in re-education camps where they should have to eat shitty food and read Marx until their eyes bleed.

If people can re-elect Howard, Bush or Blair after the last 3 years there is no hope for this naive load of shit we call humanism, much less the critical intellect required for building a new society in the shell of the old.

W&T will have no choice but to tool up and join the Stalinist zombies. The tACA can do its best to covince us otherwise as we promise we will stick around to convince you that we are right.

Just thought we'd share,
The Anti-Authoritarian Co-operative For State Socialism
The Theocracy of Walter and Theodor

[theyellowspot]

while it's also easy for me to get disillusioned with people (especially here in this country), i just try to remind myself that things usually have to get worse before they'll get better. in the U.S., i think it's going to take things getting a lot worse for US, not just other people. the middle class here is too comfortable, and as long as they are it's going to be a lot harder to convince them that things need to change. a lot of people also need to know the causes of the problems that are here. my mother thinks wal-mart is great because they provide low prices and convenience, ignoring the fact that people wouldn't need such low prices if wal-mart wasn't paying them so little. but that just means that i spend more time talking to her about the root causes of our problems. don't give up! we've got work to do!

[workerscommunes]

W&T, are you going to vote?

[Walter and Theodor]

WC

I always vote. I think of it as damage limitation. I have never been convinced by anarchist arguments against voting. I think the arguments work on an idealistic level, but are practically irrelevant. In the end, I don’t think the State cares if I validate it or not every few years. Nor am I out singing the praises of parliamentary democracy trying to convince people that I think they should think of representation as a good thing (But of course that might all change next week!) So, in practical terms I can’t see the point of refusing the ballot.

But I also have a deeper suspicion about anarchist’s who reject voting. I have never met an anti-voting anarchist who had any serious concerns on the line in an election. Which is to say that they are never in danger of unemployment, they never need benefits, or financial aid for college, they don’t live in areas with abysmal medical care, they are never in unions that are struggling against roll backs, and they are never working for minimum wage. Instead, the anarchists I know who make arguments against voting tend to be fairly privileged, or at least far enough up on the food chain that a recession or more rightwing cutbacks wont do their lives all that much damage. A friend of mine spent some time in Arizona as a student and hooked into the anarchist scene there; she said that all of the women voted and they voted because of abortion politics and access to effective birth control for under 18s. What issues could be more historically anarchist? At the same time she said the most of the men didn’t vote. I kind of thought that summed it up.

[Walter and Theodor]

I have been urging expatriation for my American friends. I think its time. If you're student age consider University abroad. If your working find out where your company's international stores/factories/offices are. Eastern Europe will welcome anyone who can teach English on subsistance wages.

...not sure I actually believe any of this.

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

I'll tell you what though W&T, you still think anarchism is about optimism? You think there's even an option to do it the stalinist way?

However pragmatic you try to be about making incremental improvements, even if that's just to get rid of wacko numbskulls like Bush and dribbling apologists* like Blair, you'll never really believe human existence can be dictated by a bunch of elitist arseholes with red stars on their caps and a vision of what's best for everyone else in their back pockets.

As distressing as it is to see people force-fed consumerism to dull their senses, it's just not possible to do their thinking for them. You have to analyse why they think and vote the way they do and try to address it as an issue.

For me the paradox of anarchism is this: In order to trust everyone, you have to trust no-one - and in order to trust no-one, you have to trust everyone. It stinks, but it's about as resilient as it gets.

As for voting, I've voted twice. I tried so hard to vote to eject Margaret Thatcher during her demonic reign - I even did door-to-door canvassing for a Labour candidate in another area. But when I stood there with the voting slip and pen at the ready in my own constituency, I knew too much personal bad stuff about the only candidate likely to beat the Conservative - and it was a solid Labour seat anyway. I spoiled the paper and left, utterly frustrated and angry at this total lie of a system.

I've known a few local councillors I would have voted for if I'd been in their ward (one was even a lifelong Tory. Later he quit the party and became an independent because he was sickened by what Thatcher was doing).



* Blair is currently under fire because he won't apologise for the war in Iraq. However, I use the term "apologist" because his entire "Third Way" is based on apologising to the ruling class (business) for every minor improvement he begs them to be allowed to make in order to keep the majority of people from being so pissed off they start to look for answers outside Labour and the Conservatives.

[Walter and Theodor]

S&V
I should say that these are ideas I am playing with...I am, as the saying goes, playing devil's advocate but at least I am playing it with myself.

That said, I think I am losing my faith in the ability of the oppressed to act in their own interests, so I am moving towards a kind of vanguardism. I am well aware that this mirrors my own movement from a working class youth to a middle class adulthood, and therefore reflects my class interests, but most of the libertarian projects I see that I like are enacted by people with a ‘bourgeois’ education.

They are people with the access to leisure time, the ability and the desire to read and think critically, as well as a desire to create. Co-housing for example is about the most anarchistic and viable solution to anumber of contemporary problems that I currently see being practiced but most of the people who do it are solidly middle class; teachers, artists, social workers. The government could be easily encouraged to get behind it and make things happen but that libertarian decentralized socialist voice is not engaging with the State in productive ways. Similarly, I am not sure that 'the proletariat' is equipped to make it happen if even if ‘they’ were given the chance.

Anarchism, seems to me, middle class. In class terms I think we are the libertarian double of the SWP. I think we are generally from the elite of the working class or the bottom of the middle class but we have cleaved to this libertarian ethos for whatever reason, rather than sign on with the Leninists.

In the end though our ability to do what we do has everything to do with the positions we have within the very apparatus we decry. I increasingly think that only the State holds the ability to dissolve the State. The David Blunketts of the world should be shot. But maybe there is a point in agitating for the Gordon Browns and then onto whoever is to the incremental libertarian democratic left of him? Maybe the agenda should be turning Labour away from its centralist tendency but holding onto its (largely un-practiced) sense of redistribution? Maybe the goal right now is only the creation of openings in the existent State?

Nothing in the anarchist platforms holds even the vaguest potential for political rejuvenation right now – it is largely just a series of beliefs and when it comes to practice the money and the resources are non-existent. It is an ideal completely removed from any programmatic potential – it is a waiting game dependent upon the spontaneity of the masses for which there is precious little evidence.

I want to be convinced otherwise.

[theyellowspot]

Walter said:

I have been urging expatriation for my American friends. I think its time.

though i just repatriated myself after a year in other places, i would not encourage expatriation to places like europe. we need folks that know what's up here (the US), and if all the "good" folks go off to where it's easier to live your politics, nothing will ever change in the US. it's kind of a copout to me, "eh, it's too hard, let's go to barcelona!".

[Loe]

Concerning your misstrust of non voters W&T, I would just like to say a few things.

Personaly I´m an active non voter, meaning that I try to rally people of similar convicton to do public protest outside the voting localities.

When it comes to not have anything at stake, you are, at least in my case, wrong. I´m a student in Norway where the cabinets for as long as I can remember have cut back on support for education. While I was in highschool it was support for books, cutbacks on the staff, coorporation like reorganizaton of the school system, etc....
When I started my University degree I started to feel it even closer to my skin. The only dorm I got was so expensive that half my scholarship each month was swalowed up by the rent, and I had real problems making ends meet.

Now the situation is looking even grimmer. In next years budget the cabinet has proposed cuts in money for building student lodging (which means even more expensive dorms), they wish to eliminate the travel support for Norwegian exchange students (meaning that they must pay their own air fares) and the scholarships are stil not being price index adjusted, which means I´m getting poorer day by day.

Now the real point in Norway is that we have a multi party system with parlamentarian rule. But as far as I can see this does not make a difference. In the period I took examples from above we had both labour and conservative/christian/liberal cabinets, and they were all pro neo-liberalism, and cut in educational spending.

To make the situation even more confusing, all parties promise to raise educational standards and spending before each election. They never come through...

My reason for beeing a non voting Anarchist is that I belive that international economic conditions, big coorporations and international financial institutions influence Norwegian (and probably all other nations too) economics in such a way that it does not matter what you vote, the real outcome will be the same.

Another point is that I belive power corrupts, nomatter how good a politicians intentions are he/she will always compromise to keep that good feeling of beeing in power, even if it means betraying his/her ideals.

Bottomline: The onlything you can trust a politician to do is LIE!

Thats my oppinion annyway...
LOve and respect, don´t pick that flower!!!! Loe for Natures Revenge

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

I think this is a very telling piece in a number of ways. Its basic argument appears to be this: organised response to capitalist electoralism has degenerated to the production of (at best) high-profile spectacles.

It's interesting, however, that Filippo doesn't suggest any specific alternatives or options.

I believe Canadian anarchists once ran a campaign during an election along the following lines: They produced a variety of slogans on posters etc saying, "Nobody improves housing", "Nobody cares about health services", "Nobody cares about education", etc, with the pay-off line being "Vote for Nobody". When the turn-out was less than 50%, they claimed it was a victory for Nobody.

In my experience, by organising response to specific issues, such as economic globalisation, anarchists often find themselves working in so many "anti" camps that we can be dismissed as merely against everything. That's not to say that such organisation is without value. It is certainly important to demonstrate the ability to have a political voice beyond putting an X next to a person's name once every four or five years. These events are also good opportunities to radicalise, unify or even create movements.

But where are we putting forward positive views about how issues should be handled? Perhaps someone is publishing the voice of anarchism somewhere, although compared to the plethora of political periodicals only a few years ago, my perception is that the voice is far more muted than it used to be. Do we concentrate enough on presenting anarchist alternatives within every day issues?

Perhaps it is too easy to reject the whole structure of societies as they currently are and to disengage from the granular opportunities by claiming a "higher" vision of a perfect world. I would certainly hold up my hand and hang down my head to that particular allegation.

An anarchist friend of mine, when drawn into discussion about responses to the politics of what can be seen as the mundane (the closure of clinics, local services etc etc) always starts his reply with the words: "Well, I'm just a moderate, but..."

(By "politics of the mundane" I'm referrring to all those local issues which many of those directly involved don't perceive as politics at all, but as an attack by the "authorities" on their services. As we've seen over the past few years in the UK, Labour, Liberal and Conservative local authorities are all quite capable of shutting down services, so it can't be "politics" can it?)

As a tired old punk rocker from 1976, I'm disappointed by a lot of current punx who attach themselves to anarchism as a kind of nihilism. For me, punk rock was about a transition, about the reclaiming of the musical tradition of "people" as opposed to "stars", most of which were massaged into success by the money behind record companies. And further still, it was about people proclaiming a right to exist outside the strictures of the society into which they were born. I don't know because I'm not directly involved in it anymore but who among punx is offering a debate about positive alternatives rather than the rejection of society as being an end in itself?

This is now a rather rambling response. Maybe it's that way because the debate is so wide, because there isn't an agenda, because we have lost the shared visions which empowered our arguments in the past. Maybe it's because I'm a tired old fucker, ground down by the world's swing to the right over the past few years. Maybe I'm just plain wrong.

I think what I'm trying to say is this: Are we engaging in debate sufficiently often about the street-level issues which have an impact on "ordinary" people's lives? And are we providing enough positive responses to be seen as the voice of an alternative rather than the voice of rejection?

[Anarchic Tribes]

I have never met an anti-voting anarchist who had any serious concerns on the line in an election. Which is to say that they are never in danger of unemployment, they never need benefits, or financial aid for college, they don’t live in areas with abysmal medical care, they are never in unions that are struggling against roll backs, and they are never working for minimum wage.

You have now, good to meet you W&T. Although I prefer 'active non-voter' to 'anti-voting anarchist'.

I believe Canadian anarchists once ran a campaign during an election along the following lines: They produced a variety of slogans on posters etc saying, "Nobody improves housing", "Nobody cares about health services", "Nobody cares about education", etc, with the pay-off line being "Vote for Nobody". When the turn-out was less than 50%, they claimed it was a victory for Nobody.

And they would have been right if Nobody had been on the voting slip.
If Nobody had been on the voting slip I would have voted. If voting were compulsory, that option would be available.

[Anarchic Tribes]

S&V, in answer to your last 2 questions, I say no, and that's a problem.

[Refused Party Program]

Och...I've been meaning to register here for a while. Greetings, comrades.

On topic: I'd love to see a "none of the above" option on voting forms.

[claptonpond]

So, W&T. Are you a Stalinist zombie now?

[Walter and Theodor]

The Theocracy of Walter and Theodor is currently convening the councils to consider how to move forward in the brave new world. While the spokespeople have been allowed to continue their work in the hallowed halls of the tACA the weight of the issues before the nation are too considerable to be entered into lightly and time will be taken to evaluate and consider options.

The councils continue to welcome advice and input.

Thank you,
The Project for the New Walter and Theodorian Century
The Theocracy of Walter and Theodor