How does organising a capitalist bookshop run on volunteer labour, for the benefit of a shrinking corporation of owners constitute "organising against capitalism"?
Amnesty International has this project going on called "Irrepressible". The idea is that the banner will show a snippet of text that is banned somewhere in the world.
http://irrepressible.info
I saw it http://www.frob.nl/ - where the text was in arabic (which I can’t read). What I could read was the english tag "Someone doesn’t want people to read this". The idea is that if text is banned on the internet, some more privileged person can republish that text and the censorship will be undermined, and hence (presumably) halted.
Um, no.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if that text exists on the internet or not. What censorship is about is preventing people with a stake in that information or analysis from accessing the information in a timely manner. So who gives a fuck if I can see some arabic text on a blog? Does the Chinese Government care whether I read that one of their citizens is talking about sex? (Probably, but then, they’re not knocking on my door).
This campaign is a bit silly coz it does nothing to help the people affected by censorship. It appeals to privileged people with hazy ideals of right versus might.
Asceticism and the hierarchy of engagement
Abolishing hierarchy - yo. You can’t say its a bad thing. But there is one kind of hierarchy I’m not keen to get rid of. That is the hierarchy of engagement. Put another way - "no work, no food".
So its just not on, in my opinion, for someone who has put no effort at all into a project to tell you that it must be run in such-and-such a way. That doesn’t mean they aren’t welcome to join, or aren’t welcome to give an opinion. But its that sense of entitlement that I don’t care for.
An open collective doesn’t mean that its open for anyone to come and direct. It means openness of engagement, and freedom to work to your own rules within the collective, so long as it works.
I do not enjoy it when someone tells me that to do my own thing, I must first do their thing. Or when I make something wonderful, and all I get are criticisms from people who could have contributed, but didn’t. Or when someone says "Oh, we should all do this", gets people excited about something not completely on track, and then quietly issues the disclaimer that they can’t possibly put any work in… meanwhile, we needed them to lead the way a bit because it was their idea that interested everyone.
Gah!
I think equality is a myth, and the longer we persist in that myth, the longer we deny ourselves any possibility of equity.
For now, though, no work, no food. I don’t need another boss, especially not an anarchist boss.
Rants, Creative Commons LicenceMarch 7, 2007 7:44 am
It is difficult to ask for solidarity and support. At least for me it is.
I am currently going through a tough process, but what makes this one different is that I have to keep reminding myself that this time there are lovely people around who want to help. And that makes a difference. An amazing difference. Its still tough to come out and ask for support, though. It is still tough to know you are asking for a favour by asking someone to listen to you rant and rave for an hour… even when you’ve gladly done it for them.
It is scary, removing all those layers of alone-ness!
Part of my anxiety re: Jura is that I am afraid of failing to be the right woman involved in the project. Perhaps a better woman could have got along with everyone and not started any fights? Perhaps the right woman could bring other women into the project more successfully than I can? Maybe a more patient woman could interact more humbly than I can?
But y’know what? That kind of thinking is fucked up. I am who I am - and I need to be dealt with on that basis. My issues aren’t because I have a mistaken appriasal of the project and how I can contribute (or how it should reward me). It isn’t that I am making trouble for the heck of it. It isn’t because I am too bold or have political differences with the rest of the collective.
Oh no. Its not. I know it is not.
Jura Books Burnout / New Cunt Jealousy
I feel really bad about going to Jura tonight for the meeting. I had talked to my flatmate roaringwomyn about a mediation we had between S* and I last week. I had felt like it was an opporunity to vent and little more. I got called out for having "incorrect perceptions" of S’s sexism and ageism against me… and general undermining of my activities (and not similar actions of others).
The mediation beat around the bush for hours before it got to the issue of why S and I don’t get on. I got called out by a younger collective member for venting my frustration at S over the last month because he is an "easy target" because he is older, been in the collective longer and appears as a figure of authority. Anyway, I was talking to roaringwomyn, and she made some good points about how this all manifested… She pointed out that its a misnomer to call a discussion of my problems with S a "mediation" because that personalises what is happening, it denies that other women in my position (notably, Pirate) had exactly the same issues with S and were treated in exactly the same way by S.
Having a mediation just clears the board of all the other women he’s alienated, and makes it a problem between Anna and S, or rather, it makes it Ann’s problem with S. The other collective members are all men, and don’t get the same level of hassling. I also wasn’t happy with how things turned out. Basically, S didn’t have to admit mistreating me (even though I fully admitted being narky over the last month). He just had to nod slightly when J asked him not to be patronising. The blokes were trying to convince me that "it was a victory". Really. Roaringwomyn said something great about that: "its your feelings, they can’t tell you that you ‘won’ when you don’t feel that way". Tonight there is a collective meeting, and I don’t feel like going. This is for several reasons. Mostly because I feel unsupported in what I put into the Jura project. It just doesn’t feel reciprocal. Really. I know that the outside world won’t give things to us, but I don’t feel like the collective gives back either. Its cold.
I also don’t want to go because there is a new woman getting interested, and its clear that S has a big interest in her (she is lovely and beautiful). But it arouses my jealousy - because there will be a favourite female to disprove everything I’ve gone through, because any new potentially interested person is worth more than me to the collective (we all have to be on best behaviour, and that means not talking about feeling shortchanged). And her being there just eclipses me. Not that I have anything against this particular person (I don’t, she’s great), but I have a problem with the politics of treating all women as politically interchangeable. Next time I complain, it’ll be "oh well, she doesn’t have a problem". I know that because I saw it happen to Pirate. I was the new cunt that invalidated Pirate’s struggle - whether I wanted to be or not. Just because my issues were different to hers. Just because it took them years to wear through me.
MIM’s Review of “Living La Utopia”
*This has remained an unfinished draft for too long… *
The Maoist International Movement (aka Mad Madam MIM!) have reviewed an anarchist film about the 1936 Spanish Revolution, “Living La Utopia”.
Living La Utopia is a film that I loved when I saw it. The people who were interviewed were old (60 years after the revolution), and reflective. They all spoke of that time with fondness and amazing clarity. One man begins by saying “anarchism is a door to the infinite … “, indeed. These interviewees, with their access to the world of generation, gave an intimate perspective on anarchism that’s often missing. Its not about destruction of what is - anarchism is about sustainably living the utopia if you can, and fighting for your children to live it if you can’t.
MIM’s review is less than appreciative of these points, though. MIM begins by criticising anarchism as banditry, and moves on to criticise anarchism for being unrealistic, sloganist, and ignorant. Even though its clearly an anarchism-bashing article, MIM does bring up some really good criticisms of anarchism as it is practiced in the world today. Lots of these are still totally pertinent criticisms that have gotta be addressed. (none of which I think are fundamental to anarchism itself, just the way its practised):
Anarchists’ failure to organise in an anarchist way by creating strongly disciplined structured
- MIM gets confused here between ‘anarchism’ and the spanish anarchists in 1936. Nonetheless, a valid criticism of today’s anarchist organising. There are lots of groups around today who form collectives and profess to be non-hierarchical and anarchist. Do these collectives work because they’re so small that power dynamics are on the level of personality
Laziness and ineffectiveness when compared to maoism and leninism.
Religiosity - people join anarchist groups because anarchism is an idealistic (not practical) doctrine wherein a revolution might never come to fruition.
Banditry - because no-one is in control, no-one can stop others from being anti-social. Anarchism becomes an excuse for violence.
Attractiveness to the lumpenproletariat
- (this only really highlights MIM’s own bigotry against those elements of the proletariat who aren’t opised to become a ‘red bourgeoise’)
One thing I find very slippery about class is pronouncements like “if you work, you’re a worker”. John Howard ‘works’, but is he “working class” or something else? I suspect that this line is a sneaky way for middle class unionists who earn heaps to get in on the class issue. On the other hand, I work in an office job which I quite enjoy most of the time - which doens’t fit into mouldy workerist conceptions of the proletariat either.
I can identify the middle class by their born-tosucceed airs but that’s about all. I don’t think that its enough to idenitfy classes by the kinds of work people do, or whether or not they do work, or their salaries. To do so is obviously limited and will never lead to any kind of solidarity. Jordan calls it the ruling class vs the ‘disposessed’, which I think is a bit too slippery, but it has a social/psychological basis which might be useful. On the other hand saying that you’re working class is you ‘feel working class’ doesn’t have an economic basis.
The wobblies use the “power to hire and fire” as a line in the class sand. But, I’m not sure its all that useful - ultimately those at the bottom of the hire and fire pile are workers too and gain little priviledge from their power. Or do they? I don’t know.
The “struggling mums and dads” of Howard’s Australia - are they working class? They might have a small business but are in the shit financially. Traditionally, these petty bourgeoisie have been the enemy/scapegoat/convenient target of the working class. Whether they’re workers per se, I don’t think they form the ‘real enemy’ and might be co-opted to the struggle. They work long hours underpaid and have a consciousness of themselves as small fry versus the big banks - they might be struggling to get out of the working class, but I doubt they’re there yet.
2 miners trapped under the earth for 13 days and one dead… at least the unions are getting some great coverage out of it.
I saw “Jarhead” last fortnight. I read the book in preparation. Actually my partner had got it about 18 months ago from a pulp bookshop, because he’s interested in war and the people who make it.
In the book, Anthony Swofford doesn’t glorify, and doesn’t condemn. He admits that he did the things he did, and tries to tell the truth of his experience. He’s critical, he’s analytical. He’s honest in a way that the film could have been, but isn’t. The book talks about young marines in training watching endless war movies, pumping themselves up, stroking their ‘dicks’ readying themselves for ‘the big fuck of war’, and each man taking a turn to go out into the hallway and cry to himself at the fear and excitement he felt. The film just shows the dick-stroking part, not the lonliness, soul-searching, questioning and fear. Just the excitation.
The film is a lie. In the book, there’s a discussion about the “Shame Wall” where marines post pics of their lovers who cheat on them back home, and how that makes them feel better, to bond as brothers on a frontier. But marine recruiters will use their exhaustive knowledge of the price of prostitutes at any point on the globe to entice young men into the corps. There’s a little contradiction there - a dialectic, even. One that might be too complex for cinema-goers to absorb. Our buff and sexy hero is shown to be a celibate and faithful boyfriend (as are all the marines) while he fantasises about his girlfriend’s dalliances with some “Jody” back home. (”Jody” is the mythic man who didn’t enlist and fucks everyone’s girlfriends). The book describes a complex relationship between women and their marine-men. Some of them get off on having a man away at war, some of them have affairs to ‘get even’ with the men for use and abuse of prostitutes. Real-life Swofford has his affairs, but eventually rejects his girlfriend when she does the same, pasting her onto the wall of shame and trying to sell his nudie pics of her. He can’t because an unfaithful woman just isn’t wank-material, even though all of the marines are unfaithful in thoguht and deed to their own women.
Our hero is a hard man, but the film doesn’t explore that he’s also a soft man who’s capable of laying out his contradictions for inspection. In his book, Swofford says that all war films, especially the “anti-war” ones are actually pro-war because they indulge and pamper the warring desire. Jarhead had the chance to rise above that, but didn’t. Why would you try to actually say something when you can just show Jake Gyllenhall’s buff body in the shower?
