Notes on ”Post-Left Anarchism”
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Spencer Sunshine*
Journal of Social Justice, Vol. 9, 2019 (© 2019) ISSN: 2164-7100 Looking Left at Antisemitism Spencer Sunshine* The question of antisemitism inside of the Left—referred to as “left antisemitism”—is a stubborn and persistent problem. And while the Right exaggerates both its depth and scope, the Left has repeatedly refused to face the issue. It is entangled in scandals about antisemitism at an increasing rate. On the Western Left, some antisemitism manifests in the form of conspiracy theories, but there is also a hegemonic refusal to acknowledge antisemitism’s existence and presence. This, in turn, is part of a larger refusal to deal with Jewish issues in general, or to engage with the Jewish community as a real entity. Debates around left antisemitism have risen in tandem with the spread of anti-Zionism inside of the Left, especially since the Second Intifada. Anti-Zionism is not, by itself, antisemitism. One can call for the Right of Return, as well as dissolving Israel as a Jewish state, without being antisemitic. But there is a Venn diagram between anti- Zionism and antisemitism, and the overlap is both significant and has many shades of grey to it. One of the main reasons the Left can’t acknowledge problems with antisemitism is that Jews persistently trouble categories, and the Left would have to rethink many things—including how it approaches anti- imperialism, nationalism of the oppressed, anti-Zionism, identity politics, populism, conspiracy theories, and critiques of finance capital—if it was to truly struggle with the question. The Left understands that white supremacy isn’t just the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis, but that it is part of the fabric of society, and there is no shortcut to unstitching it. -
Democratic Citizenship in the Heart of Empire Dissertation Presented In
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION: Democratic Citizenship in the Heart of Empire Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University Thomas Michael Falk B.A., M.A. Graduate Program in Education The Ohio State University Summer, 2012 Committee Members: Bryan Warnick (Chair), Phil Smith, Ann Allen Copyright by Thomas Michael Falk 2012 ABSTRACT Chief among the goals of American education is the cultivation of democratic citizens. Contrary to State catechism delivered through our schools, America was not born a democracy; rather it emerged as a republic with a distinct bias against democracy. Nonetheless we inherit a great demotic heritage. Abolition, the labor struggle, women’s suffrage, and Civil Rights, for example, struck mighty blows against the established political and economic power of the State. State political economies, whether capitalist, socialist, or communist, each express characteristics of a slave society. All feature oppression, exploitation, starvation, and destitution as constitutive elements. In order to survive in our capitalist society, the average person must sell the contents of her life in exchange for a wage. Fundamentally, I challenge the equation of State schooling with public and/or democratic education. Our schools have not historically belonged to a democratic public. Rather, they have been created, funded, and managed by an elite class wielding local, state, and federal government as its executive arms. Schools are economic institutions, serving a division of labor in the reproduction of the larger economy. Rather than the school, our workplaces are the chief educational institutions of our lives. -
Contemporary Anarchist Studies
Contemporary Anarchist Studies This volume of collected essays by some of the most prominent academics studying anarchism bridges the gap between anarchist activism on the streets and anarchist theory in the academy. Focusing on anarchist theory, pedagogy, methodologies, praxis, and the future, this edition will strike a chord for anyone interested in radical social change. This interdisciplinary work highlights connections between anarchism and other perspectives such as feminism, queer theory, critical race theory, disability studies, post- modernism and post-structuralism, animal liberation, and environmental justice. Featuring original articles, this volume brings together a wide variety of anarchist voices whilst stressing anarchism’s tradition of dissent. This book is a must buy for the critical teacher, student, and activist interested in the state of the art of anarchism studies. Randall Amster, J.D., Ph.D., professor of Peace Studies at Prescott College, publishes widely in areas including anarchism, ecology, and social movements, and is the author of Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization , and Urban Ecology of Homelessness (LFB Scholarly, 2008). Abraham DeLeon, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the University of Rochester in the Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development. His areas of interest include critical theory, anarchism, social studies education, critical pedagogy, and cultural studies. Luis A. Fernandez is the author of Policing Dissent: Social Control and the Anti- Globalization Movement (Rutgers University Press, 2008). His interests include protest policing, social movements, and the social control of late modernity. He is a professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. Anthony J. Nocella, II, is a doctoral student at Syracuse University and a professor at Le Moyne College. -
Is This Not the Kind of Fasting.Pdf
This material is still protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Please contact the publisher for permission to copy, distribute or reprint. From J. Chaplin and P. Marshall (eds.). Political Theory and Christian Vision. Essays in Memory of Bernard Zylstra. Maryland: University Press of American. Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. 1994 “Is This Not The Kind of Fasting I Have Chosen?”1 Simone Weil's Life and Labor Johanna Selles-Roney In a photograph taken of her class at the Lycee Henri IV in 1926,2 Simone Weil is distinguished from her male classmates by an intensity of gaze and an air of somewhat amused detachment. Weil, who graduated from the prestigious “Ecole Normale” in 1931, spent her brief thirty-four years engaged in a passionate search for truth. In many ways, she began this quest from a privileged position-the comfort of a middle-class home, parents who placed a high value on superior education, and the advantage of the best schools and teachers. She struggled with limited success to free herself from these advantages and place herself in a position to understand life from the point of view of the humblest laborer. Weil's fascination with labor3 was a consistent theme in her life and consequently offers a key to understanding her thought.4 Her reflections on the subject are marked by the application of a philosophical method which was rooted in the nineteenth-century voluntarist, spiritueliste line of French philosophy.5 Labor was more 268 Johanna Selles-Roney than a central theoretical concern; her life demonstrated a practical fascination with the existence of an ordinary laborer, whether in industry, agriculture, or other work. -
Anarchy After Leftism
Just what political practice does the eximious elder prescribe to anarchists? We know how higher-stage confederal munici- palism looks — muscular mentating men massed in meetings — but what is to be done in the here and now? The Dean despises existing anarchist efforts: Anarchy after Leftism The sporadic, the unsystematic, the incoherent, the discontinuous, and the intuitive supplant the Bob Black consistent, purposive, organized, and rational, in- deed any form of sustained or focused activity apart from publishing a “zine” or pamphlet — or burning a garbage can (51). So we are not to publish zines and pamphlets as Bookchin used to do, nor are we to burn garbage cans. Nor are we to experience freedom in the temporary collective fraternizations Hakim Bey calls Temporary Autonomous Zones (20–26). We’re supposed to get organized, but Bookchin has not indicated, not even by example, what organization we’re supposed to join. What then? I On this point the Dean, usually so verbose, is allusive and elusive. I have been unable to locate in any of his writings any formulation of the “programmatic as well as activist social movement” he now demands (60). What I think he is hinting at, with nods and winks, is participation in local electoral politics: The municipality is a potential time bomb. To cre- ate local networks and try to transform local insti- tutions that replicate the State [emphasis added] is to pick up a historic challenge — a truly po- litical one — that has existed for centuries… For in these municipal institutions and the changes that we can make in their structure — turning them more and more into a new public sphere — 1997 lies the abiding institutional basis for a grassroots 76 what defines organic communities, then organic communities certainly exist in New York City, but not many people who live in them, except the very rich, are very happy about it. -
Communities of Resistance Unite! a Radical History of the Edinburgh Unemployed Workers Centre
Communities of Resistance Unite! A Radical History of the Edinburgh Unemployed Workers Centre Demonstration against the termination of the lease and the eviction threat in 19941. This paper looks into the history of the Edinburgh Unemployed Workers Centre (EUWC) and the struggles of anti-authoritarian revolutionary groups in Edinburgh during the 1980s and early 1990s2. Grassroots and direct action oriented groups started to organise together in the early 1980s against the various attacks on the 1 Scottish Radical Library, Drawer: ACE/ECAP/Edinburgh Claimants, Folder: cling film with several photos [hereafter SRL, D: label, F: label (further description)], Photo by Norman Watkins, 1994. 2 You can contact the author through [email protected] . 1 working class. They were often based in the EUWC and developed highly sophisticated forms of community resistance which culminated in their crucial role in the Poll Tax rebellion. This paper reveals forms of bottom up revolutionary organising to add important parts to the local radical history of Edinburgh. It furthermore developed as a contribution to current debates on how the radical left can organise collectively against capital, state and any form of oppression today. The references made in text aim to collect some of the most inspiring sources on the topic. As traces they invite for further research. Cover picture from the 2015 booklet "Up Against the State: The Battle for Broughton St Unemployed Workers Centre"3. The booklet was produced by the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh (ACE) and tells the story of the centre. The first section gives a small introduction into the political climate of the time and looks not only at Thatcher's roll back of socialism but also at reactionary politics of the Labour party. -
Leaving the Left Behind 115 Post-Left Anarchy?
Anarchy after Leftism 5 Preface . 7 Introduction . 11 Chapter 1: Murray Bookchin, Grumpy Old Man . 15 Chapter 2: What is Individualist Anarchism? . 25 Chapter 3: Lifestyle Anarchism . 37 Chapter 4: On Organization . 43 Chapter 5: Murray Bookchin, Municipal Statist . 53 Chapter 6: Reason and Revolution . 61 Chapter 7: In Search of the Primitivists Part I: Pristine Angles . 71 Chapter 8: In Search of the Primitivists Part II: Primitive Affluence . 83 Chapter 9: From Primitive Affluence to Labor-Enslaving Technology . 89 Chapter 10: Shut Up, Marxist! . 95 Chapter 11: Anarchy after Leftism . 97 References . 105 Post-Left Anarchy: Leaving the Left Behind 115 Prologue to Post-Left Anarchy . 117 Introduction . 118 Leftists in the Anarchist Milieu . 120 Recuperation and the Left-Wing of Capital . 121 Anarchy as a Theory & Critique of Organization . 122 Anarchy as a Theory & Critique of Ideology . 125 Neither God, nor Master, nor Moral Order: Anarchy as Critique of Morality and Moralism . 126 Post-Left Anarchy: Neither Left, nor Right, but Autonomous . 128 Post-Left Anarchy? 131 Leftism 101 137 What is Leftism? . 139 Moderate, Radical, and Extreme Leftism . 140 Tactics and strategies . 140 Relationship to capitalists . 140 The role of the State . 141 The role of the individual . 142 A Generic Leftism? . 142 Are All Forms of Anarchism Leftism . 143 1 Anarchists, Don’t let the Left(overs) Ruin your Appetite 147 Introduction . 149 Anarchists and the International Labor Movement, Part I . 149 Interlude: Anarchists in the Mexican and Russian Revolutions . 151 Anarchists in the International Labor Movement, Part II . 154 Spain . 154 The Left . 155 The ’60s and ’70s . -
Queer Zines and the Active Subject
California State University, San Bernardino CSUSB ScholarWorks Theses Digitization Project John M. Pfau Library 2006 Cultivating dissent: Queer zines and the active subject Angela Connie Asbell Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project Part of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons Recommended Citation Asbell, Angela Connie, "Cultivating dissent: Queer zines and the active subject" (2006). Theses Digitization Project. 3003. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/3003 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the John M. Pfau Library at CSUSB ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses Digitization Project by an authorized administrator of CSUSB ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CULTIVATING DISSENT: QUEER ZINES AND THE ACTIVE SUBJECT A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, San Bernardino In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree Master of Arts in English Composition by Angela Connie Asbell September 2006 CULTIVATING DISSENT: QUEER ZINES AND THE ACTIVE SUBJECT A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, San Bernardino by Angela Connie Asbell September 2006 Approved by: Date Rong Then ABSTRACT This study performs a rhetorical analysis of several zines that deal with gender and sexual identity. Zines are self-published, non-commercial magazines that highlight the individual creativity in writing and the participatory aspects to writing, publishing, and distributing texts. The Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethic is the centerpiece of political self- motivation and connection to other activists through non-hierarchical media forms. Through the employment of a subversive rhetoric blending pastiche, performativity, and moments of strategic essentialism, zinesters create meaning, through the disruption of meaning. -
Ursula Mctaggart
RADICALISM IN AMERICA’S “INDUSTRIAL JUNGLE”: METAPHORS OF THE PRIMITIVE AND THE INDUSTRIAL IN ACTIVIST TEXTS Ursula McTaggart Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy In the Departments of English and American Studies Indiana University June 2008 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Doctoral Committee ________________________________ Purnima Bose, Co-Chairperson ________________________________ Margo Crawford, Co-Chairperson ________________________________ DeWitt Kilgore ________________________________ Robert Terrill June 18, 2008 ii © 2008 Ursula McTaggart ALL RIGHTS RESERVED iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A host of people have helped make this dissertation possible. My primary thanks go to Purnima Bose and Margo Crawford, who directed the project, offering constant support and invaluable advice. They have been mentors as well as friends throughout this process. Margo’s enthusiasm and brilliant ideas have buoyed my excitement and confidence about the project, while Purnima’s detailed, pragmatic advice has kept it historically grounded, well documented, and on time! Readers De Witt Kilgore and Robert Terrill also provided insight and commentary that have helped shape the final product. In addition, Purnima Bose’s dissertation group of fellow graduate students Anne Delgado, Chia-Li Kao, Laila Amine, and Karen Dillon has stimulated and refined my thinking along the way. Anne, Chia-Li, Laila, and Karen have devoted their own valuable time to reading drafts and making comments even in the midst of their own dissertation work. This dissertation has also been dependent on the activist work of the Black Panther Party, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the International Socialists, the Socialist Workers Party, and the diverse field of contemporary anarchists. -
Defining a Post-Leftist Anarchist Critique of Violence
Ashen Ruins Against the Corpse Machine: Defining A Post-Leftist Anarchist Critique of Violence 2002 The Anarchist Library Contents What’s the Problem? ........................ 3 Our Violent Anarchist History................... 9 “The People” are Alienated by Violence and Other Myths . 11 The Case of Mumia ......................... 23 Mean Ends............................... 27 2 What’s the Problem? Sometimes anarchists are slow learners. Disregarding the famous, definitive and prognostic Marx-Bakunin split in the First International near the end of the 19th century, anarchists overall have continued to cling to the obsolete notion that anarchy is best situated within the otherwise statist Leftist milieu, despite the bourgeois democratic origins of the Left-Right spectrum. Since then communists and Marxists, liberals and conservatives alike have had us right where they want us — and it’s shown in our history. In continuing to view ourselves as Leftists, despite the glaring contradictions in such a stance, we have naturally relegated ourselves to the role of critic within larger movements, and often found ourselves either marching towards goals which stand in direct opposition to our own interests or suckered by counter-revolutionary appeals to anti-fascist or anti-capitalist unity. The anarchist, as Leftist, swims in a sea of contradictions, much of which derives from our passive acceptance of the grip that Leftists have over the po- litical dialogue, both in terminology and in the framing of issues. In conceding to them the underlying territory of debate, North American anarchists have historically been forced into reactionary roles, arguing for nonsensical nuanced points or for means over outcomes. Until we are able to break this cycle and forge an independent critique that reflects our own ends, we are doomed to re- play the past. -
Automation and the Meaning of Work in the Postwar United States
The Misanthropic Sublime: Automation and the Meaning of Work in the Postwar United States Jason Resnikoff Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2019 © 2019 Jason Zachary Resnikoff All rights reserved Abstract “The Misanthropic Sublime: Automation and the Meaning of Work in the Postwar United States” Jason Resnikoff In the United States of America after World War II, Americans from across the political spectrum adopted the technological optimism of the postwar period to resolve one of the central contradictions of industrial society—the opposition between work and freedom. Although classical American liberalism held that freedom for citizens meant owning property they worked for themselves, many Americans in the postwar period believed that work had come to mean the act of maintaining mere survival. The broad acceptance of this degraded meaning of work found expression in a word coined by managers in the immediate postwar period: “automation.” Between the late 1940s and the early 1970s, the word “automation” stood for a revolutionary development, even though few could agree as to precisely what kind of technology it described. Rather than a specific technology, however, this dissertation argues that “automation” was a discourse that defined work as mere biological survival and saw the end of human labor as the the inevitable result of technological progress. In premising liberation on the end of work, those who subscribed to the automation discourse made political freedom contingent not on the distribution of power, but on escape from the limits of the human body itself. -
Dies-Non: Refusal of Work in the 21St Century P
University of Washington Tacoma UW Tacoma Digital Commons Urban Studies Publications Urban Studies 2019 Dies-Non: Refusal of Work in the 21st Century P. Mudu University of Washington Tacoma, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/urban_pub Recommended Citation Mudu, P., "Dies-Non: Refusal of Work in the 21st Century" (2019). Urban Studies Publications. 131. https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/urban_pub/131 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Urban Studies at UW Tacoma Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Urban Studies Publications by an authorized administrator of UW Tacoma Digital Commons. 1 GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1551780 2 3 4 5 Dies-non: refusal of work in the 21st century 6 7 Pierpaolo Mudu 8 Department of Urban Studies and Department of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, University 9 of Washington-Tacoma, Tacoma, WA, USA 10 11 ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY 12 My comments aim to cast light on a specific political pro- Received 17 September 2017 posal that can arise from a discussion of the topic of the Accepted 27 April 2018 13 ‘refusal of work’ and its implications for a social radical KEYWORDS change. Autonomist, anarchist and feminist activism, have 14 commons; feminism; been and are the main sources of a long-term conceptual 15 neoliberalism; radical needs; and empirical work on the refusal of work. Refusal of work refusal of work; squatting 16 is a very complex concept that has traversed history and 17 is reduced for uncritical dominant common sense to unemployment, laziness, idleness, indolence but it is in 18 reality one of the basic foundational qualification to think 19 any radical change.