#anti-civ

[greraden]

It will never not be crazy to me that the anti-tech/anti-civ movement isn't bigger than it is. Sentiments like "modern society traps us in soul-crushing jobs that only benefit large corporations" or "people are disconnected from the beauty of nature and forced into urban sprawl" or "industrial civilization is actively killing our planet and we can't just sit here and watch it happen" are inescapable on social media (and sound like they could have come straight out of the pages of Industrial Society and Its Future or from groups like Wilderness Front) but the second people advocate for dismantling the system altogether people are silent.

[forbidden-sorcery]

[tastethebloodofmeatthawsmoth]

"I don’t think one can separate a critique of the state and capital from a critique of civilization. Civilization gave birth to the state and capital, which brought all kinds of oppressions and tools to manage that oppression such as surveillance, greed, domination, and all the other shitty things people find logic in doing to each other and the environment. Civilization is explained away by capital as being advancements in efficiency and quality of life, but remember the life expectancy of a Black male in the U.S. is about 25 years. He is expected to be dead or in prison by 25 years of age. Civilization has caused a disconnect between people and the earth. Civilization has given birth to all kinds of diseases; drugs that don’t cure anything but have you buying them to “manage” the disease, feed their greed; pollution; patriarchy; racism; prisons; etc. Civilization is the root cause of the misery which we term oppression and must be dismantled, ruthlessly and utterly destroyed." - anarchist prisoner Michael Kimble

[dailyanarchistposts]

The question of organisation

How do we coordinate with one another, comrades and beyond, in order to transform society? The history of anarchism – especially its most revolutionary moments – is rich with examples of large, formal organisations that concentrated most or all aspects of the struggle within a single structure. These were organisations of synthesis, some of which still exist: they promote a specific political programme, hold periodic congresses to make unified decisions, and aim to serve as a mediator between power and the masses. However, it would be a big mistake for anarchists to place such an organisation – indeed, the route of formal organisation altogether – at the centre of revolutionary struggle today. At the very least, the option should be considered only in light of some major risks.

Consider, for one, the central tension of any anarchist organisation: the trade-off between size and horizontality. The larger an organisation becomes, the more hierarchy becomes necessary to maintain its basic functions – in other words, the more quantitatively successful the organisation, the less anarchist it can be. This is something no amount of conscious procedures, such as consensus decision-making or a rigid constitution, can successfully alleviate. As a matter of necessity, any organisation incorporating thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of members can maintain direction and coherence only at the cost of extensive specialisation. In particular, those tasks that command the most influence – mediation, accounting, publicity – begin to stagnate in the hands of a few experts, either implicitly or explicitly. And what a sorry outcome that offers: any large anarchist organisation soon becomes incapable of prefiguring the very world it’s supposed to be building, the principle of nonhierarchical association relegated to a mere abstraction. If there’s any doubt on this point, that can only be because the vast majority of anarchist organisations remain woefully small nowadays. An honest look at the towering bureaucracy of the CNT in Spain during the 1930s – the largest anarchist organisation there’s ever been, incorporating a million and a half members – provides an unambiguous picture.

The link between formal organisation and hierarchy runs deeper yet; besides internal hierarchies, a second major problem concerns external ones. Built into the logic of the organisation of synthesis is the hidden assumption that ordinary people are incapable of organising themselves. Society is split between the passive masses on the one hand, and the enlightened revolutionaries on the other; the role of revolutionaries cannot be to engage horizontally with the rest of the population, but instead to approach them from the point of view of recruitment or education, to make them one of us. All potential social realities are distilled into a single way of doing things, as if we alone hold the one true set of revolutionary aims and principles. Such a monolithic approach was never realistic, much less so today: honestly speaking, most people will never see the need to join our organisation, to stomach all the long meetings and tedious subculture. The 21st century has ushered in a human condition that’s unfathomably complex, calling for a much richer diversity of organisational forms than the “one big union” model that worked so well in the past. That means opening ourselves up to a more pluralistic notion of struggle, one that abandons any notions of revolutionary primacy, especially that of the organisation of synthesis.

It isn’t even as if what formal organisations lack in principle they make up for in pragmatism. Merely in terms of their capacity to actually engage in struggle, the organisation of synthesis has proven ineffective. Any structure of significant size must spend the bulk of its time and energy merely on maintaining itself, the task of physically confronting power always coming second. Meetings are now insufferably long, and the only viable collective decisions have become increasingly timid and legalistic, members always going for the lowest common denominator just so everyone can agree. Having succumbed to the quantitative game of putting recruitment before all else, reputation has become a prime virtue, and combative actions are normally condemned in the name of not upsetting public opinion. Compromise and conciliation are instead always favoured by the emerging bureaucracy, the rank and file of the organisation betrayed time and time again. Nor could it be any other way: with obvious leaders, headquarters, and membership lists, the threat of state repression is forever present, severely limiting the scope of militant activity. What you’re left with, therefore, after funnelling so much time and effort into a grand synthesising effort, is a lumbering, introspective mass that can be used for little more than putting the brakes on real struggle.

With this critique in mind, some would respond that the risks posed by the organisation of synthesis are indeed a necessary evil. Perhaps this route offers us something quite indispensable, namely, the prospect of unity itself? The nation state towers over us more ominously than ever, its military, police force, and repressive technology contained within a single, cohesive structure. It might seem like folly not to build our own structure, rigid and undivided, to contend with power on its own terms – an organisation stronger and more unified than the state itself.

However, the problem with taking unity as an end it itself, rather than simply as a tool to be applied depending on the situation, is that it actively invites the concentration of power. Any structure that fancies itself to be building the new world in the shell of the old can only turn out to be a state in waiting. Remember that social hierarchy, besides being localised in certain physical objects, is also a state of mind; it’s always seeking to revive itself, and nobody is immune to the threat, anarchists included. We need not repeat the painful lessons of the past: there’s never been a large organisation of synthesis that hasn’t also been stale and bureaucratic, even subtly authoritarian, functioning like a political party to the extent it grows in size, ultimately favouring to collaborate with power rather than destroy it. This is no attempt to denigrate some of the most inspiring moments of anarchist history, but we also need to learn some hard lessons; let’s not forget the integration of the CNT into the government during the Spanish Civil War, to the extent that even an anarcho-syndicalist trade union ended up running its own forced labour camps.

Fortunately, though, this critique warrants no strategic compromise. In short, the quality of unity is essential only for those movements attempting to seize power rather than dismantle it. Amongst Marxists, liberals, and fascists alike, unity is the vital ingredient of their organising, the intention almost always being to assume the functions of the state in one sense or another. Without unity, the state is inconceivable; such a complex structure can only function properly when operating in a centralised way, forming a robust whole that maintains cohesion by relaying orders to the different parts. Any genuine shows of diversity are a threat to its integrity, because they undermine the singularity of the social body, lessening the capacity for a single will to be imposed upon it. But remember just how little applicability this framework has to our own desires: the point isn’t to emulate the state, as if to treat it as a rival, but instead to destroy it. And for this project a fundamentally different logic is required.

Here’s an idea: as far as effective libertarian struggle is concerned, a high degree of multiformity is the essential ingredient. There’s much to be said for social movements that are messy and fragmented, even to the extent that you’re not looking at a single movement any more, but many different ones with fuzzy lines between them. Building strong links between different fronts of the struggle is essential for encouraging one another to go further, yet the circulation of energies must also remain decentralised, diffuse, or else risk denying vigour to key areas of engagement. The repressive task undertaken by power – by the media, especially – will always be to sculpt us into a cohesive subject, something with discernible leaders and demands, which can thus be easily crushed or assimilated. This is why the struggle must always prize a diversity of tactics and perspectives, empowering all participants to fight on their own basis, and for their own reasons, yet nonetheless against a common enemy.

Multiform struggles are far too disjointed and unpredictable for the state to repress in a straightforward way, and also for the Left to co-opt. They’re more inviting to newcomers as well, offering massive variation of potential involvement, allowing everyone to find their niche without compromising. And multiform struggles, finally, are much more effective at going on the offensive, given that the structures of domination are nowadays far too multifaceted and complex – quite devoid of any centre – for a monolithic approach to successfully unhinge. It would be far better to avoid the fatal error made both by formal organisations and armed struggle groups, namely, to engage with the state symmetrically, in a frontal assault, which is precisely where it will always be militarily superior.

Often we see a split between comrades as a disaster, but that depends entirely on your perspective: diversity is only a curse only when crammed into the stubborn rubric of a movement demanding unity. Remember that it’s rarely the differences between us that cause conflict, but instead one’s refusal to respect them. Such differences are inevitable, and we should be thankful, too, because disagreement is one of the surest signs of vitality, if not of freedom itself. Especially with the struggle for total liberation – defined, in part, by the plurality of its concerns – these unavoidable differences can only be a blessing. The challenge is merely to nurture disagreement respectfully, bearing in mind that, despite the divergent methods we employ, each of these is ultimately grounded in a shared need to dismantle social hierarchy altogether.

* * *

This critique surely begs the question: if not formal organisation, what instead? For some time already, insurrectionary anarchists have been organising the attack mainly through small affinity groups, often incorporating around half a dozen (or fewer) comrades. Affinity here refers to reciprocal knowledge and mutual bonds of trust, as well as a shared project for intervening in society. Affinity groups are temporary and informal, incorporating no official members or branches, refusing to take numerical growth as a basic goal. One doesn’t “join” an affinity group any more than you join a group of friends; the act of signing up to an organisation is done away with, including the largely symbolic notion of involvement it offers. Theoretical agreement is often a good starting point for building affinity, but the vital thing is to find those with whom one can combine long-term trajectories for practical engagement – an ongoing process in which discussion is only the first step.

By remaining small and tightly-knit, affinity groups remain unhindered by the cumbersome procedures that inevitably come with organising as a mass. They can respond to any situation with utmost rapidity, continually revising the plan in light of unexpected developments, melting away whenever faced with unfavourable odds. This fluid, informal terrain of struggle is also immensely difficult for law enforcement to map out and undermine, especially when it comes to infiltration. A decentralised anatomy shouldn’t discourage groups from coordinating with one another horizontally, fostering the broader networks of friendship and complicity necessary to undermine power on a large scale. The point is only that affinity groups remain fully autonomous, in no way bound to sacrifice spontaneity for the sake of cohesion, always waiting for the green light from some higher body prior to taking action. Perhaps this description sounds familiar: anonymous, flexible, and leaderless, such is exactly the informal composition utilised with great success by the ALF/ELF. The main difference is that insurrectional struggle includes a broader range of activity, the question of how best to generalise revolt always taken into consideration.

In any case, large anarchist organisations are apparently a thing of the past, having disintegrated in unison with the workerist glue that once held them together. But that doesn’t mean we’re in the clear. There’s still a very real risk of exactly the mindset underpinning the organisation of synthesis – the emphasis on uniformity and respectability, as well as the subtle mistrust of autonomous struggle – merely reinventing itself in whatever contemporary form, as it will always attempt to do. We saw exactly that manifest in the bureaucratic, centralising tendencies that stifled much of the energy of Occupy and Nuit Debout (most memorably, there were those who refused to condone absolutely anything that hadn’t first received permission from the general assembly). This insistence on sculpting a multiform population into a monolithic subject – in essence, the determination to lay down the law – is always lurking amongst movements with revolutionary potential. Perhaps it’s no exaggeration to say that such an attitude, writ large, is exactly what devoured the initial beauty of the 1789 French Revolution, 1917 Russian Revolution, and 2011 Egyptian Revolution alike. Almost all previous revolutions were defined at first by a spontaneous, ungovernable outpouring of discontent; once that energy lost pace, however, it was gradually remoulded into representational forms – elections, negotiations, bureaucracy – and its original content decisively choked out. Between these two phases, the possibility of a revolution that gets to the root of dismantling power, rather than merely reshuffling it, depends on eliminating this second phase completely. In its place, the first must be extended towards encompassing the whole of everyday life. Informal organisation facilitates this outcome to the highest degree, precisely because it promotes a terrain of struggle that is inconvertible to the functions of state power.

In any case, nothing offered here amounts to a complete blueprint. This is not a programme! Comrades might well decide, according to their local circumstances, that some degree of formal organisation remains indispensable for tasks such as getting new people involved, planning aboveground events, and procuring resources. Which is to say, once again, that the conclusion offered here is only a minimal one: formal organisations cannot be considered the locus of revolutionary struggle altogether, as may have been the case in years gone by. They must instead be ready to adopt a more modest, supportive role, sticking to objectives both specific and temporary, remaining eager to take a step back or even disband entirely if needed. Rather than falling back on outdated formulas, tired and inflexible, total liberation means embracing the fullest multiformity, wild and ungovernable – the only kind of energy capable of bringing social hierarchy to ruin.

[noneedtofearorhope]

Many [insurrectionary anarchists] refuse to offer a specific, singular model of the future at all, believing that people will choose a variety of social forms to organise themselves when given the chance. They are critical of groups or tendencies that believe they are ‘carriers of the truth’ and try to impose their ideological and formal solution to the problem of social organisation. Instead, many insurrectionary anarchists believe that it is through self-organisation in struggle that people will learn to live without institutions of domination.

“Insurrectionary Anarchism: Organize for Attack!” from Do or Die Issue 10

[notasocialismjoke]

civilization? don't you mean encitification?

[lakecitylifeline]

Misconceptions About FTHPNW

Since posting our Grievance Zine on Twitter, people have said some completely incorrect things about Lindsay's behavior being due to the communist nature/structure of the organization. It's clear that people have zero idea how From the Heart actually operated.

To clarify: From the Heart PNW proper was never a communist organization, and Lindsay is not and has never been a communist. When the walkout finally happened, a majority of the people who participated were communists, and many communist spearheaded the attempt to democratize the organization and make it more internally and externally accountable.

I'm sure this confuses people, based on their impressions from social media, but words are cheap. From the Heart was never Red's org. It was always Lindsay's org, and Red just supported the effort. Red saw the political potential of the effort, and cared about it succeeding, but he knew better than to try and run it. The CDC was his project, and when he got sick that effectively disappeared. For the years he was too weak to do political work on the ground, he just posted and fundraised and recruited. Any impression people got from Red's twitter was purely his own politics, and had nothing to do with the org--he wasn't even there on the ground to see things himself most of the time.

Lindsay's politics are based primarily on whatever passes her personal vibe check. There was no formal structure in the org, only the informal ones of seniority and personal dominance, and the capitalist ones of private control of funds and media. When we tried to democratize the organization based on our expectations as communists, that new structure was a potential threat to her control and income, and so she quickly acted to crush it.

Lindsay butted heads with anarchists and constantly talked shit about them, but if you were around long enough you learned she had smoke for everyone. She would often say that "communism never works," and other vague anti-communist statements. When we talked about carrying political literature, or when we put up political graffiti, she would explode at us. She would get annoyed when we talked about communism, even with each other. If you went along with her, she liked you, and if you disagreed with her or pushed back, she would frequently use your political ideology--anarchist, communist, or liberal--to explain why you were so annoying.

Because of Red's social media presence, online recruits were mostly communists. With anarchists distancing themselves from Lindsay or leaving when they got fed up, it eventually left the organization majority communist. This created a weird situation where both the media presence and the volunteer base of From the Heart were mostly communist, but the actual operation, organization, and politics of the org on the ground were not.

She believes large, collectively-driven political change is impossible in the US, so any thoughts we had about trying to make the program more political were squashed. She thinks our only hope is to build and support a socialist micro-society among the unhoused, and then wait out the climate apocalypse--or that we'll all die in nuclear Armageddon, so we should just help a few people and dick around while we have the chance. She talked about how we were building a "new culture," and that she was opposed to a socialist revolution if we hadn't established the new culture yet (according to her own standards). If we didn't do things exactly how she wanted, that was a personal failure to build the new culture™️.

Lots of prefiguration, lots of apocalypticism, lots of inherent sin and personal martyrdom, constant demands for a protestant work ethic (i.e. if there's a problem achieving a goal, it's because people aren't working hard enough), and not much systematic material analysis--basically Christianity, but without the parts about being nice.

All that mattered was maintaining the flow of goods and services to the unhoused of Lake City, and maintaining her income. Anything else she viewed as a waste of time. Red's misdeed was creating a false face for this, and enabling and covering for Lindsay's behavior. Once he was gone, the parasocial fog lifted. The non-socialist nature of the org became a problem once we were asked to step up and replace Red's labor.

Don't think that your politics can't be used to justify abuse--as though there are no toxic anarchist spaces. Lindsay used anarchist prefiguration, communist revolutionary discipline, and liberal identity essentialism as rhetorical devices to control us, while holding onto the economic and social capital needed to run the org. There's a lesson in that.

[spacedkitty]

the definitions amongst the disparate leftist groups seem intentionally setup to cause semantic debates masquerading as ideological debates

the issue is that anti-civ wants to talk about and critique very specific things and one of the main words used to talk about those things is a specific usage of the word civilization.

many leftists just want to prevent anyone from ever thinking about these things or taking anti-civ seriously in the first place which is why they'll often describe anti-civ as primitivist or eco-fash or use some other thought terminating accusation.

this is also why its very common for leftists who do end up talking about anti-civ use entirely different and often useless definitions of civilization. one of the common claims is that civilization means anything humans have ever done... but what exactly is the purpose of that definition? how does it help you talk about or communicate something? its not helpful with talking about anything because its only purpose is to make it harder for people to understand what an anti-civ critique is trying to say. its actually very similar to capitalists saying that capitalism is anytime humans exchange anything so capitalism has always and will always exist.

unfortunately semantic debates are more memeable on the internet so why bother with a difficult ideological debate that might require introspection, questioning of assumptions, and making difficult decisions about where your priorities are.

I worry that this is a sentiment I've seen expressed by almost every group of leftists I've encountered on the internet, each with their own set of terminology/definitions that they state the other groups dismiss out of hand as some form of conspiracy to suppress their particular brand of leftist views.

I don't think any of these groups are wrong exactly, I just worry that perhaps the problem becomes one of insularity. I see why the definition being used is used in this case, because it helps to conceptualize of civilization in this manner when dealing with the particular critiques specific to anti-civ. However, without that context, it's extremely hard to parse and looks far closer to "well, like, society is evil and we should live in mud-huts" than makes sense, and in a world full of fascists, well, I've encountered a few people that truly seem to think that's the right approach..

Without context it is easy to see idiocy in the arguments of others if you are primed to do so (which our present society does an excellent job of).

Often I see people get absorbed into a particular brand of leftism and begin denouncing the others after having furious debates using words that seem to mean different things to the different parties. Sometimes when they encounter something to change their perspective they will jump to another brand with a similar fervor and go on to denounce the former brand with the same fervor they defended it with, now using different definitions.

I still have a great deal to learn, but it always feels difficult to do so when often genuine questions are treated with hostility and a dogmatic approach to a group's views. Which I guess I understand, given the frequency of trolls (from all sides of the political spectrum, let's be honest) attempting to waste people's time with frivolous bullshit.

I find myself looking into anti-civ and finding it compatible in many ways with my understandings of socialism and anarchism, and wondering why it felt so hostile and absurd when first I encountered it. Similar to the feelings I had when first learning of communism, socialism and anarchism.

Many leftists just want to prevent anyone from ever thinking about these things or taking anti-civ seriously

I honestly don't agree with you here. I know there are some who do, but I think the vast majority have gotten into confusing debates that mimicked impassible ideological differences and wrote it off, particularly when discussing with others in their movement.

A common problem I've encountered (particularly in online leftist circles) is one of defending ivory tower knowledge over conversational understanding, which makes understanding other groups significantly harder. If your go-to response to criticism or misunderstanding of your movement is "go read this tome" you open no doors to communication, only offering a silo of separate knowledge and perspective.

In summary, I don't think most leftists are opposed to understanding anti-civ, I think we are just primed by society and other leftist movements to see anti-civ perspectives, without the proper context, as reactionary and regressive. A view I think most leftist groups see in one another.

I hope things could possibly be shifted with better grassroots communication and like, maybe something as silly seeming as leftist dictionaries, but that remains to be seen (by me at least).

[prayersforpigeons]

i think the 'just run away into the woods' critique of anti-civ anarchists boils down to not recognizing them as anarchists – they can't just go off into the woods for the same reason anarchist syndicalists don't just join a workers' co-op, communists don't just join a commune. it is not simply a statement of personal preference but a vision of a world transformed. like most anarchists they dont necessarily start from a systematic blueprint of that world, but that world-transformative vision is what carries many of them along same as anybody. the ones who arent motivated by that shirk popular movements and definitionally do not see the world becoming more in line with their values. but thats harder to argue with, & so anti-civ anarchists must 1) compose a coherent group with a singular understanding of the world, 2) be so uncaring of others that the most sensible thing to do would be abandon everyone while simultaneously be ruthlessly committed to ripping vaccines our of people's hands. a thought killing cliche (tho i appreciate OP recognizes it as unfair).

the capitalist-colonialist world system requires massive resource expenditure specifically to prevent people from opting out – where are all these places a 200 – 600 person band society could maintain a living culture with the land, free from land tax and policing and large scale resource extraction for the benefit of corporations? plenty of indigenous cultures have tried, are trying, to live outside of industrial society, and they get murdered for it. which is one of the reasons why the vast majority of active anti-civ anarchists ive met have been involved in anti-colonial & landback movement.

i hate the way these cheap dunks that keep so many discussions of things like eco-fascism on cheap targets instead of facing up to the reality of fascist responses to climate collapse. the anti-civs can't just run off into the woods for the same reason none of us can live the life we want. the relentless surveillance state backed by the ever growing & more cruel prison system the ever more militarized police the ever more violent & cruel border system the ruthless dispossession & mass murder of indigenous peoples & other vulnerable communities the immensely destructive mass extraction of resources from fragile ecosystems making vaste swathes of land uninhabitable, on & on & on. the mass death is already here, & it's not zerzan reading crust punks responsible for it.

Funny thing about that anti civ person is that like. They could just do what folks that live off the grid do, but more extreme. If you hate civilization you’re…allowed to live somewhere else. Hell since they’re so convinced in their own definition of civilization they have even more options! (Though they’ll probably be disappointed to find out first hand their definition was wrong)

I mean in a way I understand. If you truly believe that civilization is the worst thing to happen to humanity and you want the best for humanity, you will even use the tools of civilization to persuade other people to your ideas.

The thing of course is that I don't believe on that and it's so incredibly easy to point out that computers are made by, well, civilization.

I also think that to say "well go live in the woods then" is a bit rude but... honestly, if the anti-civ way of life is more rewarding, we would see more people trying to do it right? We would see people in third-world countries protesting against schools, hospitals, universities, transportation, etc. instead of wanting those, right? But instead you will find, surprisingly, that people want a better life for themselves and those who they love. And this isn't opposed to enviromental stewardship and protection, as it's often the same people who live in those places who also want enviromental protection.

It's often through organized systems, civilization, that people achieve human rights, a good life, and indeed, are able to organize how to protect nature.

It's just completely disconnected from the aspirations of most people.

[nonhumanfreak]

[radicalgraff]

"Actualize Industrial Collapse"

Seen in Canterbury, England

[forbidden-sorcery]

[mobilefruit-gundam]

Taking out my anti-civ salt shaker for this one but the reality is that basically every facet of production and industry in the “civilized” west is intrinsically reliant on extraction. It should be painfully, bluntly, and unavoidably obvious at this point that the price of extraction and all its hideous faces (mining, monoculture, logging, oil drilling, plastics, wars, housing developments, commercial fishing, amazon, temu, fucking wind farms, all of it) is climate collapse. It’s why I’m cold on lefties who can only beat the labor drum. Of course people need to organize and take care of each other here and now, exploitation of labor should be stamped out- but when the labor you are doing and the whole society it supports and is supported by are all fibers in the rope around everyone’s neck I’m not really interested in finding a more ethical way to continue them. All of that shit has got to go as soon as possible. People don’t need better jobs they need community and a real connection to the living world. We have to start thinking on a different scale or we’re doomed. You have to start giving as much of a fuck about the natural world as you do about yourself, if not more so.

Obviously there is nuance to this that I’m not going to pick apart here on my own vent post but like… that is also part of the issue. The collapse is happening everywhere and it’s happening now, we are rapidly running out of time to debate over nuance. Kill the industrialist inside you today.

[dailyanarchistposts]

From class struggle to identity politics

It’s not that we’ve forgotten the meaning of revolution; on the contrary, it’s the refusal to let go of the old meaning that’s holding us back. With every passing moment, the state of the world changes irreversibly. Perspectives that once commanded utmost dedication begin to stagnate, losing touch with the tides of a reality that swirls in constant motion. Even the brightest ideas are bound to accumulate dust. And so too those offered in response.

To this day, most dreams of revolution come grounded in some variant of Marxian analysis. On this account, class is the central principle, both for understanding oppression as well as resisting it. History is taken to consist primarily in the drama of class struggle; different historical phases, meanwhile, are defined by the mode of production that sets the stage. The current phase is capitalism, in which the means of production – factories, natural resources, and so on – are owned by the ruling class (the bourgeoisie) and worked for wages by the working class (the proletariat). Almost everyone in capitalist society is split fundamentally between one of these two molar heaps – bosses or workers, exploiters or exploited. Whilst the basic solution, as Marxists and anarcho-syndicalists traditionally see it, is the application of workplace organisation towards the revolutionary destruction of class-divided society. In concrete terms, that means the proletariat rising up and seizing the means of production, replacing capitalism with the final phase of history: communism – a classless, stateless, moneyless society.

Having risen to predominance in the West around the end of the 19th century, this current of revolutionary struggle approached its climax towards the beginning of the 20th. At this point, the mutinies that closed down the First World War avalanched into a wave of proletarian uprisings that shook Europe to its core. Beginning with the Russian Revolution, 1917, the reverberations soon catalysed major insurrections in Germany, Hungary, and Italy. Two decades later, this unmatched period of heightened class struggle culminated in the 1936 Spanish Revolution, arguably the single greatest feat of workers’ self-organisation in history. Centred in Catalonia, millions of workers and peasants put the means of production under directly democratic control, especially in Barcelona – amongst the most industrially developed cities in the world. Yet the glory days of the revolutionary proletariat were in many ways also its last stand; in Italy and Germany, the fascist regimes of Mussolini and Hitler already reigned supreme. In the Soviet Union, meanwhile, the initial promise of the Russian Revolution had long since degenerated into Bolshevism, diverting most of the energy associated with socialism towards authoritarian ends. Apparently both fascism and Bolshevism succeeded in annihilating the possibility of workers’ control all the more effectively by simultaneously valorising it. Never again would organised labour come close to regaining its former revolutionary potential.

What followed was a period of relative slumber amongst the social movements of the West. This was eventually undone by a wave of social struggles that broke out during the 1960s, which in many places put the prospect of revolution back on the table. But something about this new era of revolt was markedly different: besides its various labour movements, here we see the likes of second-wave feminism, black liberation, and queer struggle begin to occupy the foreground. No longer was class struggle regarded as one and the same with the overall project of human liberation. And that began to profoundly undermine the neat old picture you get with Marxian class analysis. Maybe there’s no primary division splitting society any more, no single fault line upon which to base the totality of our resistance? The situation has instead been revealed as much messier, exceeding the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, if not capitalism altogether.

That said, something vital you still get with Marxian analysis, even centuries after it was first formulated, is its timeless emphasis on the material features of oppression. After all, it’s not as if the classical concerns of revolutionaries – in particular, the state and capital – have since just melted away. One of the biggest problems with many contemporary social struggles is their readiness to turn a blind eye to these structures, forgetting the key insight worth salvaging from Marx: genuine liberation is impossible without securing the material conditions of autonomy. On the other hand, though, classical revolutionaries tend to emphasise these concerns only at the expense of neglecting those which are in a sense more psychological, defined by matters of identity rather than one’s relationship to property. There’s something reassuring in that, given that treating class as primary allows you to take the entirety of problems we face – social, political, economic, ecological – and condense them into one. But such an approach has little chance of reflecting the complexity of power in the 21st century, with all divisions aside from class soon being neglected.

To note, there are conceivable responses here: some have made a point of extending Marxian analysis beyond an exclusive focus on class. Of the arguments offered, perhaps the most influential contends that structures such as white supremacy and patriarchy, homophobia and transphobia, are strengthened by the ruling class in order to divide and rule the working class; therefore, any prudent take on class struggle must take care to simultaneously oppose them all, or else fail to build the unity necessary for overthrowing capitalism. Such is exactly the kind of discourse used to give the impression that Marxian analysis is equally concerned with all oppressions. Granted, this approach is more sophisticated than claiming any deviations from the class line are mere distractions, as some do even today. But still, you shouldn’t be convinced too easily: lurking beneath the sloganeering here is the basic assumption that, even if class isn’t the only form of oppression, it remains the central one, underpinning the relevance of all the rest. Other oppressions are important to oppose, yet hardly on their own terms; their importance remains secondary, pragmatic, warranting recognition only insofar as they serve as a means within the broader class struggle. This shortcoming has long since been a call for new forms of struggle to emerge. Ones which recognise that class isn’t the only oppression worthy of intrinsic concern.

* * *

The fading of the Old Left, along with its fixation with Marxism and class struggle, soon gave rise to a “New Left” in Europe and America. Amongst other factors, this transition has been defined by the growing predominance of identity politics over class struggle. Identity politics follows from the presumed usefulness of coming together around various shared identities – say, being black, a woman, gay, transgender, or disabled – as a means for understanding and resisting oppression. This eagerness to treat all liberation struggles as ends in themselves did away with the primacy of class; rather, efforts were split more evenly between different minority groups, adding depth to previously neglected concerns.

At first, this trend offered a fair degree of revolutionary potential. The Black Panther Party, for example, recognised that black power was inseparable from achieving community autonomy in fully tangible ways, as was manifest in a range of activity that included everything from armed self-defence to food distribution, drug rehabilitation, and elderly care. Also in the US, the Combahee River Collective – who introduced the modern usage of the term “identity politics” in 1977 – saw their own liberation as queer black women merely as a single component of a much larger struggle against all oppressions, class included. Even Martin Luther King, currently a favourite amongst pacifist reformers, emphasised not long before his death that anti-racism was meaningless when separated from a broader opposition to capitalism.

As time passed, however, identity politics drifted irretrievably from its antagonistic origins, eventually coming to be associated with the separation of issues of identity from class struggle altogether. Broadly insensitive to the material features of liberation, the term nowadays suggests political engagement that’s heavily focused around moralistic displays and the policing of language – something that, quite inadvertently, can easily end up excluding the rest of the population, especially those lacking an academic grounding. Any larger political strategies, meanwhile, are typically focused not on dissolving the institutions of politics, business, and law enforcement, but instead on making them more accommodating to marginalised groups, thereby conceding the overall legitimacy of class-divided society. It’s no coincidence that this reformist, essentially liberal approach to social transformation only took off in tandem with that unspoken assumption, cemented since the ‘80s, regarding our chances of a revolution actually happening any more. In short, identity politics has been contained within a fundamental position of compromise with power, taking it for granted the state and capital are here to stay.

Perhaps the central problem with identity politics today is that, having had the good sense to abandon Marxian analysis, it loses the ability to account for what’s common to the plethora of social problems we face. If oppressive relations cannot be reduced to class, then what’s the underlying structure that binds them all together? The only alternative is to treat different oppressions as disconnected and remote – problems that can, in their various forms, be overcome without challenging the system as a whole. Identity politics thus lacks the conceptual bridge needed to draw different social movements into a holistic revolutionary struggle. Particularly in its most vulgar forms, liberation struggles are treated as isolated or even competitive concerns, inviting the reproduction of oppressive relations amongst those supposed to be fighting them.

Having said that, an explicit response to these limitations was offered by intersectionality, which began gaining traction in the ‘80s. The point of this theory is to demonstrate how different axes of domination overlap, compounding the disadvantages received by those exposed to more than one oppressive identity. By focusing only on gender, for example, feminist movements tend to prioritise the experiences of their most privileged participants – typically white, wealthy women. In order to undermine patriarchy effectively, therefore, feminism must embrace a much larger spectrum of concern, inviting the narratives of marginalised women to the forefront. A key virtue of intersectionality has thus been its emphasis on the interconnected nature of power, predicating the effectiveness of different liberation struggles on their ability to support one another. Unlike with Marxian class analysis, moreover, it does so without positing that any single axis of domination is somehow primary, which offers a vital contribution for going forward.

Despite its utility for revolutionaries, however, intersectionality has generally failed to avoid co-optation by neoliberal capitalism. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, with its numerous references to the likes of the “combined effects of intersecting issues that impact communities of color,” is but one example. Or else look at its seamless application by the mega-corporations nowadays, to the extent that Sony Pictures even has its own Director of Intersectional Marketing, a role designed to ensure that “marketing campaigns achieve maximum outreach to targeted multicultural and LGBT demographics.” How has a seemingly radical theory been diverted towards blatant reactionary ends? A first problem with intersectionality, as with identity politics more generally, is its abandonment of classical revolutionary concerns. At best, class is discussed merely in terms of “classism,” namely, an individual prejudice that can be undone simply by changing opinions, rather than abolishing class-divided society overall. Meanwhile, the state – a concrete institution, not an identity category such as race, gender, or class – is typically ignored altogether, inevitably resulting in toothless political programmes.

Moreover, this distinct lack of material analysis leads to a second problem, apparently the inherent defect of any take on identity politics: the inability to locate a common thread to the constitution of oppression as such. By setting out ever more subcategories of oppressed identities – not just being a black woman, for instance, but also a black trans-woman, a black disabled trans-woman, and so on – the consequence is an endless process of compartmentalisation. This emphasis on complexity could easily be a source of strength, opening up multiple fronts of diffuse engagement, inviting greater numbers to participate without having to assume a secondary role. Yet by focusing only on particularities, any notion of a common enemy against which to generalise revolt soon vanishes. Only when combined with a broader, concretely revolutionary vocabulary can intersectionality be used to promote diversity rather than fragmentation, undermining power as a totality.

Of course, none of the failures of identity politics should detract from the gains hard-won over the years. Even if transphobia continues to lag behind, overt racism, sexism, and homophobia are rarely tolerated by mainstream politics in much of the Global North – something unthinkable just a few decades ago. The uncomfortable fact, however, is that capitalism has been quite happy to adapt to these changes, taking on this or that superficial tarnish, yet remaining wholly the same in terms of its core operations. Women have flowed into the workforce, just as the nuclear family continues to disintegrate; nonetheless, human existence remains dominated by wage labour, property relations, and value accumulation. Amidst all the profound historical shifts, the misery of employment remains constant: workers in Amazon’s warehouses – as contemporary a workplace as you could imagine – are subject to intense surveillance and control, with many too fearful of their productivity quotas to even use the bathroom. No joke: only recently, various companies have begun microchipping their workers to keep track of them better. The opportunity to vote for a black or female head of state, or for queers to marry or join the military, poses little threat to the operation of business as usual. If anything, it only strengthens the liberal paradigm, allowing people to convince themselves – despite the gap between rich and poor growing consistently worldwide, as well as each new day dragging us closer to the brink of ecological meltdown – that somehow things are actually getting better. Decades of alleged ideological progress, only to be met with the turning of a circle: the basic features of authoritarian society, at least as strong as they were a century ago.

Such is the impasse we’re faced with. Taken by itself, class struggle fails to account for the complexity of oppression, attempting to subsume each of its forms into the monolithic category of economic exploitation. Identity politics, on the other hand, breaks out of this formula, yet only by abandoning any semblance of a revolutionary perspective. Rather than collaborating to produce a tangible threat to the existent, therefore, all that class struggle and identity politics did was swap their problems. Both trends offer their own vital insights, but neither charts the possibility of new worlds altogether – not even close.

[noneedtofearorhope]

Graffiti slogan: "Ireland Solidarity Alfredo Cospito FIRE TO THE PRISONS" at Cherywood bypass, N11 road, Co.Dublin

Alfredo Cospito, along with Nicola Gia, were incarcerated in 2012 for kneecapping Roberto Adinolfi, managing director of Ansaldo Nucleare. Their action was carried out against the nuclear power company in direct retaliation for the nuclear disaster in Fukushima - in which the deadly ecocidal effects are felt to this very day, poisoning the ocean and local wildlife. Alfredo and Nicola were sentenced to ten years and eight months. From the outset the cowardly left condemned Alfredo and Nicola’s action against the dangers of nuclear power.

During their trial Alfredo released a statement which included:

“I am an anti-organisation anarchist because I oppose all forms of authority and organizational constraints. I am nihilist because I live my anarchy today and not in waiting for a revolution, which -if it ever came about - would only produce more authority, technology, civilization.”

During his sentence Alfredo was given additional charges as part of a larger trial involving many anarchists known as the Scripta Manent Trial. Many of the charged were convicted and given harsh sentences, Alfredo was given an extra twenty years for bombing a police training college in 2006 with his partner Anna Beniamino who was sentenced to sixteen and half years. The Italian Supreme Court of Cassation changed Alfredo's conviction to “Political Massacre” and gave him life in prison without parole plunging him into the concrete depths of the 41 bis prison regime. This regime was first created to be used against mob bosses to stop them communicating on the outside to diminish their power.  It wasn't long till the Italian state used this regime against “subversives”. The barbaric regime includes: solitary confinement for twenty two hours a day, a one hour visit once a month, heavily restricted communication to the outside world, no reading materials allowed sent in.

Since Alfredo's first sentence he had constantly communicated and took part in the anarchist movement debates via publishing writings and interviews. So the Italian state has gagged Alfredo and totally isolated him by burying him alive in a concrete tomb of 41 bis.The Italian state has labeled Alfredo as the leader of the Informal Anarchist Network - which is a leaderless, informal movement, with no organizational structure. It is a battle name of action, if they choose, to use as a signature for attacking and a means to collaborate with other anarchists of shared affinity for action across the globe without ever having to meet each other communicating through communiques of direct action claims. Alfredo never shied away or denied his support and involvement in the anti-organisational project of the Informal Anarchist Federation despite being condemned by much of the cowardly leftist elite including many liberal “anarchists”.

Many in the so-called “anti-capitalist movement” condemned Alfredo and his comrades as “terrorists”, “adventurists”, and “vanguardists”. The cowardly leftists couldn't conceive that the I.A.F don't act in the name of the oppressed, or in the hopes of inspiring the moribund “working classes” to rise up against the system but act through an individual will and motivation to take action against the murderous mega machine that is capitalist society in the here and now - not waiting for a mass revolution that more than likely will never happen.

From Instagram page: Éirí Amach : Cells Of Mother Earth

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

Some anarchist anti-psychiatry writings.