#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.

[notasocialismjoke]

pro-civ people when industrial civilization leads to the destruction of global weather systems and mass casualty events:

[forbidden-sorcery]

[dailyanarchistposts]

The collapse of workerism

Of course, some would have it that we never lost a revolutionary perspective at all, quite confident they had the solution all along. This comes in the form of workerism, a broad set of strategies – mainly Marxist or anarcho-syndicalist – that affirm the centrality of the working class for overthrowing capitalism. In the history of revolutionary struggle, few ideas have consistently held more sway; but surely that’s only the reason why this sorely outdated approach has proven so hard to get over. Things have changed more dramatically than ever in the last decades, shattering the material conditions that once granted workplace organisation such grandiose pretensions. It’s important to clarify why, or else the attempt to exceed activism risks being subsumed by yet another reformist method, this one all the more stagnant.

Only a few decades ago, the prospects of organised labour in the Global North were much more hopeful, with trade unions retaining a great deal of strength into the 1970s. Mainly during the ‘80s, however, capitalist production underwent some major alterations. Profound technological developments in the field of electronics – especially digitisation – caused the productive process to become much more automated, requiring significantly less human input. This combined with an increased ability on the part of employers to outsource employment to less economically developed countries, where labour was much cheaper. Fairly suddenly, therefore, the two biggest sectors of the economy – split mainly between industry and agriculture – were greatly reduced in size, resulting in massive layoffs. Yet those who lost their jobs were generally absorbed by steady growth in the services sector, thereby avoiding immediate social destabilisation. Whilst it was once the smallest economic sector by a long way, the services sector is now by far the largest in the Global North, even approaching 80% employment rates in the US, UK, and France.

The result has been a striking redefinition of the common notion of work. It’s lost its centre of gravity in the factory, having fragmented instead in the direction of various post-industrial workplaces – restaurants, shops, offices. Once a largely centralised mass, the working class has been dispersed across the social terrain, the new focus being on small, highly diverse productive units. Between these units, workers possess few common interests and interact little, leading to a significantly diminished potential for collective action. Of course, resistance in the workplace continues, but the internal avenues necessary for revolt to generalise have been majorly severed, the situation continuing to decline in light of ever greater technological advance.

Nobody can deny the profound identity crisis faced by the working class. Only a few decades ago, the factory was seen as the centre of everything, with workers offering the vital component in the functioning of society as a whole. Work was once a way of life, not so much in terms of the amount of time it took up, but instead because of the clear sense of existential grounding it offered. For generations, there had been a strong link between work and professionalism, with most workers committing to a single craft for the entirety of their lives. Career paths were passed down from father to son, who often remained in the same company; the families of different workers also maintained close ties with one another. Nowadays, however, everything has changed: employment is immensely uncertain, the relentless fluidity of the post-industrial economy forcing most to get by on a roster of precarious, low-skilled jobs. Far fewer people take pride in their work, especially given that employment only rarely has a convincing subtext of doing something socially important. Trade unions have also vanished as a historical force, having been defeated in the key battles of the ‘80s, their membership levels imploding in lock-step with the advance of neoliberalism. A residue of the old world still exists, but it continues to dissipate further every day, never to return. In the Global South, too, things are inevitably moving in the same direction.

These developments cast serious doubt on the validity of Marxist and anarcho-syndicalist strategies for revolution. It’s becoming increasingly meaningless to speak of “the workers” in reference to a cohesive entity. It isn’t as if the disintegration of the working class implies the absence of poverty, nor of the excluded – in no sense whatsoever. What it does mean is the end of the working class as a subject. One that was, as Marx put it, “disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself” (Capital, 1867). Over the last decades, the working class has been dismembered and demoralised by the very same mechanism: just as the mass application of steam and machinery into the productive process created the industrial proletariat two centuries ago, the invention of new, automated technologies has led to its dissolution. There’s no single project around which to unite the working class any more; it follows, as with identity politics, that gains in the workplace will almost always be limited to improving capitalism rather than destroying it. The Industrial Revolution has been superseded by the Digital Revolution, yet the revolutionary optimism of workerism remains ideologically trapped in a bygone era, fumbling for relevance in a century that won’t have it. Although, to be honest, this is hardly news: already for some time now, the nostalgic language of workerism has come across as stale and outdated to most, even if academics often struggle to keep up.

In any case, the collapse of workerism might be nothing to mourn. Another implication of the end of traditional employment is the predominance of a range of workplaces few would want to appropriate anyway. The factory has been replaced by the likes of call centres, supermarkets, service stations, fast food joints, and coffee shop chains. Yet surely no one can imagine themselves maintaining these workplaces after the revolution, as if anything resembling a collectively run Starbucks or factory farm is what we’re going for? When workerism first became popular, there was an obvious applicability of most work to the prospect of a free society. In the 21st century, however, the alienation of labour runs all the deeper: no longer is it the mere fact of lacking control over work, but instead its inherent function that’s usually the problem. To put it another way, it should come as no surprise that Marxists haven’t yet replaced their hammer and sickle with an office desk and espresso machine, as would be necessary to keep up with the times. The modern symbols of work are worthy only of scorn, not the kind of valorisation involved in putting them on a flag.

This is another big problem for the workerist theory of revolution, given its conception of revolution primarily or even exclusively in terms of the seizure of the means of production. Achieving reforms in the workplace is one thing, but only rarely can such exercises in confidence-building be taken as steps towards appropriating the workplace altogether. Surely the point isn’t to democratise the economy, but instead to pick it apart: those aspects of the economy genuinely worth collectivising, as opposed to converting or simply burning, are few and far between. Of course, they still exist, but they’re marginal. And that confirms the absurdity of expecting workplace organisation to offer the centrepiece of any future revolution.

This hardly implies doing away with the material aspects of revolutionary struggle, given that communising the conditions of existence remains necessary for living our lives – not just this or that activist campaign – in genuine conflict with the system. All the more, the moment in which these subterranean influences suddenly erupt, and mass communisation overturns the ordinary functioning of the capitalist machine, surely remains a defining feature of revolution itself. Yet such endeavours must be sharply distinguished from seizing the means of production – that is, appropriating the capitalist infrastructure more or less as it stands before us. Far from offering a vision of the world we want to see, the syndicalist proposal to reclaim the conditions of work – to assume control of very the system that’s destroying us – merely implies self-managing not only our own exploitation, but also that of the planet.

As an aside, it should be added that these issues undermine the contemporary relevance of Marxism altogether. It was previously suggested that Marxian class analysis no longer offers a credible account of oppression; the current discussion, meanwhile, suggests it cannot be used to frame the topic of revolution either. As a method for interpreting the world, as well as for changing it, Marxism has had its day. If we wanted to be a little diplomatic, we could say this isn’t so much a criticism of the theory itself, more a recognition of the fact that the world it was designed to engage with no longer exists. If we wanted to be a little less diplomatic, moreover, it should be added that what’s left of Marxism is utterly boring, reformist, and kept “alive” almost exclusively by academics. As the big guy declared back in 1852, “The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” Yet in no case has this claim, offered in response to the lack of imagination amongst revolutionaries in the 19th century, been more relevant than with Marxism today. We should pay our respects, if indeed any respect is due, whilst refusing to be crippled by an outdated approach. The same goes for anarcho-syndicalism, its once unbridled potential decisively shut down by the combined victories of fascism and Bolshevism.

To offer a last word of clarification, none of this implies doing away with workplace organisation altogether. There’s still much to be said for confronting power on every front: the collectivisation of any remaining useful workplaces, as well as the fierce application of the general strike, surely remains vital for any effective revolutionary mosaic. Just as workplace organisation continues to prove effective for breaking down social barriers, as well as potentially improving our lives in the here and now. The core claim offered here is only that it cannot be considered the centrepiece of revolutionary struggle altogether – quite the minimal conclusion. Merely in terms of asking what the abolition of class might look like today, workerism has lost its way. And that doesn’t begin to consider the abolition of hierarchy as such. When taken in isolation, organised labour offers nothing more than a subtle variety of reformism, thinly cloaked in its stuffy revolutionary pretensions. Total liberation, by contrast, refuses to single out any focal points of the clash, be they workerist, activist, or otherwise.

[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

[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).

[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

[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

[notasocialismjoke]

civilization? don't you mean encitification?

[forbidden-sorcery]

[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.

[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.

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

Some anarchist anti-psychiatry writings.

[metamatar]

i unironically believe combine harvesters and looms and washing machines and electric stoves and refrigerators are transformative for the poor in india, esp women. i don't really find it possible to comprehend as liberatory a political programme that demands that we must retreat from labour saving technologies because they're tainted by civilisation. like i lived without a refrigerator for a few months do you know how much of your life you end up reorienting to preserving food even when you have access to supermarkets? does everyone need a personal one? def not. a new one with fancy features every year? no. are all such technologies equal in terms of their impact environmentally viz labour saved? no. but this insistence on a prelapsarian world predating such technology means a refusal to sketch out a political programme that seeks to do more than retreat to a theoretical primitive communism. and i haven't even touched on how in the third world the fantasy of jury rigged medical tech and self compounded medication is real and kills more often than capitalist negligence does in the first.

and unless you believe the first world is the only place that deserves such technologies, we do have to produce more of them to expand access to the global poor.