#organization strategies

[justposting1]

I Quit My Job to Flip Furniture Full Time: My Journey to a Creative and Sustainable Career

How I Transformed My Passion for Furniture Restoration Into a Thriving Full-Time Career When I first heard about furniture flipping, I was intrigued but skeptical. Could something as simple as refurbishing old furniture really replace a steady paycheck? At the time, I was working a demanding 9-to-5 job in an office, staring at spreadsheets day after day. The monotony, combined with my growing…

[ranjith11]

Task prioritization using Asana | Asana features for task prioritization | Future Proof Accountants

In this video, Neha talks about how we can use Asana for task prioritization - making it simple for team to prioritize tasks :) In this video, we'll show you how to become a task prioritization pro using Asana. Efficiently managing your tasks is key to productivity, and Asana is here to help. We'll guide you through the steps to set up, organize, and prioritize your tasks effectively. Whether you're a project manager, student, or professional, mastering task prioritization can transform your workflow. Join us to discover the tools and techniques that will boost your productivity and help you stay on top of your to-do list.

[rotzaprachim]

im shaking every single student organizer and screaming that they need to separate a demand to divest from arms funding from the demand for a university to cut off all contact with Israeli and Israeli-American scholars and students, a demand which no university will agree to because implementing it would in many cases be very illegal

[telesodalite]

Never getting over Fulcrum being a project manager...

Idk why, but something about that is so funny to me. Not just because the title of "project manager" is inherently kinda funny for a Decepticon, but also because-

1. It's vague sounding and hard to explain irl because it technically exists in multiple fields, like healthcare or manufacturing, which surely translates into canon in some way.

2. In canon, it's simultaneously a really mundane, innocuous sounding job, yet it's also a super morally awful position to reside over depending on the context. (*cough* forced colonization and cyberforming *cough*)

And 3. It solidifies the fact that behind all the surface level militaristic work we get with both the Decepticons and Autobots, there's also Cons and Bots with "normal" jobs in both factions.

Like, sure yeah we get scientists and doctors, engineers and programmers, but usually in big important or warfront positions. (For plot reasons, understandably.) But it's also really funny and interesting to think of those that worked background positions, or minor jobs.

Like an Autobot working in their equivalent of an HR department, or a Decepticon who runs one of their outpost's or starship's kitchens.

Just all the pre-war jobs that didn't just disappear with the war, but instead evolved to exist within the factions.

It's particularly funny with the Decepticons though, because it could be a super mundane job or situation, but because it's them, it has to have an air of ~e v i l~ to it, either legitimately and/or merely for the vibes, like Tarn's "performance reviews".

[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.

[watermelinoe]

"i advocate for political violence" <- person scrolling social media in bed

[cementcornfield]

Oh??

[thequeenofthewinter]

Highlights from the reworking of the outline of my fic:

"Feel feelings of stuff and things"

"Strained relationship pt. 2., electric boogaloo (new and improved with MORE pining)

"Fuck nasty in a crypt"

...sometimes I swear I words properly.

[razzek]

Top 5 MOST useful tools for blind people just starting out

Top 5 most fave tools for the blind overall

Top 5 least useful

Top 5 fucking weirdest and/or funniest

This is a big ask and I will do my best to answer, with the caveat that I am just a single blind person with memory issues who doesn't remember everything my blind friends have told me. XD I am counting other people as tools in this list because a person with eyes sometimes is a handy tool for us. XD

Top 5 MOST useful tools for blind people just starting out 1. White cane 2. Blindness skills training through centers, government programs like Vocational Rehabilitation, Orientation & Mobility specialists, and anywhere you can find it 3. Membership with the National Talking Book Library aka NLS in your state (US); I think the UK is RNIB and Canada has one, not sure about other countries 4. Supportive family and friends and other blind people if you can find them 5. Screen reader (NVDA is free for Windows, iPhone has VoiceOver, Android uses TalkBack)

Top 5 most fave tools for the blind overall 1. White cane and/or guide dog 2. Text to speech, screen readers, audio books, audio described movies and tv 3. Accessible smart phones (often iPhone but Android is catching up) 4. Bump dots (stick-on tactile dots you put around your home) 5. Braille and refreshable braille displays/notetakers

Top 5 least useful 1. Sighted people inventing crap without talking to any blind people ("smart" canes, "smart" shoes, dangerous devices you hold in your only free hand that claim to tell you what's in front of you but actually don't, screen reader breaking "accessibility" overlays, etc...) 2. That ring which only shows one braille cell at a time (that's not how anyone reads) 3. Strangers giving/yelling vague directions ("It's right over there!", "Oh my god watch out for the stairs (that you are halfway down)!", giving directions to the guide dog who doesn't speak English or any language because they are a dog...) 4. Hot liquid measuring devices (always broken, the noise they make is so fucking loud it's caused me a lot more injury than just sticking my finger in the hot liquid, will wake up the neighbors) 5. All but one use case of AI claiming to be for the blind, at least as far as I've seen

Top 5 fucking weirdest and/or funniest 1. Ping pong balls (good for measuring hot liquids) 2. Funnels (really helpful for pouring liquids) 3. The lanyard strap that sticks to the back of your phone so you can wear it around your neck (looks silly, is incredibly useful) 4. White cane holster (yes it's a thing, I have at least three XD) 5. Things being organized Very Specifically (close your eyes and YOU try to find the remote after someone put it in a random place! XD)

[justposting1]

Embracing Identity Beyond Success: A Journey Toward Inner Peace

Navigating the Fear of Professional Decline In today’s world, discussions about identity politics dominate every corner of society. We’re constantly identifying ourselves by political affiliations, beliefs, or roles: “I’m a Democrat, you’re a Republican,” or “I’m a liberal, you’re a conservative.” While these labels can be meaningful, they often overshadow deeper, personal aspects of identity.…

[retrocgads]

UK 1998

[monstrsball]

"1, 2, 3, eyes on me!"

Iwaizumi's not one who believes in love at first sight but he thinks he falls a little in love with Sugawara Koushi when he watches him effortlessly quiet a room full of elementary schoolers and professional volleyball players.

[dipperdesperado]

notes toward taxonomies of social change tactics

Changing the world is hard. Creating equitable and egalitarian social relations have proven difficult to create. The path forward isn’t necessarily clear, but I have some general inclinations about how we should frame our approach. We should avoid a traditional approach, where we just try to turn things back to “how they used to be”. We instead should wrestle with present and past ideas to create the best possible course for the future.

This is super important for tactics. Depending on where you lie on ideological lines, you might be super into some tactics over others. I’d say, once we have a basic idea of our visions and values (and some ethics), we can try to pick some tactics from what’s available, and decide how to execute from there. from there. This post will mostly be gesturing towards a way to categorize tactics to decide what you will think will be useful based on the context.

So, I think some useful variables for any given tactic are:

Level of visibility or publicity. How aware will people be of this? How “viral” will it be?

Legality. How much trouble will you get in with the law?

Directness. How far are you from the issue? Is this a direct action, or do you have to go through intermediaries?

“Violence” or confrontation. How confrontational is this with oppressive systems?

Organizational structure. What kinds of organizational structures can facilitate this action?

Intended impact/likely result.

Current feasibility. Given your current power level, are you able to pull this action off?

Risks. What are the dangers with this idea?

Benefits. What can be gained if this tactic yields successful?

You can look at any given tactic, rank them based on these categories, and based on your strategy and analysis, decide if it’s something that you want to do. Depending on the situation, you can use as many or as few variables as you want.

I’ll end with an example of using this to categorize certain tactics, with a specific selection of variables.

Above Ground Tactics a. Legalist Tactics

Peaceful protests

Petitions and letter-writing campaigns

Lobbying and advocacy

Public speeches and rallies

b. Illegalist Tactics

Civil disobedience

Sit-ins and occupations

Blockades and disruptions

Nonviolent direct action

Underground Tactics a. Legalist Tactics

Covert research and information gathering

Whistleblowing

Strategic media campaigns

b. Illegalist Tactics

Sabotage and property destruction

Hacking and cyber-attacks

Underground publications and propaganda

This is just a start. I think that something like this can be useful so that we can have a way to gauge our tactics in the context that we plan to apply them. Hopefully, this can be part of an interesting tactical/strategic discussion.

[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.

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

My local anarkiddie zine distro collective got themselves blocked by the local chapter of BLM for spreading adventurist tactics that would instigate a fight at a protest announcement, and they got super pissy about it saying they were just spreading "basic protest safety" LOL

Many such cases

[stormandmoonlight]

two common talking points about non-voting from the left:

1. depriving the Democrats of your vote will show that you will not empower genocide and punish them for doing so

2. the Democrats will not be affected if the Republicans win power because they are the same class

does anyone else see a contradiction in terms here?