RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: Leftist anarchist on fighting the REAL enemy  Wed Jan 07, 2009 5:40 am | |
| Though he's anti-capitalist, he has some good points that counter Molyneux's argument from priority.
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MY ANARCHISM PROBLEM
Bob Black
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Too often have the anarchists lectured me to shun "feuds" and "in-fighting" the better to fight "the real enemy," by which they mean some conveniently remote abstraction such as capitalism or the state. Now it's arrogant for people who say I'm arrogant to tell me they're better at spotting my real enemies than I am. In its most seductive form -- the flattering suggestion that my enemies are unworthy of me -- I have refuted the argument by the way I praise John Crawford (chapter six). I might dismiss the standard, cruder version as a cynical self-serving ploy to escape my criticisms by misdirecting them. Though offered, occasionally, in good faith, it's rubbish.
The Lone Ranger and Tonto are surrounded by Indians. The Ranger says, "It looks like we've had it, old friend." Tonto says, "What you mean we, paleface?"
"The real enemy" is the totality of physical and mental constraints by which capital, or class society, or statism, or the society of the spectacle expropriates everyday life, the time of our lives. The real enemy is not an object apart from life. It is the organization of life by powers detached from it and turned against it. The apparatus, not its personnel, is the real enemy. But it is by and through the apparatchiks and everyone else participating in the system that domination and deception are made manifest. The totality is the organization of all against each and each against all. It includes all the policemen, all the social workers, all the office workers, all the nuns, all the op-ed columnists, all the drug kingpins from Medellin to Upjohn, all the syndicalists and all the situationists.
This isn't rhetoric to me; it informs my choices. It implies that I can expect to find authoritarian actions, opinions and personalities among anarchists as elsewhere. "Comrades" are not my comrades -- nor am I, at my worst, my own comrade -- insofar as they or I behave like "the real enemy." There is no real enemy apart from human agency.
And what better place for authoritarians to nest than among anarchists who are so easily taken in by labels, so easily dazzled by slick production values, and so easily confused by the facts? Although it is only an ideal type, the authoritarian personality is all but completely realized in anarchists like Jon Bekken, Michael Kolhoff, Chaz Bufe, Fred Woodworth and Chris Gunderson as in anti-authoritarians like Caitlin Manning, Chris Carlsson, Adam Cornford and Bill Brown. (Anti-authoritarian, what a story that word could tell; as Bill Knott put it, "If only mouthwash could talk.")
If anarchists are capable of authoritarian attitudes and ideological incoherence, I should no more hail one as a comrade, sight unseen, than I would a state trooper or used-car dealer. The label is not a warranty. An important reason for my 1985 disclaimer of anarchism was to forstall any claims on my loyalty or for exemption from criticism on the basis that "we" are on the same side. A real comrade would welcome critique.
LNK |
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CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
| | Subject: Re: Leftist anarchist on fighting the REAL enemy Wed Jan 07, 2009 6:09 am | |
| Yes, I heard of him ages ago...
Was in the Loompanics catalog for years...
Mainly for No One Should Ever Work
Bob Black's 1985 essay, "The Abolition of Work"
Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.
That doesn't mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child's play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isn't passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act.
Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment.
I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists -- except that I'm not kidding -- I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry...
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/black02.htm
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