Anarchoblogs

Chucklesome demolitions of The Observer's lazy dissing of the latest Chomsky compilation, Hopes & Prospects.

I just realized that I haven’t mentioned this book already here and I think it’s high time I do.

During my recent vacation I went through Cory Doctorow’s latest novel: For The Win and it was immediately a favourite. It’s not often that a book which can extract such strong sentiments out of me but this one did it spades. I kept alternating between anger, excitement, happiness and so on, as I was rooting for the heroes, feeling their pain and being gripped to my seat by the very believable action happening inside.

I don’t know if Cory is an anarchist but he seems to have got the practice of anarcho-syndicalism down pat. The only thing that I think would have been improved is if the organizers of the International Workers of the World Wide Web (IWWWW, or Webblies. I kid you not, these were some of the more awesome concepts he came up with) were more decentralized rather than basically being controlled by a few of the heroes and therefore suffering tragic blows when those heroes where directly assaulted. But then again, this is a story and I’m no author so I don’t know how much one can avoid having main actors in the story that one can identify with. Also, while distribution of power is always the optimal  way to organize a union, in the real life gritty practice, that can get sidetracked. So in a sense perhaps the book was more realistic this way, while also pointing out the flaws of even a small centralization.

On the other hand, it’s obvious how much research and knowledge Cory has invested in learning about gaming and especially MMORPGs and their surrounding Agorism. This is something that might make the novel a bit more difficult to follow for internet/gaming illiterates but on the other hand it will be easier to identify with for a younger audience which has grown into this culture, and perhaps introduce them to the dark underbelly of the beast they’re feeding every month, the dark world around it and the surrounding lives of those who try to make a living out of it.

All in all, I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s not written for anarchists in any sense but I can only imagine that anarchists will love it. But I also believe that it will also provide a realistic example of what Anarchist struggle is in practice to all those who prefer to imagine us as either Terrorists or Hippies.

Buy it if you can or download it for free if you can’t. Since it’s published in a Copyleft license, you’re free to read and distribute and I hope that, like me, you’ll also choose to talk and write about it. It’s definitely worth it and it’s easily the best book I’ve read in the last 3 years.

Insightful? Funny? Informative? Convincing? Helpful?

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Other similar posts you might also enjoy: Penny Arcade RPG? | Anarchist Convertions | A children’s book about cosmogenesis? Oh yeah!

So, I just got done reading Heather Burditt’s review of the Radical Unschooling segment of the show on her blog here.

This is the reply I left her and how I felt about the segment in general:

“eh. It was alright. I highly agree that only portraying one radical unschooling family was a poor choice. While I am a fan (maybe that’s not the right word) of the ‘Clan of Parents’, seeing a variety of families, especially at least one with older or grown unschoolers, would have been better. I also didn’t like how the ‘experts’ didn’t have to support their (what seemed like) opinions with any research, statistics or examples. I also didn’t like that the Parents weren’t able to speak back to the experts or that there wasn’t a pro-radical unschooling ‘expert’ to offer counter arguments. In all, I didn’t see it as really balanced…not to mention that the way it was cut up seemed kind of staged and almost like it all happened in one day. An entire hour with equal time from both sides of the argument and at least two more families, might have made began to make a difference.”

Sarah Parent and her family were representing Radical Unschooling and I think they did a fine job, given how the footage was cut and the fact that they really didn’t get to speak to anything that the ‘experts’ said.

Did you watch it? What did you think? Did you write a review (leave me a link)? Were you one of the people mysteriously contacted by Discovery Health prior to the airing?

Would Wal-Mart be so powerful, so destructive and so hated if not for the power granted it by governments? That’s the question that plagues me after watching Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005). Wal-Mart gets government subsidies, a government grant of limited liability and favorable tax cuts. So why does an otherwise fine movie fail to see their analysis through to the end?

Why Don’t Folks Get a Better Job?

Wal-Mart makes people work more hours than they actually pay them for, the movie charges. So why don’t people quit and get a better job, or start their own business? This question is not addressed. But it’s government that has artificially constricted work opportunities. They’ve imposed burdensome taxes and blatant inflation policies that rob people of their savings; savings that could be used to start a business or fund further education. Government passes laws forbidding people from running businesses out of their homes and government agents enforce these illegitimate rules against little old ladies who like to bake, folks down on their luck who run one too many yard sales and others in need.

Government Subsidies Prop Up Employees

How do people even survive while working at Wal-Mart, if the pay is so terrible and the hours so long? They depend on government subsidies: overpriced “benefits” forced on the workers in the form of tax payments. WIC, medicaid, medicare, government unemployment insurance, CHIP, Section 8 housing, food stamps, you name it. According to the film, Wal-Mart keeps lists of all the government benefit programs and directs their employees to them, instead of offering them a fair wage.

Local Business Ecosystems Wiped Out

When Wal-Mart comes to town, the movie shows us, the local ecosystem of small businesses is wiped out. Why? Because Wal-Mart offers lower prices perhaps? How can they do that? They get government subsidies, rip off their employees (see previous paragraph) and use even cheaper workers overseas. Is government leveraged to keep those overseas workers priced so cheaply? Probably but I don’t know as much about that.

An Example: Colombia

To take one example, I lived for some time in Colombia, a third-world nation, where the government has made it so expensive for businesses to fire workers that hirings are few and far between. They have also made it complicated and expensive to start your own business. The underground economy is huge there. If government makes it hard for workers in the U.S., it’s probably twice as difficult in your average globalized third-world nation.

Film Quiet on Real Solutions

What solution is offered by the film? Not much, I’m afraid. Folks in some cases have to fight their own local governments to keep Wal-Mart out of their communities. In at least one case, Wal-Mart got a measure on the ballot to overrule them! Clearly Wal-Mart executives are very skilled in leveraging the guns of government to get their way. But the film doesn’t talk about this.

The Man Behind the Curtain is Government

The solution is to end government. Without government, Wal-Mart will no longer have its subsidies, special tax cuts and shield of limited liability protection. It would be held accountable in courts. Without government, folks could keep their entire paychecks and if need be start businesses out of their own homes, unmolested by government agents. Without government, Wal-Mart would crumble. Don’t fight Wal-Mart, it’s just a front. Fight the real power behind it: government and its wanton use of aggression.

Photo credit: Brave New Films. Photo license.

This review was published in this month’s issue of Z Magazine by Hans Bennett, a Philadelphia photojournalist mostly focusing on the movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners. An archive of his work is available at insubordination.blogspot.com

When Israeli anarchist Uri Gordon first moved to Europe in the fall of 2000 to begin his doctoral studies at OxfordUniversity, he was planning to study environmental ethics. However, Gordon explains that “the IMF/World Bank protests in Prague had just happened, the fresh buzz of anti-capitalism was palpably in the air, and I was eager to get a piece of the action.” After attending a report-back from locals that had traveled to Prague, he quickly became involved in protests locally and around Europe. “I soon ended up doing much more activism than studying,” writes Gordon, who had now been “tear-gassed in Nice, corralled in London and narrowly escaped a pretty horrible beating in Genoa.” He soon decided to shift the focus of his PhD thesis to anarchist politics. The completed thesis has now been published as Anarchy Alive!

Gordon boldly declares: “In case anyone hasn’t noticed, anarchism is alive and kicking. This past decade or so has seen the full revival of a global anarchist movement on a scale and on levels of unity and diversity unseen since the 1930s. From anti-capitalist social centres and eco-feminist farms to community organizing, blockades of international summits, daily direct actions and a mass of publications and websites – anarchy lives at the heart of the global movement that declares: ‘another world is possible’”Its euphemisms are legion: anti-authoritarian, autonomous, horizontalist”but you know it when you see it, and anarchy is everywhere.”

A major strength of this highly-recommended book is Gordon’s ability to write both for the seasoned activists as well as readers new to anarchism and the various resistance movements that have sprung up this decade. It is also a useful tool for US activists to learn more about the various struggles throughout Europe and in Israel. The first few chapters (which Gordon himself advises the veteran anarchists to skip) focus on the basics of what anarchism is, and what role it has played in various global struggles. The later chapters will be more interesting to the seasoned activists, where he looks self-critically at the movement from his perspective as a participant in various struggles, including work with such groups as Peoples’ Global Action, Earth First, and the Dissent! network resisting the 2005 G8 summit.

Thankfully, Gordon transcends the divisive and self-righteous “I’m more of an anarchist than you are!” attitude that unfortunately has infected much of anarchist literature today. Instead, his book is a sincere attempt to establish common definitions and begin an honest and constructive dialogue about the most controversial issues facing the movement today. This approach by Gordon is seen in his chapter “Peace, Love, and Petrol Bombs,” which addresses issues of violence, non-violence, and the “diversity of tactics” strategy for large protests. He shows how activists on all sides of this debate have been dogmatic, and have twisted definitions to support their views. As a result, most dialogue is unproductive. So, by laying out the different arguments and definitions around the use of violence (ranging from corporate property destruction to actual armed struggle), Anarchy Alive! will hopefully make a significant contribution to the development of activist strategy.

Anarchism in Israel Today

In his final chapter, titled “Homeland,” Gordon argues that “anarchism has been a continuous undercurrent in the politics of Israel/Palestine for decades,” which dates back to “the earliest Kibbutz groups in the 1920s,” who were “organized on libertarian-communist principles” and read Kropotkin and Tolstoy. While estimating 300 self-identified anarchists living in Israel today, he writes that the “contemporary Israeli anarchist movement fused together during the wave of anti-globalization activism at the end of the 1990s, bringing together anti-capitalist, environmental, feminist, and animal rights agendas”Since the beginning of the second Intifada, activities have focused on the occupation in Palestine, in particular against the building of the Apartheid Wall.”

Gordon contends that the Israeli anarchist approach of “taking direct action alongside Palestinians” is an important strategy because “joint Palestinian-Israeli struggle transgresses the fundamental taboos put in place by Zionist militarism. Alongside the living example of non-violence and cooperation between the two peoples, the struggle forces Israeli spectators to confront their dark collective traumas. Israelis who demonstrate hand-in-hand with Palestinians are threatening because they are afraid neither of Arabs nor of the Second Holocaust that they are supposedly destined to perpetrate.”

Gordon writes about the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which is a Palestinian-led organization that began in summer 2001 to coordinate European and North American volunteers to accompany non-violent Palestinian actions in the occupied territories. The ISM does not identify itself as anarchist, but he argues that “two clear connections to anarchism can nevertheless be made. First, in terms of the personnel, international solidarity activities in Palestine have seen a major and sustained presence of anarchists, who had earlier cut their teeth on anti-capitalist mobilizations and local grassroots organizing in North America and Europe,” thus constituting “the foremost vehicle for on-the-ground involvement of international anarchists in Palestine. Second, and more substantially, the ISM prominently displays many features of anarchist political culture: lack of formal membership, policy and leadership; a decentralized organizing model based on autonomous affinity groups, spokescouncils and consensus decision-making; and a strategic focus on short-term campaigns and creative tactics that stress direct action and grassroots empowerment.”

In 2003, many of the Israelis that had been working with the ISM “felt the need to give more visibility to their own resistance as Israelis, by creating an autonomous group working together with Palestinians and internationals,” writes Gordon. While participating at a protest camp in the village of Mas’ha, this direct-action group soon named itself Anarchists Against the Wall. Since eviction from Mas’ha, these anarchists have participated in several other joint actions, where sometimes “Palestinians and Israelis have managed to tear down or cut through parts of the fence, or to break through gates along it,” reports Gordon.

Studying To Win

In the conclusion, written from Kibbutz Samar in Israel, Gordon acknowledges that his book provides “more questions than answers,” but this is the most important thing about it. By looking at the anarchist and global anti-capitalist movements self-critically, and asking tough questions, Anarchy Alive is a powerful tool for all activists, so that we can improve our strategies.

Alongside Gordon’s self-criticism is his optimistic belief that things can change when people come together and fight. He concludes by arguing that “these days anarchists and their allies are again sensing that the tides are turning. With the defeat, in Iraq and elsewhere, of the US attempt at global hegemony, things are shifting in the global system and a new surge of struggle may be on the horizon”There are new questions for anarchists to face now – questions about winning.”

Reddit recently brought to my attention this little but very uplifting video

In the comments spgreenlaw mentioned that this was part of a move called The Take. Well, I’ve just watched it and it was brilliant.

The movie is basically about the struggle of the workers of an abandoned factory to take it under worker’s control. It is a real life example of the difficulties that syndicates and cooperatives face when trying to get what most of us would consider as only fair.

If you wish to see what worker’s self-management means and how capitalists will put private property rights over human lives, perhaps you should see it as well.

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Other similar posts you might also enjoy: In defense of Syndicalism | Quote of the Day: Rights | This Human Nature