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As 19th Century philosopher Lysander Spooner pointed out, "Whether the ( USA ) Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist." Team anarchism - hell yeah. From a Mexican wave to an anarchist tsunami. Once a rumor and invisible slowly growing impenetrable The coming anarchy, the coming community, the coming global insurrection. We must go beyond our natural indignation at profit’s appropriation of our water, air, soil, environment, plants, animals. We must establish collectives that are capable of managing natural resources for the benefit of human interests, not market interests. This process of reappropriation that I foresee has a name: self-management, an experience attempted many times in hostile historical contexts. At this point, given the implosion of consumer society, it appears to be the only solution from both an individual and social point of view. Proponents of anarchy believe that no human being should dominate another. The ideal society is decentralized, with no coercive rulers, no hierarchies, and everybody equal. Anarchy means acting locally and globally through a federation of communities in which our pork-barreling, corrupt parliamentary democracy is made obsolete by direct democracy. Anarchist civil disobedience means disregarding the decisions of a government that embezzles from its citizens to support the embezzlements of financial capitalism. Why pay taxes to the bankster-state, taxes vainly used to try to plug the sinkhole of corruption, when we could allocate them instead to the self-management of free power networks in every local community? The direct democracy of self-managed councils has every right to ignore the decrees of corrupt parliamentary democracy. Civil disobedience towards a state that is plundering us is a right. It is up to us to capitalize on this epochal shift to create communities where desire for life overwhelms the tyranny of money and power. Now that the old world is collapsing, the fusion of free natural power, self-built housing techniques, and the reinvention of sensual form is going to be decisive. So it is useful to remember that technical inventiveness must stem from the reinvention of individual and collective life. That is to say, what allows for genuine rupture and ecstatic inventiveness is self-management: the management by individuals and councils of their own lives and environment through direct democracy. The precursor and backbone of today’s Internet, ARPANet, was created in the late 1960s with the immediate objective of enabling communication between academics but more broadly as part of a strategy to enable U.S. military communications to survive in the event of nuclear war. Decentralization was introduced to prevent decapitation. However, the enduring result of ARPANet was the decentralized peer-to-peer network it created. It was TCP/ IP’s reliability, easy adaptability to a wide range of systems, and lack of hierarchy that made it appealing for civilian use. The hard-wiring of decentralization into the Internet’s technological platform created unintended consequences for all superpowers.. Anarchism is a great refusal to follow power. Its no longer possible NOT to imagine an entire modern social order based upon small-scale, directly democratic, widely dispersed centres of authority or that decentralist alternatives might be feasible alternatives on a broad scale. Indeed *must be* in light of the existential threat posed by runaway greenhouse. And anarchism today is also identity-based historical associations, dynamic semantic and intellectually driven debates, and the reproduction of internet stances closely tied to the active strengths of an immanent proletariat. The anarchist narrative excites more interest daily and the more and more are joining in the anarchist conversation. And this is natural given really, given that anarchism produced the the greatest breadth and depth of revolution in the 20th century, in the Ukraine and Spain. Who dares wins. The Internet is also attractive to anarchists because its architecture enables a communistic informational economy. The collaborative production of free software or of Wikipedia is for the most part not even a form of exchange. Rather, information is effectively held in a common pool. This makes large parts of the Internet effectively an electronic commons, where information is subject to “peer production” and “group generalized exchange” (Yamagishi and Cook 1993; Kollock 1999; Benkler 2002). The Internet’s logical structure is the technological foundation for the cultural codes associated with the “hacker ethic” of free manipulation, circulation, and use of information (Himanen 2001). Today a sector of the Open-Source and Peer-to-Peer freenets and the modern anarchist movements are quickly finding themselves dissolved into one and another. If the virtual glove fits...anarchists make extensive use of mobile phones, e-mail, and Internet websites in their organizing and have themselves developed a number of ICTs. The most celebrated example is open publishing software, by now a staple of Internet communication, pioneered in Australia by the Catalyst collective of anarchist hackers and used to run the first Indymedia website during the 1999 anti-World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle (Indymedia 2004; Meikle 2002). Many activists are also talented programmers, playing an important role in the development of GNU/Linux operating systems and other open-source, free software applications. In Western Europe there currently operate over thirty HackLabs—radical community spaces offering Internet access and training in programming while also serving as hubs for political organizing (Barandiaran 2003). Another form of engagement with 'appropriate' ( expropriated!) technology is to be found in the widespread anarchist attraction to innovative sustainability applications. Permaculture design (Mollison 1988), organic farming techniques, eco-architecture and construction with natural and recycled materials (Alexander 1977), and solar and wind energy—all of these have been drawing a great deal of interest from activists and are employed in many eco-villages, community gardens, and urban projects with an explicit or implicit anarchist ethos (Anarchist Federation 2008b; Bang 2005; O’Rourke 2008; Roman 2006). These technologies of practical sustainability embody, in their various ways, a combination of traditional knowledge with the latest insights from ecological science and systems theory. So on a practical basis, we literally see this in day-to-day struggle. Revolutionary tendencies now emerge fully networked with the unity of practice and ideas in struggle. This is not just online but in real-space and in real-time. More than enough free opportunities, free enterprises and even free love, for all those with free minds. 1,2,3,4... many Exarchia's now! We now see the emergence of a new praxis, whose theory or praxis is anarchist or incomplete in the best and most open-ended sense of that word. All that is missing is that once-alienated creature - you! There is every reason to be hopeful in the last days of God and the State, with the emergence of our non-sectarian libertarian-socialist tendency that supercedes the historical limitations of syndicalism and pre-net anarchism, yet which utilizes the advances of both. The revolt against work, municipalism, producer and consumer co-ops, anarcho-feminism, green-anarchy, queer anarchy, anarchy and the black revolution, the primitivist perspective; all of these preceded the internet and incrementally advanced the anarchist project. Now all this radical progress - this great advance-in-diversity, may be speeded up with the help of the wwweb. In the old days our voice was swamped out by either Jingo yellow presses or left-fascist lies - but we have the internet now. Defending and extending the net today is a revolutionary act. Advancing in diversity we may strike together in unity...at the time and place of our choosing. The first planet-wide revolution ever! Can you feel it coming? People get ready. Now to defend the micro-attack...the first shout to put a crack in the wall ( From A-News ) '... the function of many of these attacks is not necessarily to "awaken" other people. I posted this list of advantages of actions like this to another poster, but I think you could learn from it as well: - Incurs a financial cost to a predatory entity whose raison d'etre is to accumulate capital (banks) - Builds self-esteem and trust among the anarchists who take part, and gets them into the mindset of being historical actors rather than historical spectators - If done enough times and with enough frequency, helps to normalize political direct action within the broader culture (see: Europe) - Demonstrates that anarchist attacks can be quick, successful and relatively easy, thus encouraging other anarchists to act as well, thus spreading the social war As I also told the other poster, this mythical "revolutionary moment," where the rest of society suddenly grows a conscience and joins the resistance, will never come. Major change is almost always instigated by a minority. We have but to act, and all action is good in that regard...' Propaganda-of-the-deed will never die - so long as just one anarchist lives! Post a comment in response: |
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