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Theory

September 8, 2002 - 12:00pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Anonymous Comrade writes:

Leftist Globalization, Freedom, and Differences from the Right

Marx, alienation,
and what a future Communism would look like, written in contrast to pre-capitalist
communalism.

Globalization and anti-globalization moves to the local have been the
focus of lefty debate for years now: we've had Seattle, the IMF/World Bank
protests, and more attention thrown on the issues than ever before. Looking
at some of the fundamental concepts behind a move to the local, then, would
be a good way to flesh out what people mean when they talk about alternatives
to globalization. So here we go.

September 6, 2002 - 9:12am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Click here: Mouffe and Laclau

August 23, 2002 - 5:40pm -- Stenglander
Reviews
Theory

Dr Woooo submits the following review by Rob los Ricos of Hardt and Negri's "Empire."

Rob los Ricos is a J18 anarchist political prisoner. Info on Rob Los Ricos can be found at: http://www.infoshop.org/rob.html or

http://eugene.indymedia.org/features/prisoners/

Empire by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt (Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA, 2000) 478 pp. $18.95 paper.


In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 1988,
Bush the Elder proclaimed that we had entered into a New World Order. I was alarmed to hear someone drunk with power-and who knows what else-crowing over the seemingly unlimited authority the ruling powers had achieved. The media tried to pretend it never happened, but the concerns of many, many people-who, like myself, were stunned into disbelief by Bush I's proclamation of power forced conservative political pundits to eventually address the President's megalomaniacal statement. Mostly, they stressed the "fact" that the NWO had been in existence for quite a while and was nothing new after all. Most lefty-liberals fell in line with the conservatives and even tried to outdo them by claiming that the NWO was just more of the same old capitalist imperialism. This isn't so. In Hardt and Negri's book, Empire they describe how the emergence of the NWO/Empire represents a new epoch in human evolution, an event so profound as to put an end to history, not by negating it, but by bringing historical processes to their conclusion. This (Empire) is it: the ultimate fulfillment of human endeavor.


To the authors, this is not necessarily a bad turn of events. To me,
however, Empire represents the triumph of the darkest aspects of human
capability and must be resisted with every bit of energy by everyone who
treasures life.

August 15, 2002 - 8:37pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

In the aftermath of September 11th, certain sectors of the US left buckled under ruling class pressure and turned against Noam Chomsky. His uncompromising anti-imperialism might have been acceptable during the 1980s when the Sandinistas were under Washington's gun, but in today's repressive atmosphere no quarter is given to the dissident intellectual. Of course, no quarter is asked from Chomsky, who remains fearless and principled as ever.

August 10, 2002 - 12:53pm -- hydrarchist
Theory

Anonymous Comrade writes

"The Sad Story of Shamus Kelly

“When I turn 29, I’m gonna put a bullet through my head.”

And that’s how I meet Shamus Kelly.

I stroll into Klapper’s Pub with my buddy Sam Brown and we sit down at the back corner table next to Karl Gruber the German and Michelle his girl (should be my girl). Klapper’s has become a second home for me since I moved to Boston and I know most of the people here. Walter from Jersey is here and so is my fellow writer friend Pete Mora the converted Muslim poet and beautiful French-Canuck Susan Blanc who I haven’t seen in a few weeks—she had mono—and we sit and talk and order pitchers of on-draft Kronenberg. Klapper’s has everything on draft, over 112 drafts, and what they don’t have on draft they have in bottles, perhaps the greatest selection of beer in the world. The choice of music when I walk in is Violent Femme’s “Add It Up”, a great song, and I get to hear that disturbingly beautiful piercing voice of Gordon Gano, the direct descendent of Lou Reed, I dig it. I dig all the music they play and why I’m using the phrase “dig” I don’t know but I like it, I dig the sound of it, it’s from before my time but from a great time (the 1950s). I was born too late like ol’ Miniver Cheevy and perhaps I use their language to keep them alive in desolation with me, but I do dig it all, the loud yet melodic noise of the California hardcore scene of the 80s, Bad Religion and the Dead Kennedys and Circle Jerks, and the pure raw sound of Charles Thompson aka. Black Francis aka. Frank Black, leader of the Pixies, timeless cool music that you feel flowing through your balls—I dig it all.

August 8, 2002 - 10:08am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

from hydrarchist:

"Panic, War and Semio-Kapital"

Franco Berardi (Bifo)

Globalisation stands reframed in the dark light of the global war. This means we need
to reconceptualise the change that is taking place in the social, economic and anthropological
form of globalisation. During the past two centuries, global control was the
general techno-utopia of capitalist society and modern culture. Now, the time of global control
is over. We are completely out of this framework today. The new governing framework
of capitalism is global panic. If we want to understand what panic means we have to talk
about the ‘attention economy’ and about ‘digital labour’. This is where the source of contemporary
panic is, in the organisation of time in the digital sphere, in the relationship
between cyberspace and cybertime.

August 1, 2002 - 12:02pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Anonymous Comrade writes:

You may find our pamphlet "Bordiga versus Pannekoek"
interesting:

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/3909/bo rdiga/bvptoc.html

Incidently, its just been reviewed by the ICC who rather
predictably criticise it for 'modernism', 'anarchism' and
undermining the need for the Revolutionary Party.

July 31, 2002 - 7:29am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

jim writes:

"ANARCHA-FEMINISM * by Flick Ruby

For too long anarchist feminists have been labeled as the ladies
auxiliary of male bomb throwers. The misconception and manipulation of
both feminists
and anarchist principles and practice have resulted in the use of
sensationalist and ridiculing tactics by the state and its spokespeople.
This has not only
polarised the general populace from potentially liberation concepts but
has also polarised anarchist from feminists. In the past and more so
recently there
has been a uniting of these beliefs and Peggy Korneggers article;
'Anarchism; the Feminist Connection' goes so far as to say that the two
genres of
thought are inextricable tied although the connection has not been
consiously articulated by feminists very often. Kornegger agrues that
feminism
"emphasis on the small group as a basic organisational unit, on the
personal and political, on anti- authoritarianism and on spontanious
direct action was
essentially anarchism. I believe that this puts women in a unique
position of being the bearers of a subsurface anarchist consiousness
which if articulated
and concretised can take us further than any previous group toward the
achievement of total revolution.

July 29, 2002 - 1:36pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Anonymous Comrade writes

Mastering Everyday Life:

Worker's Autonomy in a Situationist Context

Plus a few digressions about how resistance could take shape.

Suggestions in the form of pronouncements.

A parallel, and in general more in depth discussion of this type of thing can be found at:
http://www.Notbored.org/councils.html

The idea, or at least one of the ideas, behind worker's autonomy is that at some point in the capitalist system actual work has to be done by people who have some sort of knowledge of how the system works.Society is not yet so alienated that it's the machines versus us. Real workers still figure in in a real way in the process of production and distribution. All of society in Capitalism tends to alienate the worker from control of his work, alienate the worker from the inner workings of the society he lives in, so that ideally a person goes to a job where he does a mindless task all day, then goes to a supermarket after work, and then relaxes in his anonymous apartment in his anonymous neighborhood watching processed media on his TV. But the Spectacle is more porous than that. Workers' autonomy consists, in part, in having the work process mastered enough so that people can actually take control of their jobs and proceed to manage it themselves--proceeding from the work knowledge. At some crucial points work knowledge and the foundation of the spectacle come together, and knowledge of how things work becomes a power base from which to assert ones’ rights against the spectacle itself. Taking back everyday life from alienation, both at work and at home/free time, can proceed from taking those opportunities in the spectacle when life isn't totally mediated, when people actually matter, and working them open so that the non-mediated part of life gets a little bigger. Force the spectacle to negotiate with YOUR real life instead of letting it dictate it's terms to you. After all, the Spectacle did come from somewhere: no matter how distorted an image it is it’s ultimately a reflection of real life.

July 25, 2002 - 7:11pm -- Uncle Fluffy
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Louis Lingg writes "Beginning in the last decade of the last century military theorists and futurists began discussing the features of what they charecterized as Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW), the next step in the evolution of the art of war.

Some of its features include: fighting in a complex arena of low-intensity conflict; fighting worldwide through and across a spectrum of political, social, economic, and military networks; and involving a mix of national, international, transnational, and subnational actors. In 4GW the distinction between civilians and combatants is blurred, and even more ominously, so is the distinction between war and peace.

Defense and the National Interest has posted numerous articles, essays and papers addressing Fourth Generation Warfare, including the seminal and prescient The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation, published in 1989.

LtCol Thomas X. Hammes' The Evolution of War: The Fourth Generation is considered to be the best introduction to 4GW concepts and theories, and respectfully uses examples from the Chinese Revolution, Vietnam, Nicaragua and Palestine.

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