6 responses to ““No. This is a Genuine Revolution””

1. I’m always puzzled by suggestions that left to our own devices (say free of direct oppressive governmental oversight) we could be radically different as human-beings, critters who could somehow overcome their differences in interest/neuroses/temperaments/etc. This isn’t to say that all forms/instances of organization are the same (clearly they are not) but that we would have to be radically different critters to avoid the usual traps of power-plays, miscommunication and such that plague all attempts at organizations over time.

2. saskia has more faith than i:
   https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/saskia-sassen/shrinking-economies-growing-expulsions-we-need-greece%27s-syriza#.VKsSbFMQZ7t.twitter

3. http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/david-graeber-pointless-jobs-tube-poster-interview-912

4. Yeah, I don’t think many people are operating under the illusion that in the void of contemporary power structures we’ll enter into a utopian space free from violence, calamity, or even interpersonal competition and bids for exploitation – such mentality writes an idealistic essentialism into the human condition. We do stand divided, but regardless of this, experimentation with new forms of governance, crisis management and being together is a must. What is the alternative? Accepting whatever comes down the pipe and letting go, drifting more and more into the catastrophic void? For that reason I find the debate on Libcom so interesting, and how indicative of left-wing/anarchist debate it is in general. It always comes down to the optimists (like Graeber, in this case) and those who pick at these developments, criticizing them for being not communist enough, not anarchist enough, not anti-capitalist enought, etc. The thing is that in the search for praxis we can’t contain ourselves in theory, academic debate, and the like; we need to look to real-world struggles, the steps people are taking, the theories that drive them and the material conditions (economic, political, religious, ecological) that underscore these theories. Even if the PKK still embodies aspects of a Third World nationalist program, or if they operate with some market structures entact, this isn’t terribly important at this stage (in my opinion): what is important is following whats going on and seeing where it leads and if it contains immediate relevancy in other areas. That they incorporate a kind of post-state governance, ecological concerns and gendered politics into their program is fantastic (at least it appears so from afar, admittedly).That these are taking root in wartime is something that should give us pause (it does seem interesting that their ‘anarchist turn’ is being correlated to the ISIS conflict. Maybe I’m mis-remembering, but I recall having read about their Bookchin-esque politics prior to this conflict. But then again, ISIS had a presence in the region quite a while before it gained traction in the Western media).

   Instead of the Spanish anarchists, a more apt comparison may be the Zapatistas, especially given how the people of Rojava actively cite them as an example. The events in Chiapas are very much the October Revolution for our “post-socialist” world, pretty much inventing the template for how insurrectionary struggles has proceeded in the years sense (horizontal organizing, plays with the notion of identity, the heightened role of media and information technology, circumvention of the state, aspirations for a commons, tactical maneuvers based on the ambiguous role of transnational NGOs, etc.) Many have criticized the Zapatistas along the same lines as Rojava is now – failures to comply with theoretical orthodoxy (particularly Marxists), inability to create a wider transformation in the general economy and the failure to foment revolution on a grand scale. Yet again, the Zapatista moment was a reaction to a particular set of existential coordinates – the prior failures of the left, the collapse of the communist alternative, the implementation of NAFTA and the early hegemony of neoliberalism in general – while also providing a certain catalyst for a whole global resistance, from the WTO protests in Seattle to the Tute Bianche and the Carnivals Against Capitalism, not to mention the first major uses of swarming, netwar, and hacktvist tactics like DDOS. Whether or not the events and Rojava could spur something like this remains to be seen, but its very existence points to something important – even if today we’re meant to think through ontology (as demanded by the anthropocene), we need to de-ontologize our politics, shed the fundamentalism that still clings to critical thought and practice, and see the ways active experimentation is going.

   • well I think that the purity-testing is tied to a utopian wishful thinking but leaving that aside I’m certainly with you on
     “The thing is that in the search for praxis we can’t contain ourselves in theory, academic debate, and the like; we need to look to real-world struggles, the steps people are taking, the theories that drive them ( and the material conditions (economic, political, religious, ecological) that underscore these theories”
     except of course that I don’t think that theories can/do drive anything/one (we should of course attend to speech-acts and such that may include the use of bits and pieces of theoretical works), so yes back to the rough ground (no more drone’s eye views) and into the thick of things.