Economic Aspects of "Love"

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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Sun Aug 05, 2012 8:47 pm

http://propelledbyfire.wordpress.com/20 ... -with-you/

i want to be liberated with you

Image

i want our love to be felt

a fiber thick enough to see

i want to love you

not control you

nor be controlled

i want to appreciate you for your creation

not fetishize the curves of your body

nor the beauty of your skin

i don’t want to be your answer to happiness

nor be the womyn who “saves your life”

i want to deconstruct my privilege

and throw away insecurities

i want a love free of pain

and full of dialogue

i want us to evolve our minds

and de-gender our love

free from hierarchies

and patriarchy

i want a love so honest, so true

that every brushing of cheeks

every pressing of lips

every glance across the room

is as fresh as the breeze flowing with the rising sun over the buildings of downtown Oakland landing with all its beauty in the plaza of the people

i love you

but i don’t just love you

it goes deeper

i want to struggle with you

build with you

learn with you

revolutionize with you

i want to go toe to toe with the oppressors and ourselves

and

be liberated with you
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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Sun Aug 05, 2012 10:47 pm

Exile & Austerity, Montreal, Night 86
July 18, 2012

Image

A [Paul] Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

— Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1940)

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One must have a home in order not to need it.

— Jean Améry, “How Much Home Does a Person Need?” (1966)

* * *

I’ve been thinking a lot lately of home, history, and exile, and the intertwining legacies between them. Of the wreckage.

I’m in voluntary exile this summer. In so many small ways, though, my exile can be traced to my own brokenness, a “personal” narrative that is also constructed by the contemporary social conditions, which in turn are shaped by the “catastrophe” of history. Thus I experience a twist on another Améry essay, ”The Necessity and Impossibility of Being a Jew”: the necessity and impossibility of being at home in this world.

His essay speaks volumes to me, a godless Jew, in the wreckage of the Holocaust (which Améry survived and didn’t survive) and the state of Israel. As an assimilated Jew prior to the Shoah, Améry had no relationship to Judaism and didn’t identify with being Jewish; with the onset of National Socialism, he couldn’t avoid being Jewish, or rather, it picked him out, tortured him, and put him in a concentration camp; after the Holocaust, he conjectures, it’s both necessary to embrace our histories and impossible to do so. “With Jews as Jews I share practically nothing: no language and no cultural tradition . . . for me, being a Jew means feeling the tragedy of yesterday as an inner oppression. On my left forearm I bear the Auschwitz number; it reads more briefly than . . . the Talmud and yet provides more thorough information.” Hence his further query, in another essay in his collection At the Mind’s Limits, “How much home does a person need?” after he and millions of othered Others — Jews, Roma, queers, those considered mentally or physically impaired, and more — were forcibly exiled, and if not annihilated physically, then annihilated culturally, emotionally, materially. Their communities and worlds, often even a memory of them, were forever gone.

This necessity-impossibility paradox seems to mark the human condition at this juncture in the twenty-first century. Most of us have been exiled from all that we’ve produced, reproduced, created, dreamed of, cared for, and loved — our sense of being at home in our own world — reduced to pressing our noses against the glass houses of the few who’ve stolen nearly everything from us and yet cruelly flaunt their abundance (a situation that’s captured, even if poorly, in the 1% language of Occupy). We, the vast “pile of debris,” can only look forward to austerity, which daily gets more austere.

I’m one of the relatively lucky ones in this present-day exilic existence, since it’s more parts existential than, say, geographic or material, although at times — like this past week, when I experienced a minor health issue — it viscerally hits me how much most of us are increasingly being forced outside the human community in terms of basic needs like health care. For too many, the necessity-impossibility paradox has already heaped “wreckage upon wreckage” on them for decades or even centuries.

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Like the Algonquins of Barriere Lake, five hours north of Montreal, who are presently trying to fend off Resolute Forest Products, which began active clear-cut logging of the Algonquins’ traditional territories last week, and the riot squad, sent in by the government to enforce the logging (there’s a solidarity casseroles at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, July 18 at 111 rue Duke, Montreal, http://www.facebook.com/events/413763868670087/). Like a family from Ville St-Laurent that due to racial profiling and the criminalization of immigrants, faces the deportation of the father this August, after thirty years in Canada, to a country he hasn’t seen since he was nine, separating him from his partner, mother, and kids for years and perhaps forever (Solidarity across Borders is holding a “Beat the Borders” reggae music fund-raiser at 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, July 19 at 2009 Decarie, #108, Montreal, http://www.facebook.com/events/267149120057721/).

So many peoples, so many names, over so many catastrophes. Like in the now-tourist-attraction Pinkas Synagogue in Prague, where between 1954 and 1959, two painters took it on themselves to inscribe the names of 77,297 Bohemian and Moravian Jews murdered in the Holocaust on the walls of the main nave and adjoining areas. They included each person’s birth and death dates, but in most cases, a deportation date to a concentration camp was the last known moment of each individual’s life, and all that the artists (or perhaps these angels of history, battling in vain to “awaken the dead” with their act of remembrance) could record.

It’s hard indeed to feel at home in this world, because this world offers little comfort and shelter to most of humanity. I come from a country that, for instance, spends three to five times more per year on incarcerating someone than educating them. Where it’s normal not to have health insurance (forget health care), and just a routine part of life in a big city to see lots of people sleeping on the streets. Where’s it’s someone’s own fault if they go hungry, can’t pay their bills, or lose a job, or get depressed because of this. All this is reason enough for exile, and reason, even more, to stay and resist with others. A necessity and impossibility, bound up in the recent paradox of the name “Occupy,” signaling an awakening for some and a further erasure and pain for others.

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http://cbmilstein.wordpress.com/2012/07 ... -night-86/


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Last edited by American Dream on Mon Aug 06, 2012 12:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Sun Aug 05, 2012 11:12 pm

http://cbmilstein.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/anarchism-4/

Anarchism
June 7, 2012

“Anarchism” by Cindy Milstein is available as a downloaded PDF as part of the Lexicon Series created by the Institute for Anarchist Studies (Anarchiststudies.org), along with four other titles (and more on their way soon), http://www.revolutionbythebook.akpress. ... et-series/. In turn, it is an excerpt from Cindy’s book Anarchism and Its Aspirations (IAS/AK, 2010).

* * *

By anarchist spirit I mean that deeply human sentiment, which aims at the good of all, freedom and justice for all, solidarity and love among the people; which is not an exclusive characteristic only of self-declared anarchists, but inspires all people who have a generous heart and an open mind.

—Errico Malatesta, Umanita Nova, April 13, 1922



At its core, anarchism is indeed a spirit—one that cries out against all that’s wrong with present-day society, and yet boldly proclaims all that could be right under alternate forms of social organization. There are many different though often complementary ways of looking at anarchism, but in a nutshell, it can be defined as the striving toward a “free society of free individuals.” This phrase is deceptively simple. Bound within it is both an implicit multidimensional critique and an expansive, if fragile, reconstructive vision.

Here, a further shorthand depiction of anarchism is helpful: the ubiquitous “circle A” image. The A is a placeholder for the ancient Greek word anarkhia—combining the root an(a), “without,” and arkh(os), “ruler, authority”—meaning the absence of authority. More contemporaneously and accurately, it stands for the absence of both domination (mastery or control over another) and hierarchy (ranked power relations of dominance and subordination). The circle could be considered an O, a placeholder for “order” or, better yet, “organization,” drawing on Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s seminal definition in What Is Property? (1840): “as man [sic] seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.” The circle A symbolizes anarchism as a dual project: the abolition of domination and hierarchical forms of social organization, or power-over social relations, and their replacement with horizontal versions, or power-together and in common—again, a free society of free individuals.

Anarchism is a synthesis of the best of liberalism and the best of communism, elevated and transformed by the best of traditions that work toward an egalitarian, voluntarily, and nonhierarchical society. The project of liberalism in the broadest sense is to ensure personal liberty. Communism’s overarching project is to ensure the communal good. One could, and should, question the word “free” in both cases, particularly in the actual implementations of liberalism and communism, and their shared emphasis on the state and property as ensuring freedom. Nonetheless, respectively, and at their most “democratic,” one’s aim is an individual who can live an emancipated life, and the other seeks a community structured along collectivist lines. Both are worthy notions. Unfortunately, freedom can never be achieved in this lopsided manner: through the self or society. The two necessarily come into conflict, almost instantly. Anarchism’s great leap was to combine self and society in one political vision; at the same time, it jettisoned the state and property as the pillars of support, relying instead on self-organization and mutual aid.

Anarchism as a term emerged in nineteenth-century Europe, but its aspirations and practices grew out of, in part, hundreds of years of slave rebellions, peasant uprisings, and heretical religious movements around the world in which people decided that enough was enough, and the related experimentation for centuries with various forms of autonomy.

Anarchism was also partly influenced by Enlightenment thought in the eighteenth century, which—at its best—popularized three pivotal notions, to a large degree theorized from these revolts. First: Individuals have the capacity to reason. Second: If humans have the capacity to reason, then they also have the capacity to act on their thoughts. Perhaps most liberating, a third idea arose: If people can think and act on their own initiative, then it literally stands to reason that they can potentially think through and act on notions of the good society. They can innovate; they can create a better world.

A host of Enlightenment thinkers offered bold new conceptions of social organization, drawn from practice and yet articulated in theory, ranging from individual rights to self-governance. Technological advancements in printing facilitated the relatively widespread dissemination of this written material for the first time in human history via books, pamphlets, and periodicals. New common social spaces like coffeehouses, public libraries, and speakers’ corners in parks allowed for debate about and the spread of these incendiary ideas. None of this ensured that people would think for themselves, act for themselves, or act out of a concern for humanity. But what was at least theoretically revolutionary about this Copernican turn was that before then, the vast majority of people largely didn’t believe in their own agency or ability to self-organize on such an interconnected, self-conscious, and crucially, widespread basis. They were born, for instance, into an isolated village as a serf with the expectation that they’d live out their whole lives accordingly. In short, that they would accept their lot and the social order as rigidly god-given or natural—with any hopes for a better life placed in the afterlife.

Due to the catalytic relationship between theory and practice, many people gradually embraced these three Enlightenment ideas, leading to a host of libertarian ideologies, from the religious congregationalisms to secular republicanism, liberalism, and socialism. These new radical impulses took many forms of political and economic subjugation to task, contributing to an outbreak of revolutions throughout Europe and elsewhere, such as in Haiti, the United States, and Mexico. This revolutionary period started around 1789 and lasted until about 1871 (reappearing in the early twentieth century).

Anarchism developed within this milieu as, in “classical” anarchist Peter Kropotkin’s words, the “left wing” of socialism. Like all socialists, anarchists concentrated on the economy, specifically capitalism, and saw the laboring classes in the factories and fields, as well as artisans, as the main agents of revolution. They also felt that many socialists were to the “right” or nonlibertarian side of anarchism, soft on their critique of the state, to say the least. These early anarchists, like all anarchists after them, saw the state as equally complicit in structuring social domination; the state complemented and worked with capitalism, but was its own distinct entity. Like capitalism, the state will not “negotiate” with any other sociopolitical system. It attempts to take up more and more governance space. It is neither neutral nor can it be “checked and balanced.” The state has its own logic of command and control, of monopolizing political power. Anarchists held that the state cannot be used to dismantle capitalism, nor as a transitional strategy toward a noncapitalist, nonstatist society. They advocated an expansive “no gods, no masters” perspective, centered around the three great concerns of their day—capital, state, and church—in contrast to, for example, The Communist Manifesto’s assertion that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” It’s not that anarchists didn’t take this history seriously; there were other histories, though, and other struggles—something that anarchism would continue to fill out over the decades.

As many are rediscovering today, anarchism from the first explored something that Marxism has long needed to grapple with: domination and hierarchy, and their replacement in all cases with greater degrees of freedom. That said, the classical period of anarchism exhibited numerous blind spots and even a certain naïveté. Areas such as gender and race, in which domination occurs beyond capitalism, the state, and the church, were often given short shrift or ignored altogether. Nineteenth-century anarchism was not necessarily always ahead of its day in identifying various forms of oppression. Nor did it concern itself much with ecological degradation.

Of course, comparing classical anarchism to today’s much more sophisticated understanding of forms of organization and the myriad types of domination is also a bit unfair—both to anarchism and other socialisms. Anarchism developed over time, theoretically and through practice. Its dynamism, an essential principle, played a large part in allowing anarchism to serve as its own challenge. Its openness to other social movements and radical ideas contributed to its further unfolding. Like any new political philosophy, it would take many minds and many experiments over many years to develop anarchism into a more full-bodied, nuanced worldview—a process, if one takes anarchism’s initial impulse seriously, of always expanding that worldview to account for additional blind spots. Anarchism was, is, and continually sees itself as “only a beginning,” to cite the title of a recent anthology.

From its beginnings, anarchism’s core aspiration has been to root out and eradicate all coercive, hierarchical social relations, and dream up and establish consensual, egalitarian ones in every instance. In a time of revolutionary possibility, and during a period when older ways of life were so obviously being destroyed by enormous transitions, the early anarchists were frequently extravagant in their visions for a better world. They drew on what was being lost (from small-scale agrarian communities to the commons) and what was being gained (from potentially liberatory technologies to potentially more democratic political structures) to craft a set of uncompromising, reconstructive ethics.

These ethics still animate anarchism, supplying what’s most compelling about it in praxis. Its values serve as a challenge to continually approach the dazzling horizon of freedom by actually improving the quality of life for all in the present. Anarchism always “demands the impossible” even as it tries to also “realize the impossible.” Its idealism is thoroughly pragmatic. Hierarchical forms of social organization can never fulfill most peoples’ needs or desires, but time and again, nonhierarchical forms have demonstrated their capacity to come closer to that aim. It makes eminent and ethical sense to experiment with utopian notions. No other political philosophy does this as consistently and generously, as doggedly, and with as much overall honesty about the many dead-ends in the journey itself.

Anarchism understood that any egalitarian form of social organization, especially one seeking a thoroughgoing eradication of domination, had to be premised on both individual and collective freedom—no one is free unless everyone is free, and everyone can only be free if each person can individuate or actualize themselves in the most expansive of senses. Anarchism also recognized, if only intuitively, that such a task is both a constant balancing act and the stuff of real life. One person’s freedom necessarily infringes on another’s, or even on the good of all. No common good can meet everyone’s needs and desires. From the start, anarchism asked the difficult though ultimately pragmatic question: Acknowledging this self-society juggling act as part of the human condition, how can people collectively self-determine their lives to become who they want to be and simultaneously create communities that are all they could be as well?

Anarchism maintains that this tension is positive, as a creative and inherent part of human existence. It highlights that people are not all alike, nor do they need, want, or desire the same things. At its best, anarchism’s basic aspiration for a free society of free individuals gives transparency to what should be a productive, harmonic dissonance: figuring out ways to coexist and thrive in our differentiation. Anarchists create processes that are humane and substantively participatory. They’re honest about the fact that there’s always going to be uneasiness between individual and social freedom. They acknowledge that it’s going to be an ongoing struggle to find the balance. This struggle is exactly where anarchism takes place. It is where the beauty of life, at its most well rounded and self-constructed, has the greatest possibility of emerging—and at times, taking hold.

Although it happens at any level of society, one experiences this most personally in small-scale projects—from food cooperatives to free schools to occupations—where people collectively make face-to-face decisions about issues large and mundane. This is not something that people in most parts of the world are encouraged or taught to do, most pointedly because it contains the kernels of destroying the current vertical social arrangements. As such, we’re generally neither particularly good nor efficient at directly democratic processes. Assembly decision-making mechanisms are hard work. They raise tough questions. But through them, people school themselves in what could be the basis for collective self-governance, for redistributing power to everyone. More crucially, people self-determine the structure of the new from spaces of possibility within the old.

Anarchism gives voice to the grand yet modest belief, embraced by people throughout human history, that we can imagine and also implement a wholly marvelous and materially abundant society. That is the spirit of anarchism, the ghost that haunts humanity: that our lives and communities really can be appreciably better. And better, and then better still.
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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Mon Aug 06, 2012 6:42 am

http://m1aa.org/?p=471

DEFEND THE ASHFORD HOUSE FIVE!

SHOULDER & SOLDIER IT UP
WITH HOOSIER ANTI RACISTS.


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First of May Anarchist Alliance statement.

For any who may not yet be in the know, on Saturday May 19th, in the environs of Chicago’s South suburban town of Tinley Park, Illinois, police arrested 5 militants from Indiana’s Hoosier Anti-Racist Movement, an Anti-Racist Action affiliate. They are Alex R. Stuck, John S. Tucker , and brothers Jason W. Sutherland, Cody L. Sutherland, Dylan J. Sutherland. The five are being charged with an array of serious charges stemming from a confrontation that occurred at The Ashford House Restaurant.

Part of the Ashford House’s facilities were being used for an undercover meet up of representatives of several Nazi and white supremacist groupings. Their supposedly secret tête-à-tête blew up in their faces when faced with 20 uninvited “guests”. Anti-Racist Action claimed responsibility for the action.

Now weeks on, it is imperative solidarity with those charged be stepped up, in particular from in and around the anarchist movement. We say this because ARA was largely the creation of and has carried along over the years as an overwhelmingly anarchist endeavor. The defendants and ARA are family. The state, the media and the fascists are clear about this. Whatever our various groupings present relationship/commitments are to anti-Nazi work at present, we, as anarchists, cannot afford to ignore Tinley Park.

This case is occurring amidst ongoing and increasing state security agency attempts to tar and target the anarchist and combative wings of the wider rising social movement. Witness government and police agency actions in regards to the set up and arrests in Cleveland and Chicago. Consider the moves by liberals closely identified with the Occupy and anti war movements, like Chris Hedges, trying to vilify and in effect marginalize anarchism and militancy by attacking the straw man of some Black Bloc actions. Also, do not forget the Nazis themselves who have been threatening the families and friends of the five and have murdered ARA militants in the past.

Many of us cut our teeth on anti-fascist activity; we have learned much from it both positive and negative. While we are working at present on developing a range of arenas vital to constructing a liberation movement we cannot afford to pay insufficient attention to issues rising from the events of May 19th. In addition to rallying support for the five we need to begin to take steps to ensure the circles and formations we are part of devote some measure of activity, resources and what we may have learned to this area. Our solidarity and engagement as well as our questions are called for.

The Tinley Five Park Five Need Your Support! Here’s how:

Stay informed with the Tinley Park Five solidarity webpage: http://tinleyparkfive.wordpress.com

And the Hoosier Anti-Racist Movement (HARM): http://indianaantifa.wordpress.com

Donate money to the defense: https://www.wepay.com/donations/legal-d ... -park-five
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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Mon Aug 06, 2012 8:08 am

Many nations of the third world are described as ‘underdeveloped’. These less wealthy nations are generally those that suffered under colonialism and neo-colonialism. The ‘developed’ nations are those that exploited their resources and wealth. Therefore, rather than referring to these countries as ‘underdeveloped’, a more appropriate and meaningful designation might be ‘over exploited’. Again, transpose this term next time you read about the ‘underdeveloped nations’ and note the different meaning that results.

—Robert B. Moore, “Racist Stereotyping in the English Language”
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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Mon Aug 06, 2012 8:16 am

http://wildrosecollective.org/2012/07/1 ... st-racism/

Against Fascism, Against Racism
Posted on July 10, 2012

Wild Rose Collective endorses the July 31 Day of Action against Fascism and Racism. The recent membership leak of the neo-Nazi group the National Socialist Movement and other similar leaks demonstrate that across the country fascists are living in our neighborhoods.

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Here in Iowa City, like many other places across the world, we too have seen murmurings of white supremacist activity. First was a Ku Klux Klan flyer in a nearby town and more recently the infamous Holocaust denier, neo-Nazi sympathizer and revisionist historian David Irving visited the Iowa City area to give a lecture and meet with local white supremacists. With others, we helped to organize a protest to disrupt his lecture and to make it known that Nazis were not welcome in our town. We had a strong anti-fascist turn out, and made it clear to Irvring’s camp, the hotel (Baymont Inn, both locally and nationally), and to local passersby that we would not tolerate this despicable message in our community. We must actively oppose fascists and racists at every turn, and halt their efforts to spread their ideology of white supremacy and hateful violence in our communities.

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We also stand in support of the Tinley Park 5 and are donating $50 to their legal defense fund. We hope Cody, Dylan and Jason Sutherlin, Alex Stuck and John Tucker are soon freed from Cook County Jail and reunited with their families and friends. For more information on their status, see http://tinleyparkfive.wordpress.org. We encourage others to also donate money or literature to the Tinley Park 5 if able to do so.
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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Mon Aug 06, 2012 8:47 am

Romney, Obama, and the Darwinism That Substitutes Culture for Genes

August 05, 2012

By Paul Street


Many Democrats clucked disapprovingly after it was reported that Mitt Romney recently told 50 or so rich campaign donors at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that Israelis had higher average incomes than Palestinians because of the cultural superiority. “Culture makes all the difference,” Romney said. “And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things. As you come here and you see the G.D.P. per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000, and compare that with the G.D.P. per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality.”[1]

This statement naturally brought no protest from the many wealthy Americans in attendance, including the super-billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.[2]

It was a misinformed and vicious comment. To begin, Romney badly understated the income differences in question. According to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, in 2009 Israel’s per capita income was nearly $30,000 per year, while in 2008 (the last year for which the C.I.A. had Palestinian figures) the per capita G.D.P. of the West Bank and Gaza was $2,900. So the average income disparity is more like 10 to 1, not 2 to 1, according to the C.I.A., hardly known for trumpeting justice for the Palestinians.[3] No wonder that a quarter of the people living in the West Bank and more than half of those stuck in the open-air prison called Gaza are food insecure.[4]

Israel-Imposed Misery

Beyond his gross factual inaccuracy, Romney completely ignored the critical role of Israel’s military conquest, repression, and apartheid in creating destitution across the Palestinian territories. Besides the devastating historical impact of displacement and division, the strongly pro-Israel New York Times[5] reports that:

The Palestinians live under deep trade restrictions put in place by the Israeli government: After the militant group Hamas in 2007 took control of Gaza – home to about 1.7 million Palestinians – the Israelis imposed a near-total blockade on people and goods in Gaza. The blockade has been eased…But aid organizations say the restrictions still cripple Gaza’s economy. The West Bank, where 2.5 million Palestinians reside, is also subject to trade restrictions imposed by the Israelis.”[6]

We can also consult that leading Israel supporter the C.I.A. It reports that “Israeli-imposed border closures, which became more restrictive after Hamas seized control of the territory in June 2007, have resulted in high unemployment, elevated poverty rates, and the near collapse of the private sector that had relied on export markets.” In the West Bank, “Israeli closure policies continue to disrupt labor and trade flows, industrial capacity, and basic commerce, eroding the productive capacity” of the economy.[7]

Saeb Erekat, a senior aide to President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, understandably called Romney’s remarks “racist….This man, Erakat added, “doesn’t realize that the Palestinian economy cannot reach its potential because there is an Israeli occupation.”[8] Cannot reach its potential seems like an understatement. The misery imposed on the Palestinian people by Israeli polices is deep and extensive. As Islamic Relief USA reports:

The vast majority of Palestinians, living inside the territories, and living as refugees in neighboring regions, depend on international aid for survival. Foreign investment in the region has dropped, further hindering the ability for Palestinians to move toward a more stable economy. In Palestine, where a majority of the population relies on foreign assistance for survival, insecurities in food, water and electricity, as well as crippled health care services and educational facilities, make living conditions some of the worst in the world. [emphasis added]” [9]

One of the Most Unequal Countries in the OECD

Permit me a not-so-tiny quibble on something that has not been mentioned in the official media discussion of the fallout from Romney’s comment. Beneath the deceptive and insufficient statistical category of average (mean) per capita income/G.D.P., moreover, there’s the problem of economic disparity within Israel. It is unthinkable that Romney or any other money-hungry U.S. politician speaking to wealthy campaign bankrollers there would dare to mention that Israel’s heavily militarized and U.S.-subsidized economic system creates one of the most savagely unequal societies in the “developed” world. According to no less of a capitalist authority than the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last April, “Israel has one of the highest levels of inequality in the OECD…This is reflected in very low market incomes of the lowest income decile which are 1/15th that of the highest income decile. While the size of redistribution from the tax transfer system (the difference between market and disposable incomes) is around average in Israel, the high starting point leaves Israel one of the most unequal countries in the OECD, after only the US, Mexico and Chile." [10]

In the summer of 2011 tens of thousands of Israelis joined nationwide protests against high costs of living and growing income inequality. More than two months before the Occupy Wall Street encampment was launched in lower Manhattan, Israeli protestors “set up more than 40 tent encampments scattered across Israel, with as many as 120,000 people turning out to demand lower taxes and increased access to education and housing.”[11]

The “Culture” of White Supremacy as American as Apple Pie

Disgusted as they might claim to be at Romney’s “insensitive” comment, Democratic Obama supporters might want to reflect on the unpleasant fact that Romney’s racist “cultural” explanation of inequality is as American as apple pie. Romney’s great sin for establishment white liberals and Democrats is to be so foolishly over-explicit in voicing what white Americans in both of the dominant U.S. political organizations have long felt on the reasons for such black white-inequality as Caucasians are willing to acknowledge in the U.S. As the estimable black left political commentator Glen Ford recently noted on Black Agenda Report:

White South Africa regarded its wealth as prima facie evidence of cultural superiority. The fact that the land, minerals and labor on which that wealth was built belonged to Black people simply proved that Blacks lacked a “culture” adequate to manage those resources….[In a similar vein] White U.S. southerners also insisted, during slavery and Jim Crow, that “their” Negroes were the best off in the world because of their exposure to white folks’ religion and way of life. Left to their own devices, however, Black folks’ innate cultural inferiority – depravity! – would do them in. Blacks’ freedom of movement and expression must be contained, for their own good.”

“White liberals also believed in the Culture Demon. In the 1950s and early 60s, it was considered politically correct to describe African Americans as “culturally deprived” – meaning, Blacks are disadvantaged by lack of exposure to white culture. Power has nothing to do with it.”

“The 20 to 1 disparity between Israeli and Palestinian per capita income matches the wealth gap between American Blacks and whites (app. $5,000 vs. $100,000 for median Black and white households). The fact that such numbers do not provoke general shock and calls for reparations is proof enough that most whites view the disparity as more a natural phenomenon than evidence of cumulative injustice. [The “liberal” sociologist and future Democratic U.S. Senator] Daniel Patrick Moynihan spoke for white folks of the past, present and future when he posited, in 1965, that a Black “culture of poverty” is what keeps Black people poor – not pervasive white racism
. [emphasis added].”[12]

The “New Darwinism”

With all due respect to antiquarian cranks like Charles Murray and Richard Herenstein (authors of the infamous sociobiological/Social Darwinian volume The Bell Curve), it’s been a long time since the dominant white-American explanation for the disproportionate poverty experienced by blacks and other non-Caucasians relied on notions of genetic inferiority. Still, white America did not so much transcend as reconfigure Social Darwinism in the middle of the last century. “All too often,” Stephen Steinberg noted more than thirty years ago:

notions of biological superiority and inferiority have been replaced with a new set of ideas that amount to claims of cultural superiority and inferiority. According to this perspective, differences in social class position among ethnic groups in America are a product of cultural attributes that are endemic to the groups themselves. In a sense, nineteenth century Social Darwinism has been replaced with a ‘New Darwinism’ that has simply substituted culture for genes.”[13]

This “new” Darwinian explanation of disproportionate black poverty and black-white inequality in the U.S. today has nothing to do with endemic persistent practices and policies of institutional racism: savage housing and school segregation, rampant employment discrimination, ubiquitous racially biased arrest, conviction and incarceration, racially biased patterns of private and public investment, viciously under-funded black schools, racially biased media coverage and culture, and more.[14] All this and the crippling legacy of 250 years of black North American chattel slavery goes out the window – like the Israeli occupation in Romney’s account of Palestinian poverty – in the dominant white (mis)understanding of blacks’ position in the U.S.


From: http://www.zcommunications.org/romney-o ... aul-street
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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Mon Aug 06, 2012 12:25 pm

Women of all ages are swooning over this guy and misreading his obsessive, cruel behavior as evidence of love and romance. Part of the reason for this is that his wealth acts as a kind of up-market cleansing cream for his abuse, and his pathological attachment to Anastasia is reframed as devotion, since he showers luxury items on her. This is a very retrograde and dangerous world for our daughters to buy into, and speaks to the appalling lack of any public consciousness as to the reality of violence against women.


Why are Women Devouring Fifty Shades of Grey? - Gail Dines, professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston.
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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Mon Aug 06, 2012 2:10 pm

"In this country, Black women traditionally have had compassion for everybody else except ourselves. We have cared for whites because we had to for pay or survival; we have cared for our children and our fathers and our brothers and our lovers. History and popular culture, as well as our personal lives, are full of tales of Black women who had ‘compassion for misguided black men.’ Our scarred, broken, battered, and dead daughters and sisters are a mute testament to that reality. We need to learn to have care and compassion for ourselves, also."

Audre Lorde


"To be poor in the United States today is to be always at risk, the object of scorn and shame. Without mass-based empathy for the poor, it is possible for ruling class groups to mask class terrorism and genocidal acts. Creating and maintaining social conditions where individuals of all ages daily suffer malnutrition and starvation is a form of class warfare that increasingly goes unnoticed in this society. When huge housing projects in urban cities are torn down and the folks who dwell therein are not relocated, no one raises questions or protests."

bell hooks
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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Mon Aug 06, 2012 6:37 pm

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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Tue Aug 07, 2012 10:23 am

http://libcom.org/library/fifty-shades- ... -workplace

Fifty Shades of Capitalism: Pain and Bondage in the American Workplace

Image

Lynn Parramore on the sadism of modern wage labour.


If the ghost of Ayn Rand were to suddenly manifest in your local bookstore, the Dominatrix of Capitalism would certainly get a thrill thumbing through the pages of E.L. James’ blockbuster Fifty Shades of Grey.

Rand, whose own novels bristle with sadomasochist sexy-time and praise for the male hero’s pursuit of domination, would instantly approve of Christian Grey, the handsome young billionaire CEO who bends the universe to his will.

Ingénue Anastasia Steele stumbles into his world — literally — when she trips into his sleek Seattle office for an interview for the college paper. When she calls him a “control freak,” the god-like tycoon purrs as if he has received a compliment.

“’Oh, I exercise control in all things, Miss Steele,’ he says without a trace of humor in his smile. ‘I employ over forty thousand people…That gives me a certain responsibility – power, if you will.’”

She will. Quivering with trepidation, Anastasia signs a contract to become Christian’s submissive sex partner. Reeled in by his fantastic wealth, panty-sopping charm, and less-than-convincing promise that the exchange will be to her ultimate benefit, she surrenders herself to his arbitrary rules on what to eat, what to wear, and above all, how to please him sexually. Which frequently involves getting handcuffed and spanked. “Discipline,” as Christian likes to say.

Quoting industrial tycoon Andrew Carnegie, Christian justifies his proclivities like an acolyte of Randian Superman ideology: “A man who acquires the ability to take possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.” (Rand’s worship of the Superman obliged to nothing but his intellect is well-known and imbued with dark passions; she once expressed her admiration for a child murderer’s credo, "What is good for me is right," as "the best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard” in a 1928 diary.

Christian Grey, our kinky CEO, started his literary life as a vampire when Erika Leonard, the woman behind the pseudonym “E.L. James,” published the first version of her novel episodically on a Twilight fan site, basing the story on the relationship between Stephenie Meyers’ love couple Edward Cullen and Bella Swan. It was later reworked and released in its current form. Gone was Edward the vampire, replaced by Christian the corporate slave-master.

Drunk on the intoxicants of wealth and power, Fifty Shades of Grey hints at a sinister cultural shift that is unfolding in its pages before our eyes. The innocent Anastasias will no longer merely have their lifeblood slowly drained by capitalist predators. They’re going to be whipped, humiliated and forced to wear a butt-plug. The vampire in the night has given way to the dominating overlord of a hierarchical, sadomasochistic world in which everybody without money is a helpless submissive.

Welcome to late-stage capitalism.

Invisible Handcuffs

This has been coming for some time. Ever since the Reagan era, from the factory to the office tower, the American workplace has been morphing for many into a tightly-managed torture chamber of exploitation and domination. Bosses strut about making stupid commands. Employees trapped by ridiculous bureaucratic procedures censor themselves for fear of getting a pink slip. Inefficiencies are everywhere. Bad management and draconian policies prop up the system of command and control where the boss is God and the workers are so many expendable units in the great capitalist machine. The iron handmaidens of high unemployment and economic inequality keep the show going.

How did this happen? Economists known as “free-market fundamentalists” who claim Adam Smith as their forefather like to paint a picture of the economy as a voluntary system magically guided by an “invisible hand” toward outcomes that are good for most people. They tell us that our economy is a system of equal exchanges between workers and employers in which everybody who does her part is respected and comes out ahead.

Something has obviously gone horribly wrong with the contract. Thieving CEOs get mega-yachts while hard-working Americans get stagnant wages, crappy healthcare, climate change, and unrelenting insecurity. Human potential is wasted, initiative punished and creativity starved.

Much of the evil stems from the fact that free-market economists who still dominate the Ivy League and the policy circles have focused on markets at the expense of those inconvenient encumbrances known as "people." Their fancy mathematical models make calculations about buying and selling, but they tend to leave out one important thing: production. In other words, they don't give a hoot about the labor of those who sustain the economy. Their perverted religion may have something to say about unemployment or wages – keeping the former high and the latter low — but the conditions workers face receive nary a footnote.

Michael Perelman, one of a small group of heretical economists who question this anti-human regime, draws attention to the neglect, abuse and domination of workers in his aptly named book, The Invisible Handcuffs: How Market Tyranny Stifles the Economy by Stunting Workers. He reveals that instead of a system of fair exchanges, we have “one in which the interests of employees and employers are sharply at odds.” This creates conditions of festering conflict and employers who have to take ever-stronger measures to exert control. Hostility among workers thrives, which results in more punishment. Respect, the free flow of information, inclusive decision-making – all the things that would make for a productive work environment — fly out the window. The word of the manager is the law, and endless time and energy is expended rationalizing its essential goodness.

Americans are supposed to be people who love freedom above everything else. But where is the citizen less free than in the typical workplace? Workers are denied bathroom breaks. They cannot leave to care for a sick child. Downtime and vacations are a joke. Some – just ask who picked your tomatoes – have been reduced to slave-like conditions. In the current climate of more than three years of unemployment over 8 percent, the longest stretch since the Great Depression, the worker has little choice but to submit. And pretend to like it.

A medieval peasant had plenty of things to worry about, but the year-round control of daily life was not one of them. Perelman points out that in pre-capitalist societies, people toiled relatively few hours over the course of a year compared to what Americans work now. They labored like dogs during the harvest, but there was ample free time during the off-seasons. Holidays were abundant – as many as 200 per year. It was Karl Marx, in his Theory of Alienation, who saw that modern industrial production under capitalist conditions would rob workers of control of their lives as they lost control of their work. Unlike the blacksmith or the shoemaker who owned his shop, decided on his own working conditions, shaped his product, and had a say in how his goods were bartered or sold, the modern worker would have little autonomy. His relationships with the people at work would become impersonal and hollow.

Clearly, the technological wonders of our capitalist system have not released human beings from the burden of work. They have brought us more work. They have not brought most of us more freedom, but less.

Naked domination was not always the law of the land. In the early 1960s, when unions were stronger and the New Deal’s commitment to full employment still meant something, a worker subjected to abuse could bargain with his employer or simply walk. Not so today. The high unemployment sustained by the Federal Reserve’s corporate-focused obsession with “fighting inflation” (code for "keeping down wages") works out well for the sado-capitalist. The unrelenting attack on government blocks large-scale public works programs that might rebalance the scale by putting people back on the job. The assault on collective bargaining robs the worker of any recourse to unfair conditions. Meanwhile, the tsunami of money in politics drowns the democratic system of rule by the people. And the redistribution of wealth toward the top ensures that most of us are scrapping too hard for our daily bread to fight for anything better. The corporate media cheer.

Turning the Tables

In the early '70s, the S&M counterculture scene followed the rise of anti-authoritarian punk rock, providing a form of transgressive release for people enduring too much control in their daily lives. Bondage-influenced images hit the mainstream in 1980 — the year the union-busting Ronald Reagan was elected president — in the form of a workplace comedy, 9 to 5, which became one of the highest grossing comedies of all time. 9 to 5 struck a chord with millions of Americans toiling in dead-end jobs ruled by authoritarian bosses. Audiences howled with joy to see three working women act out their fantasies of revenge on a workplace tyrant by suspending him in chains and shutting his mouth with a ball-gag.

More recently, the 2011 film Horrible Bosses follows the plot of three friends who decide to murder their respective domineering, abusive bosses. The film exceeded financial expectations, raking in over $28 million in the first three days. It went on to become the highest grossing black comedy film of all time.

The fantasy of turning the tables on the boss speaks to the deep-seated outrage that trickle-down policies and the war on workers has wrought. People naturally want to work in a rational, healthy system that offers them dignity and a chance to increase their standard of living and develop their potential. When this doesn’t happen, the social and economic losses are profound. Today’s workers are caught in Perelman’s “invisible handcuffs” – both trapped and blinded by the extent to which capitalism restricts their lives.

The market has become a monster, demanding that we fit its constraints. As long as we ignore this, the strength of the U.S. economy will continue to erode. Freedom and equality, those cornerstones of democracy, will diminish. For now, many working people have unconsciously accepted the conditions that exist as somehow natural, unaware of how the machine is constructed and manipulated to favor elites. Fear and frustration can even make us crave authority. We collaborate in our own oppression.

Just ask Anastasia Steele, whose slave contract spells out her duties with business-like efficiency:

Does the submissive consent to:

-Bondage with rope
-Bondage with leather cuffs
-Bondage with handcuffs/shackles/manacles
-Bondage with tape
-Bondage with other

Yes! She consents. The hypnotic consumption Christian offers in a world replete with fancy dinners and helicopter rides – goodies that will be revoked if she fails to obey — overturns her natural desire for free will. Once Anastasia has signed on the dotted line, her master rewards her with a telling gift that is often the first “present” an office employee receives: “I need to be able to contact you at all times…I figured you needed a BlackBerry.”

Her first note to him on her new gadget asks a question: “Why do you do this?”

“I do this,” Christian answers, “because I can.”

Until we can link ourselves together to change this oppressive system, the Christian Greys will remain fully in control.



Lynn Parramore is a contributing editor at Alternet. Cross-posted from Alternet via Naked Capitalism
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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Tue Aug 07, 2012 11:09 am

Machine Gun ♋ Jimi Hendrix

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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Tue Aug 07, 2012 11:31 am

One of the dead, Prakash Singh, was a priest who recently immigrated to the United States with his wife and two young children, said Justice Singh Khalsa, a temple member since the 1990s.

Relatives of Kaleka, the president of the temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, said Monday that he was killed fighting the attacker.

“From what we understand, he basically fought to the very end and suffered gunshot wounds while trying to take down the gunman,” said Kanwardeep Singh Kaleka, his nephew.

“He was a protector of his own people, just an incredible individual who showed his love and passion for our people, our faith, to the end,” the nephew said, near tears. “He was definitely one of the most dedicated individuals I have ever seen, one of the happiest people in the world.

Source


We should be focusing on telling the stories of the victims, not the shooter. Prakash Singh sounds like he was a beautiful person and he deserves recognition for the life he lived and was ultimately deprived of, as do all of the victims. We need to focus on the good and the love the victims spent their lives spreading and tell their stories to continue spreading each for them, not the hatred of the shooter.

http://mohandasgandhi.tumblr.com/
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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Tue Aug 07, 2012 1:09 pm

Haki R. Madhubuti - Children
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Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Tue Aug 07, 2012 2:59 pm

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ ... ganization

Title: Anarchism And Collective Organization
Author(s): Matt
Date: 2001
Topics: NEFAC organization
Notes: By Matt (Firefly Collective)
Northeastern Anarchist #2 Spring 2001
Source: nefac.net



Matt

Anarchism And Collective Organization


Because of the frequent mass demonstrations that have been occurring in the past couple of years, a lot of people in the anarchist movement have formed, joined, participated in, or otherwise been involved with an affinity group. In fact, many people have been turned on to anarchist politics after experiencing first hand the efficient and empowering action that can come out of a solid affinity group. Working closely with people that share a mutual trust and respect, as well as a common strategy and vision proves the anarchist method of organizing far better than the most eloquent anarchist thinker. After all, it has its roots in what most of us consider to be the farthest reaching attempt at anarchist social revolution — the Spanish Civil War.

What is of note that relates very closely to then and now is that the anarchist affinity groups of the Spanish Civil War didn’t form in the weeks prior to July 1936 — in many cases, they had been around for years. They formed as study groups for self-education; for propaganda purposes — printing and distributing newspapers and pamphlets: they formed as class conscious individuals saw a need for more organization at the grassroots level, more widespread radical education, and a more strategized method of agitation.

Today, when considering what work we are doing and have been involved with, and what type of impact we, as anarchists, will have in the future, the question of forming collectives becomes a very important one to look at. From the perspective then that working in collectives and helping others to form them is something that anarchists should be doing, I hope to discuss some of the practical considerations that might come up in the formation of a collective and its subsequent work.

Most of us have spent a lot of (generally well spent) time and energy working as individuals in coalitions, networks, and organizations that are generally synthesist with their politics — groups that form around a specific issue or campaign or that do specific, routine projects with folks from a multitude of political persuasions involved. There is often little discussion of politics and the space to discuss theory and tactics as they might relate to a strategy of struggle is generally absent. We can and need to question the overall strategy behind this type of work and the effectiveness at achieving stated goals but there are instances where this work has been and continues to be important. The Zapatista support work in the US and Canada, and the activity being undertaken to free Mumia have often happened under this structure. Recent local anti-FTAA coalitions have also shown that this work can be positive and effective.

However, the point I want to make is that as a collective (rather than an individual), anarchists can have a stronger impact contributing to such struggles as well as initiating campaigns and struggles that we can be openly radical with and assure that the work is carried out with a revolutionary perspective even though we may be fighting for a reformist victory. Not only that, but in a collective with people we know well, respect, and trust we create an environment ripe for personal and political growth. We can take a small step in the process of creating social alternatives to our alienating and competitive existence under capitalism.

Deciding to join or form an anarchist collective is more of a decision about working with a particular group of people than committing to do political work. Both are important, but since most of us are, in some capacity or another, already involved with radical politics the former needs more consideration. With that in mind, the choice of people you want to work with takes on more priority and immediacy than specific projects or campaigns you might engage in. Looking around you at work, in your neighborhood, city, town, or at school, ask yourself who it is that you respect; who’s been involved with projects that you thought were solid; who, in your conversations seems to argue along similar lines as yourself; who is someone you could learn from as well as potentially teach something to? These are some of the questions that can lead to the formation of a collective. If it is probably accurate to assume that anarchists number about 1 to every 1,000–10,000 people in North America then most of us shouldn’t have too difficult of a time finding other people that would be interested in forming a collective.

A common mistake to avoid is starting a collective with people simply because they call themselves anarchists. In North America today, there are “anarchists” that brutalize women, “anarchists” that vote for presidents, “anarchists” that care more about their patches than real social change, and “anarchists” who think a huge majority of the human population should die. The point here isn’t to call for some abstract theoretical anarchist purity, but to be aware that a common strategy and vision is sometimes easier to find with people who do not label themselves as anarchists. What should never be overlooked in the formation of a collective is that, anarchists or not, the group must have theoretical and tactical unity.

The members of any collective should not only share the same political analysis but the strategy and tactics involved must be agreed upon as well. This is a major point that distinguishes the collective form of organizing from more broad-based coalitions or networks. In pursuing this unity, one of the more important things that a newly formed collective can do is draft out a political statement detailing not only a critique of the contemporary system but a vision as well. This collective discussion, though obviously inward functioning, can establish a solid framework for long-term involvement in social movements. Though it is fluid and changes as the collective’s experiences do, writing the statement begins the process of helping those involved in the collective to become more articulate and knowledgeable in regards to understanding our exploitative and oppressive system. In addition, it offers a concise picture of your politics to other individuals or collectives that may be interested in the work you’re doing and possibly want to start a relationship. It also engages our desires and imagination in thinking about a vision for a society where life could be enjoyed rather than stolen.

Oftentimes, a collective is viewed with suspicion and seen as exclusive or elitist by other activists. This is usually an issue of people not understanding the organizational idea of a group that functions with a closed membership. The point isn’t to act as an all-star team of activists but to build trust and relationships while being engaged in social struggle from a common platform. It is important to explain this to people and to address those who express interest in joining. When it doesn’t make sense to open the membership to an individual who is interested in joining, the collective should encourage and help that person to form another collective. This project of encouraging others to form collectives should be a constant one for any collective. In addition to constantly advocating for others to self-organize, another way a collective can combat the perception of exclusivity is by getting involved with current struggles in your area or by initiating campaigns in your community that present the possibility for numerous people and groups to work together. This will give the group visibility and show that your collective doesn’t exist for reasons of ideological purity. While there may be some work that is more effectively accomplished by the collective alone, don’t let the group devolve into some kind of activist nucleus that is only concerned with perpetuating its existence.

It is definitely time for anarchists to begin to seriously consider getting more organized. Moving beyond the protest circuit and looking at ways to transform the anarchist movement, into something rooted in the community and educated from experience confronting the system where we meet it on a day to day basis, begins not only a revolutionary strategy, but its examination as well. And in many ways, forming collectives and engaging in social struggle at that level mirrors a vision of an anarchist society where autonomous, egalitarian, non-hierarchical groups of people work with each other and with other collectives to achieve common goals. That model opposed to leaders, inimical to authority and oppression, and at odds with reformism should give us a basis of organization that can begin to challenge the entire system.
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