THE BEST OF THE BLOGS:
THE LETTER "A":
Once more Molly goes chugging down her blogroll list to feature recent posts from other blogs on her Links section that were of particular interest. Today is devoted to the letter "A".
Against the State, a libertarian blog from the USA has an article titled 'Post Constitutional America'. It is really a collection and reference to how the original American idea of "limited government" gradually disappeared to be replaced by the leviathan of today.
The Aketus Blog has an article, 'The Tanneries Squat is Safe' on a the situation on a squat in Dijon, France. Lots of good mustard there.
Alas a Blog has an interesting review of 'Red Diapers, Growing up in the Communist Left'. The book, of course, is very much centred on the USA where the commies had a virtual monopoly of "radical politics" for many decades, and thus it misses the experience of being a "red diaper baby" in Canada, let alone European countries. Still very entertaining reading.
Anarcha Fairy, from down under, has an article titled 'On the Problem with 'Life-Stylism', basically a critique of Murray Bookchin and containing all the misapprehensions that most of us "colonials" have when viewing events at the centre of the Empire. Molly disagrees with the author in that, as a Canadian, she has a much closer view of the nonsense that Bookchin criticized. The whole matter of the simple insanity of some parts of the American left and its imperial role in exporting nonsense to the rest of the world is ignored here in an attempt to see the matter in a dispassionate philosophical light. Not that the author is wrong in what he says. He merely is ignorant of the "heart" of the debate which is emotion rather than philosophy. Perhaps only Americans (of which Molly is not one) can judge the true depravity of the things that Bookchin argued against. One can only hope that when the bullshit is exported from the USA that it is diluted by the more common sense views of the colonials.
Still, there's another post from down under on the Anarchia site titled 'Against Veganism as Individual Boycott'. Your meal as politics is one of the less enlightened commodities that has been exported to anarchists across the world from the industrial ideology factories of the USA(and Britain to a lesser extent). The author comes to the conclusion that veganism is "simply a personal choice" and not a reasonable political statement or strategy. Well, yeah !!!!... this seems obvious to those of us outside of the charmed circle, but it bears repeating and justification in the face of too much subculturalism.
Finally, An Australian Anarchist Weblog has a story of the alternatives to the dreaded Wikipedia as well as a comment on the whole matter of "encyclopedias". He mentions the Uncyclopedia which is basically a spoof of Wikipedia as well as the Citizendium which attempts to be an alternative to Wikipedia. There's also reference to the loony tunes American fundamentalist site Conservapedia that attempts to give a holy roller alternative to the 'Satanic' Wikipedia. Look this one up for yourself. The other two have been added to Molly's 'Other Interesting Links'. Molly especially appreciates the spoof. Very well done with a lot of effort.
Sometime later this weekend...other letters of the alphabet.
1 comment:
Hmm... I think maybe you missed the point of my post (or, more likely, I didn't make myself clear enough!). ;)
I wasn't arguing for or against lifestylism or social anarchism per se, but rather against the very terms the debate uses (and the implied theory of the social that underlies those terms). Bookchin was a good starting point, but certainly here in Aotearoa his polemic has since been largely forgotten as the debate (or rather, lack of) has taken on a life of its own.
If, as I suggested, the political/economic/personal/etc. levels of social life are instead merely intimately linked aspects of a single level (the notion of the 'flat social'), then the terms lifestyle and social anarchism become meaningless. Indeed, a lifestyle anarchism properly instigated becomes immediately a political project aimed at the abolition and/or evasion (the latter being a valuable political project IMO despite its popular derision) of the drudgery of work, private property, patriarchy, racism, etc. etc. Thus the debate is forced to move to questions of effective political action, rather than reframing some types of action as merely personal and others as political, and we can thus equally attack practices of "social anarchism" for their failed tactics (the classic march, for example).
Hopefully, in the end, such a view would allow for a better evaluation of tactics and according to a criteria that has some logic to it.
Post a Comment