MOLLY'S ANARCHISM:

ANARCHISM AND PLEASURE:

Molly came to be an anarchist in a certain time and place ie the early 1970s in Canada. At that time we defined ourselves in opposition to the far more numerous "radical left". Today these leftist formations are something of a "geriatric joke". Today anarchism is, for all intents and purposes, the ultra-left, in most countries in the developed world. Trotskyism, Maoism and good old fashioned "real commies" are a sad and nostalgic breed forever trying to "reunite the left" ie recruit each other and preserve their delusions. Not that this detracts from the powerful appeal of social-democracy and how this attracts far too many present day anarchists. It is just that the grinding mill of history has pretty well put finis to the romantic nation of the "vanguard party" and the "great proletarian revolution" directed by an elite cadre. Time moves on.

The sad fact is that it doesn't move on in some circles, and some repeat the same mistakes as their grandfathers made and rejected. The whole inspiration for this post was a comment made on the previous post about the 'Calgary Anarchist Bookfair'. I think that I made it very plain in my reply to that post that I am not a "fashion anarchist" who thinks that food choices have anything to do with anarchism. Still, this matter deserves further comment, beyond the mockery. The latter is easy to fall into as I read such trash as a "statement" saying that anarchist prisoner support groups should disassociate themselves from some con "because" he has not just become an obvious Nazi but "because" he has come to "eat meat". Uh duh , the fact that he was an unrepentant criminal in the first place has nothing to do with "support" ? Yeah, commit armed robberies, but don't eat meat because this is wrong ! Ah, the joys of private morality !

All that is beside the point when I observe present day anarchism. When I became an anarchist one of the defining differences between ourselves and the leftists was that we were thoroughly and completely opposed to the ethic of self-sacrifice that leftists held to, where the individual was offered the vicarious collective pleasure of pretending to be part of some over-riding movement of history. No doubt such an illusion was more than slightly hypocritical as, like Napolean's privates, each leftist was free to imagine a bureaucrat's stamp in his back pocket.

When I became an anarchist such things as the "right to pleasure" as enunciated by such people as Alex Comfort, Paul Goodman and many people before them seemed to be a given of the way that we viewed the world. We looked on the "politically correct" pronouncements of the "left" as ridiculous. History proved us wrong. As leftists abandoned their silly leftist sects and became part of the ruling class they enforced their views in a much more severe way than they were capable of before they held power. Yet... the more extreme insanity of their views was lost in the trade-off between so-called "ideals" and getting the money and power in social control agencies. And a very good thing this is. Social workers, and the "professional activists" today mainly squabble about money and money alone without any concept that society should be ordered differently. All fine and good to me because I would seriously hate, for instance, of insanity such as Weatherman's idea that "sleeping on mattresses" is "white skin privilege" becoming some sort of government policy. I'm not kidding ! That was one of their oracular pronouncements way back when. Better that the "friends of the marginalized" argue about how much more money will be tossed their way, whereby they collect 90% and "the poor" collect 10%. It's actually far safer in a social sense. Long live corruption !!! It's our great guarantee against death camps set up by those who have "morality" and are willing to enforce it on their victims.

What disturbs me today, when anarchism has become the ultra-left, as I said is just before, is how facilely such mindless herd-following has become , and how much anarchism today has adopted every failed fad of the "new left" and the "counter-culture" as some sort of gospel and defining mark of "anarchism". Not only is this in contradiction to the main focus of anarchism when I became an anarchist on the ways to increase the power of ordinary people rather than propagandize them about their personal choices.It is also, much more fundamentally, in contradiction to the anarchist vision of personal liberty. The idea that there is a "politically correct food" is, of course, the attitude of a religious cult rather than one of a political movement that aspires to influence a majority (or even a large minority). The grossest examples of such cultism are evident in the anarchist cults that promote "anti-oppression". Not that I have any objection to people from various ethnic backgrounds(or any other "ism") to organize separately and even bitch and complain endlessly about their "oppression"

What I object to most strenuously is the tendency to turn practical organizing efforts into occasions for ersatz psychotherapy. Yes, I say here and now that there should be no "anti-oppression work" as it is euphemistically called. Let the normal political process of argue, confront and compromise take its rightful course, and let an anarchist project develop from this honest social interplay rather than from dogma and slogans inherited from two generations before. Dogma and slogans that reduce anarchism to nothing more than the sort of flagellants that roamed Europe in the wake of the Black Death.

Anarchism and pleasure ? Those who should be most prominent in opposing self-sacrifice in the name of an abstraction-a spook in the words of Stirner- are often the greatest promoters of such nonsense as they mindlessly (in terms of refusing to step outside their restricted social circles) cheer lead for juvenile terrorism. These people have hardly learned anything from their espousal of individualism beyond the idea that they should try and undercut every effort at anarchist organization. Yeah, play act at terrorism to "prove yourself" and your commitment. How Leninist and Christian can you get ? Forget real social effects because they are secondary to your existential "statement". All this is fine and good, but don't pretend that it is politics or that it has anything to do with ordinary people and their desire to "increase their pleasure" as per the original individualist project.

Other, more rational, anarchists basically ignore the whole subject, in the vain hope that it will go away. Perhaps they are right in such an omission. Still, they miss a point that Molly would argue. As I have said many times before here on this blog- I am not a "revolutionist". I think that the human misery that revolutions create is detrimental to the anarchist project of increasing human happiness/pleasure. While I would never accuse my own comrades of having sick power fantasies of carrying a commissar's stamp in their back pocket I would still submit to them that the method that they have chosen to achieve anarchy is wrong, and involves (to the subject of this post) the submission of individual pleasure to an inordinate degree to some ideological goal. My own vision is that ordinary people could participate in an anarchist movement, and that they would not be exposed to extra-ordinary personal danger because of this. I am fully aware that I violate this goal in the here and now(not in the least because I oppose violent actions that are often set up by governments), but I have a different picture for the future. Hence my ideal of anarchism as an "evolutionary" process.

Anarchism and pleasure ! Anarchism today is very much more developed than when I came to it in the early 70s, but, to my mind, it has lost an important compass. Some of this loss may be attributed to the fact that anarchism has adopted a juvenile sort of method of "not judging" as it is taught in schools in North America today. The idea of a "variety of tactics: where it is considered "bad manners" to disagree with things that are obviously foolish is the sort of pap and nonsense that is presently taught in grade school today. It is grade school nonsense. Words do mean something. Giving people free rein to psychologically torture others while saying that the victims have no right to retaliate is self-contradictory. If all views are "equal" then opposition should be able to see the light of day. But this is, of course, against the ideology of "totalitarian liberalism" that too many anarchists have adopted as if it was "anarchism".

Anarchism and pleasure ! When anarchism develops even further than it has today then such question as suffering so you can "eat right" will become irrelevant, just like mortifying your flesh in "anti-oppression work" will. To date only Spain has passed this "tipping point" courtesy of the CGT. Not that Spain is immune to cultism and cultish self-sacrifice, but this sort of thing is overwhelmed there by a large movement of people who see anarchist ways of acting as a rational way to advance their own interest ie "their pleasure".

Certainly, as the situationists suggested decades ago (in some very turgid and pretentious language), the "pleasure" of social change is much more than the abolition of a ruling class and the self-management that results. It is also a "negation" (please excuse Molly this one rhetoric word) of the whole idea that society demands sacrifice from its members, as the Leninist left and their imitators think. It is even more so the opposite of the guilt-ridden subculture that anarchists influenced by "the left" (the "dead left" in my view) want to perpetuate. The whole idea that there is a "correct way of eating" is a misanthropic idea that does a disservice to anarchism. It can be seen as a juvenile "way-point" but nothing other. When anarchism comes into its maturity it will be discarded along with other subcultural ideas that have much more to do with "definition" than they do with human pleasure and reality.

For an anarchism in line with human nature ! For an anarchism that does not demand pain because such an "anarchism" is an illusion !