BLOGGING:

HERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:

Time moves on, and so does Molly's Blog. This summer this kitten will be three years old. A long time in cat years, but a short time in most other chronologies. In that time the blog has (hopefully) improved, and it has certainly expanded. It has spun off a sister site, Molly's Polls, and more will be yet to come. I continue to work pretty well every day on the Links section. I think that I have almost completed the listings for the French CNT, the "CNT-Vignoles". The other French CNT, the "CNT-AIT" is still to come, but it will be a far shorter listing. My attempt to put some order into the CNT listings is, I have to say, hampered by what I find a rather opaque method of numbering their locals on the part of the CNT, rather than simply listing them as a geographic local. So be it. They share this characteristic with pretty well every union in the world, whatever its political stripe. I do, however, continue to plow through. To be honest I find the CNT-F task easier than the previous IWW task, even if there are many more "projects" and "publications" in the CNT than in the IWW. Not unexpected. By most estimates the CNT-F is far larger than the IWW, and, besides, the French really love to put out publications(and to form organizations from splits for that matter). It's a classic.

You know where this is trending. I shudder when I finally have to face the task of listing the Spanish CGT, or even the Spanish CNT. No doubt I will undertake simpler tasks first, such as listing the contacts for the FAU or the USI. Still, I suspect that I have two years of work ahead of me here. it will, however, eventually be finished.

All this is against a background of gradually expanding and editing the other categories in the Links. This goes on at its usual slow bit steady pace. Further editorial subdivisions will be done in the months (and years ?) to come to make the list more user friendly.

As to the blog posts I have to emphasize that the "balance" is always a work in progress. I see that I have finally, after a hiatus of many months, published something today that is not political. Obviously I have missed the idea of balance that I originally strived for, but the correction does eventually come. The balance between local, Canadian and international posts is also always a moving target. I have expressed my own priorities before, and I hardly have to repeat them now. What I will say is that what actually shows up in the posts is, at best, 5% of what is actually worthy of publication. Many significant things that come to my attention never see the light of day here. There is an even greater continent of things that never come to my attention at all.

Anarcho-purists may quibble about how much of this blog is devoted to things that are obviously not connected with anarchism. My response to this is that these things are connected at a deeper level than labels would admit. They are connected at the level of "class struggle", a term I hate to use but one that is very descriptive. My own idea of anarchism is not some self-referential idea of being some sort of "ultimate radical" and wandering off into what can (kindly!!!) be described as intellectual masturbation. My idea of anarchism is grounded in the actual needs and struggles of ordinary people, not the delusions of some sort of subculture that deludes itself with the lies of its own superiority. To put it bluntly, anarchism is about the needs, struggles and desires of ordinary people or it is not anarchism; it is only a religious cult without this anchor.

In some ways this is a blessing. It cuts out huge swatches of what one anarchist news site thinks is important. I don't have to pay any attention whatsoever if somebody breaks a window in Woebegone Iowa with a presumptive political purpose. Neither do I have to pay attention when some fool imagines that arson is, by some trick of magical thinking, a way to "preserve the Earth", and I don't have to pay attention to their trials and tribulations when they are eventually and inevitably caught (sometimes because infiltrators put them up to it, but more often because they are simply incompetent fools). Hey, no problem, no worry. Let them live in their delusions, in or out of prison. I...Don't...Give...A...Fuck. The only disturbance is that these people think they can define 'anarchism" as what they do. Quite frankly I find the actions of such people (mostly Americans) very reminiscent of the attempt of American creationists to smuggle in religion via so-called "intelligent design".

On the other hand this liberation from arrogant cultism has a drawback. I have to pay attention to a far greater field of struggle with which people outside of the mutual admiration society are intimately concerned from day to day. This means that I am obligated to try and report things from a vastly wider field of human existence than a cultist has to pay attention to. Obviously this often involves me in compromises that I don't feel too comfortable with, but it is a reality. The point that i see as relevant is how to push these struggles into a more and more libertarian direction. All that while not having the hubris of imagining that I am producing anything more than a tiny blog that only 100 to 150 people a day drop by to read. Not big potatoes in the cosmic scheme of things.

So here is Molly's Blog, continually trying to find its balance. The balance will never be "finally' found because it is an ever shifting target. The journey, however, is the whole story. The goal is an ever receding mirage that merely leads me on. Some things I am absolutely certain of. My decision to pay attention to the lives of ordinary people is both a moral and aesthetic choice. The morality of it should be obvious. The aesthetics revolve around the fact of just how ugly the cultish forms of anarchism, all of which depend on an overwhelming arrogance, actually are. For myself I have absolutely no desire, let alone need to buoy up my ego by identifying with a pseudo-superior group. Life itself has more than enough meaning for this tiny little cat, and I see no reason to accept lies just because they lead to self-exaltation.

Other things I am much less certain of. Negation is always easier than affirmation. In most things i preserve an attitude of scepticism. Perhaps I grew old while my back was turned. Come along with Molly as she explores this unknown universe in the years that are left to me.