Anarchist Discussion Forums

by **oddasudda** » Thu Feb 06, 2003 2:55 pm

[color=green]I'm just very curious why anyone from the middle-class would want to overturn a system in which they seem to be doing quite well. Perhaps because they have morals and a sense of justice? Do you really believe that they are irreversably evil?

by **Din** » Thu Feb 06, 2003 11:36 pm

[color=green]i'd also like to point out to you that most of the pioneers of anarchist writing were middle/upper class Quite correct there. And ironically, the one major pioneer of anarchist philosophy that was from the lowest class was Max Stirner, whose ideas are generally despised by those anarchists with a fetish for the working class but who nonetheless worship the words of the aristocratic Bakunin and Kropotkin. Stirner died in poverty.

by **Guest** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 12:41 am

Why do so many anarchists fetishize Max Stirner? He was not of the "lowest class." He grew up lower-middle class. When his father died, his mother married a pharmacist. He obviously was privileged to some degree since he attended university in Germany and eventually became a professor. He then got married and a year later quit his teaching position. After quiting teaching, Stirner attempted to invest his wife's inheritance and failed miserably. She left him and he ended up living alone, but not poor. He soon inherited money from his mother and managed that rather well until his death. Granted, he did spend some time in debtors prison, but more because he chose to not repay his debts (not he couldn't). I really believe that Stirner has very little to contribute to anarchism. He was more of a self-isolationist, classical liberal market anarchist than a revolutionary.

by **Phoebe** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 4:28 am

then that confirms the point even more. on top of that one could even go so far as to say Bakunin was a lifestyler. After going anarcho he broke away from trappings of richness and lived in pretty spartan conditions........ funded by rich friends. another reason i don't like middle class bashing is that there seems to be very little in the way of a clearly defined middle class. Some people seem to use it for elitist one-upmanship, to the extent that their version of a working class is about 5-10% of the national population. apart from the fact that in britain even the working classes are internationally speaking the bourgoisie. our conditions of life and the number of choices we're allowed in comparison to a kid working 12 hours a day in a sweatshop at gunpoint are obscenely decadent. i know that's a ridiculous argument to make, but i'm just asking exactly what constitutes middle class, and what's bad about it. If you mean short-sighted comfortable-with-their-lives affluent liberal wankers who assume that if they try and be nice to people everything will be ok, and that struggle isn't really necessary, then fair enough, i agree they are pricks. if you're attacking someone cause of their accent, that's xenophobia, and isn't a whole lot better than racism, homophobia, sexism or any of the other prejudices. phoebe (bakunin used to hate jews and germans as did many anarchists, thankfully the anarchist community developed beyond that particular petty prejudice)

by **Guest** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 3:53 pm

"if you're attacking someone cause of their accent, that's xenophobia, and isn't a whole lot better than racism, homophobia, sexism or any of the other prejudices." There are women, gays and black people with working class accents though. I admit I am prejudiced towards my own class and against the middle-class because the middle-class are actively involved in keeping the rest of us down. The middle-class teach our kids, police our streets and generally run the state machinery to keep us in order. There is nothing they do which we couldn't do without or alternatively, do better for ourselves.

by **Guest** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 9:13 pm

homage is right, Max Stirner was not really working class, he was impoverished middle class, but definitley middle class.

by **Din** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 10:09 pm

[color=green]Why do so many anarchists fetishize Max Stirner? You are kidding, right? Max Stirner has always been a marginalized anarchist, as your own attitude towards him attest. It would be far more accurate to note that many anarchists fetishize Bakunin. [color=green]He was not of the "lowest class." He grew up lower-middle class. My words were comparative. I was comparing Stirner to the other major pioneers of anarchist philosophy - Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin. When I said that Stirner was from the lowest class, I meant that Stirner was from the lowest class amongst these other major 19th century anarchists. Godwin and Proudhon were middle-class. Bakunin and Kropotkin were both aristocratic. Stirner, as you note, was from the lower-middle class - which makes him the lowest in class stature amongst these "major pioneers of anarchist philosophy", which was my exact words. In any case, contrary to what you quite seemingly believe, I do not think that anyone need to remain within the same class throughout their entire life. There are those from the working class who end up in the upper class. There are those from the aristocratic class who end up amongst the peasants - as evidenced by Tolstoy. [color=green]I really believe that Stirner has very little to contribute to anarchism. Of course, you would. That's not a big surprise. [color=green]He was more of a self-isolationist, classical liberal market anarchist than a revolutionary. He did not wished to be a "revolutionary". As for liberalism, it was Stirner himself that said the egoism he advocated was the "invincible opposite", "a deadly enemy" of liberalism. [color=blue]In modern anarchism we have the confluence of the two great currents which during and since the French Revolution have found such characteristic expression in the intellectual life of Europe: Socialism and Liberalism. - Rudolf Rocker

by **Guest** » Mon Feb 10, 2003 6:56 am

" It would be far more accurate to note that many anarchists fetishize Bakunin." if there's one anarchist who gets fetiishised, its' not Stirner or Bakunin or anyone like them it has more to do with this anarchist's pussy than any ideas

by **Guest** » Mon Feb 10, 2003 8:59 pm

Thanks for that meaningful post.

by **Guest** » Thu Feb 13, 2003 12:57 pm

Would be interested to know who the middle class bashers consider to be middle class. My guess would include agency temps (of which I am one, currently working in a mental health rehabilitation centre teaching IT, painting walls, cleaning floors, designing spreadsheets etc.) Temps aren't unionised, their employer often takes around 40% of the money being paid for them (let alone the value of their productiveness), they aren't contracted, and the whole market depends on structural unemployment - there has to be someone waiting by the phone ready to go into work the next day. However, most temps have degrees, and are generally skilled workers in the sense of some knowledge of computer software, being able to type quickly etc. Those in professions, such as carpenters, plumbers, are paid more, are more independent, have more control over their working hours, and are much closer to the model of self-employed middle class small business owner than your average secretary or receptionist. Although I'd agree that the majority of work that any low level administrator does (worked for the NHS for 8 months, produced nothing) is completely without any value whatsoever, to anyone. FWIW, my degree that I studied for is in music, and I'm currently working a day job and have been doing so since I graduated in 2001 - playing free-improvised music pays almost no money, no matter what level you are at, and no matter how many international festivals you do a year (I don't have gigs at international festivals, but some of my friends do). Reducing very, very complex international employment patterns to two or three strictly defined classes has very, very little interest to me. FWIW I also live on an ex-council estate, and pay about 8 times as much rent as people living on council estates do, for a three bedroom flat shared by four people. The quality of the accommodation does not increase by it being privately owned. BTW, just found this board a day or so ago, some interesting stuff. Looking forward to some of the other threads.

by **Pomegranate** » Thu Feb 13, 2003 5:47 pm

oops boy did i screw up, i meant to reply to q4a's post and instead i edited it so i had to delete it! sorry. but basically the post asked why Pom (me) is the only minority around here, to which i responded: the problem for me isnt the presence of "middle-class whites". let's face it, in the u.s. middle-class whites are the most likely to be educated and leisurely enough to read up on and accept obscure political theory. it has to do with a certain amount of wealth creating a certain amount of available time to think. of course, most upper-class whites arent going to pick a political idealogy which points a finger at the wealthy and holds them to a higher standard of responsibility than they currently enjoy. what i do see as a problem is the _lack_ of minorities. they should at least be represented. where are the african-american, native-american, latino, asian anarchists? my question is better posed like this: why do educated minorities who read up on obscure political theories choose ideologies other than anarchism? what is it that we as anarchists are lacking in this appeal? either we're dead wrong or we're completely missing a very important point. i know quite a few politically active and aware minorities and they almost always seem to choose the socialists or communists. when i go to marches, even in the culturally diverse SF bay area, the black blockers and other syndicalists i see are almost all white and appear middle-class. i just hope they arent going through a "make the parents mad" phase which they will outgrow much like the hippies "grew up" into yuppie filth. what is the anarchist movement missing which it needs to appeal to a wide base of ethnicities and cultures?

by **Din** » Thu Feb 13, 2003 10:04 pm

[color=green]where are the african-american, native-american, latino, asian anarchists? Ahoy, there. I'm here. [color=green]my question is better posed like this: why do educated minorities who read up on obscure political theories choose ideologies other than anarchism? Anarchism has been and still is a rather marginalized political ideology within Europe, Australia, and the two American continents. Many people do not give it serious consideration, associating it with superficial images of chaos and terror. Even in the academia, the subject of anarchism is only ever treated in any serious respect within the marginalized sector. Other political ideologies such as marxism or liberalism is given far more attention in comparison, so it is hardly a mere coincidence that the minorities would be drawn more to the more well-known subjects. Even there, the situation is nowhere as extreme as it is outside of these three continents that are largely populated by Europeans and their descendents. In Asia and Africa, anarchism is not merely marginalized - it can be practically absent and unknown. In short, many people in these two continents have yet to be even introduced to the idea. Which is rather ironic, given that such alternatives as Marxism and Liberalism is far more Euro-centric than Anarchism, which has long been recognized as a reaction against and rejection of much that is glorified in European culture - in favor of ideas and lifestyles that are far more at home amongst the cultures of Africans, Indigenous Americans, and Aboriginal Australians. [color=green]what is it that we as anarchists are lacking in this appeal? either we're dead wrong or we're completely missing a very important point. i know quite a few politically active and aware minorities and they almost always seem to choose the socialists or communists. Let us not carried away here. The Socialists - and Liberals - attract more minorities, but they also attract more in the majorities. If you have a thousand Socialists and a hundred Anarchists, surely it is far more likely that in that thousand, you would find more minorities. It is not necessarily a proportionate problem but a quantitative one. A hundred minorities amongst a thousand socialists is proportionately equal to ten minorities amongst a hundred anarchist. I do not think that the Socialist movement in North America is any less white-centered than Anarchists. The perception is deceiving. And incidentally, the situation is not helpful to us anarchists when anarchism is mistakenly portrayed as a mere sub-branch of socialism - as the platformists in particular tend to do. [color=green]what is the anarchist movement missing which it needs to appeal to a wide base of ethnicities and cultures? Attention? Recognition? You are not going to attract people if people do not even know that you exist - or that you should be accorded any serious attention in the first place. The trouble then is that anarchism suffers from much misconceptions and spoiled images - of the bomb-throwing terrorist, of the juvenilistic (white) punk, and so forth. Even amongst the white population, there is a general lack of awareness of anarchism as a political ideology. And anarchists themselves are not doing much to change this image, given their own fetish for images and their own euro-centric perspectives. Every white anarchist knows Bakunin and Kropotkin, quote them religiously like a bible. But how many white anarchists are familiar with such names as Lucy Parsons, Ba Jin, or Sam Mbah? How many white anarchists are familiar with the anarchist movements in China or Japan? How many white anarchists are even aware that Gandhi - yes, Gandhi! - was a self-declared anarchist? Unfortunately, in my view, anarchism has been co-opted into something of a self-identifying badge, a label, a mere fetish where slogans and images are more important than anything else. White anarchists even expect non-white anarchists to identify themselves with a white term. It does not matter that the terms anarchy, anarchism, and anarchist are European terms that do not exist in the languages of Africa or Asia.

by **Guest** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 3:46 am

another approach to it: are there any people around who are (or writings by) anarchists who do come from such ethnic minorities, who can comment on the situation in their respective cultures. And who wouldn't have their hands tied in the same way as outsiders.

by **Pomegranate** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 11:10 am

this is the best effort as far as i'm aware: http://struggle.ws/inter.html

by **Pomegranate** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 11:12 am

one more, that other gets a bit muddled http://struggle.ws/africa.html

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fetishizing Max Stirner

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