situationists

Who do the passionate communards work for?

une pétroleuse

via Anarquía, translation by Anarchist News

"I will then become a worker: such is the idea that stops me, when the mad rages push me towards the battle of Paris - where, however, so many workers continue to die while I write to you! Work now, never again." 1 Rimbaud

Since 1871 - the year in which the "accursed poet" wrote this letter - it was not necessary to be a "seer" to see the obvious: the masses of workers who fought on the barricades in Paris continued to work. That "wildcat strike" in front of the Versailles authority was, in turn, a new job that produced new obligations and condemned them to perpetuate work in saecula saeculorum. Such deep reflection, in the midst of a necromancing trance, probably prompted Rimbaud to question: who were the passionate communards working for? prophesying a system of domination based on direct democracy as the axis of political-social management, which ensured the permanence of authority and continuity of work.

Raoul Vaneigem: Paths to a human future

From notbored.com via Autonomies

Until now, capitalism has only tottered due to the crises of its internal development, its fluxes of growth and decline. It has progressed from one bankruptcy to another. We have never succeeded at bringing it down, except on those very brief occasions when people have taken their destinies into their own hands.

The Hollowing of Anarchy: Gentrification

From scholium

Anarchy can differ from other anti-capitalist ideologies in being a lived practice. If anarchy is the end goal, then it must be the means as well. This often turns out looking like working as little as possible, living communally with friends, getting by using scams, and experimenting with social relationships. Unfortunately, these more interesting and liberating tendencies based in subverting daily life are receding as gentrification closes off possibilities for living cheap in the cities. What remains in the U.S. anarchist space is activism. Lacking this daily life component, anarchy slides back into leftism.

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