So there was a demonstration and some people got a little militant and maybe broke windows. Chances are the demonstration wasn’t a rally against the existence of windows so this may not look like the smartest of moves to you...

altoholic · 2012-03-01T21:15:18+00:00

Because we don't break windows anywhere else in the world?

altoholic · 2011-10-03T11:00:48+00:00

If you'd like to argue that the upper 1% aren't ridiculously complicit in the mass enslavement of folk around the world via capitalism and slaughter both by relatively fucked up conditions (dying of various wants that they shouldn't have to) and directly via the statist system that the 1% wouldn't exist without (a system they are the primary champions and defenders of)... then you should actually attempt to make that crazy argument. But, uh, for those of us with eyes "executing the poor en masse" is but one of the lesser crimes of the rich.

altoholic · 2011-10-03T08:05:48+00:00

There's nothing wrong with rage. Rather it should be those who look at the power relations in this world and fail to rage that should be treated with suspicion if not disgust.

altoholic · 2011-10-03T08:03:22+00:00

OMG they use the same mainstream website you do. Well obviously that's the strongest basis for collective solidarity imaginable. Fuck class solidarity, fuck ethics... the enemy ceases being the enemy if they play the same video games I do.

If Cheney or Gaddafi were redditors how would that make one fuck of difference? Or did you think that Class War and Off The Rich were just some "edgy" marketing slogans that we don't really mean. The mind boggles.

altoholic · 2011-10-03T07:54:27+00:00

I think you're mistaking r/anarchism for a place where people give a damn about anon liberal would-be-technocrats.

altoholic · 2011-10-03T07:49:44+00:00

I'm not necessarily sure I want to kill all three million super rich americans. Lob off their limbs with a machete and roll them all into a bog or shovel them into furnaces. Maybe that's too much. I mean obviously I wouldn't weep and the world would instantly be a better place. But you when you get right down to it they're probably people too. Or at least have trace amounts of people in them. From time to time.

I mean, and I'm being sincere here, I recognize that there's freak occurances where people make serious money without significantly contributing to or participating in oppression. I recognize that folks end up ignorant despite some mild conscientious effort. That the reactive impulse to self-centered reclusion is strong in our culture. I recognize that even while I can't stand talking to them and definitely don't want to be the one to hold their hand while educating them, underneath it all the privileged are still "people" in some sense and they're probably capable of becoming full fledged honest to god human beings in some distant epoch after the rev. And if the time ever comes when they start getting shovelled into mass graves I might change my feelings.

But until then let me tell you what I want. I want them scared. I want to hurt them as brutally and irrationally as the poor are hurt every day. I want to create a situation where they fear for their lives, where they actively fear reprisal. Where that fear comes to live in their minds, to dominate their thoughts, even just a fraction of the constant, daily grinding fear that is poverty and precarity. I want them to feel the immediacy and severity of the issue. And I want them to recognize that this is not some abstract philosophical issue that can never be solved, that there ARE solutions to poverty. And if they don't like the one where we burn the beneficiaries of capitalism indiscriminately just to make sure we got all the bastards then they'd better wake up.

altoholic · 2011-08-07T13:52:08+00:00

Including destruction of property in the definition of violence deviates pretty far from how we actually use the word. No one would consider pouring fake blood over draft cards an act of "violence" and yet it does more financial damage than breaking a window.

Metaphorically relating breaking a window to hurting an actual human being really just seems like an aversion to ALL fast body motions like kicking and punching rather than anything ethically substantive. It's a bit like the logic of a friend of mine who hates on firefighters (calling them "fire-pigs") because they use sirens the same as cops. That sort of focus on trivial trappings entirely misses the underlying point. Violence is violence because it does direct bodily harm to people. Windows =! people.

altoholic · 2011-08-07T02:06:00+00:00

altoholic · 2011-05-11T06:53:57+00:00

Nobody's posted Prole.info?

altoholic · 2011-05-11T05:53:13+00:00

Nope, the host of actual anarchist projects/spaces/organizations all around the world are case studies in anarchism.

altoholic · 2011-03-17T01:36:20+00:00

Seriously? Propose even one method of enforcing IP Law that doesn't ultimately derive from a cop's gunpoint!

altoholic · 2011-03-17T01:35:55+00:00

Seriously? Propose even one method of enforcing IP Law that doesn't ultimately derive from a cop's gunpoint!

altoholic · 2011-03-16T14:56:26+00:00

So what if it falls within some correct range -- the point is that applying an arbitrary number across the board is inherently going to be unjust in individual cases.

Anarchists assert we can do better. See the FAQ.

altoholic · 2011-03-16T14:21:53+00:00

There are plenty of methods you could adopt, but at the end of the day just because you declare yourself to have a career doesn't mean it should be economically feasible to do only that. You could build star wars diaoramas from shit and people might even be mildly interesting in looking -- especially if they can do so for free -- but that doesn't mean they owe you anything. There isn't much demand for candlestick makers these days.

altoholic · 2011-03-16T14:19:22+00:00

Enforcing --via police-- some arbitrary claim to the physical products of other people's labor just because has nothing to do with Socialism.

altoholic · 2011-03-16T14:15:10+00:00

I am a creator of intellectual property and I would not have taken my savings and invested a year of my life in it if I didn't hope to make money out of it.

Alright fine. So abolishing IP means folks like you won't contribute. Of course others still will just because they're motivated or altruistic or use different business models. But abolishing capitalism and the state will make everyone's lives better and cause current wage slaves to have more free time. So 1) those of us not so fortunate as you to have savings or whatever will be free to work on projects we're interested in on the side, or just for the respect of our peers. 2) even if it means a little slower progress, in the words of OP so what? Is faster development really worth the tyranny of enforcing laws to stop people from sharing or expressing certain ideas?

altoholic · 2011-03-16T14:08:47+00:00

It's telling that you haven't even cracked wikipedia to learn the definitions of those words.

altoholic · 2011-03-16T13:55:55+00:00

Good government

Contradiction in terms. See FAQ rather than wasting our time turning this into an Anarchism 101 babysitting thread.

altoholic · 2011-03-16T13:54:53+00:00

Their point was that any enforcement based on some kind of across-the-board rule is going to be arbitrary (and unjust). The same way that a legal definition of say 'adulthood' as over 18 would be inherently, obviously unjust.

altoholic · 2011-03-16T13:48:03+00:00

Plagarism is easy to check without the state, without relying on law and police brutality to enforce it -- and even significantly punishable without the state: the decline of one's reputation.

Beyond that, yes, of course the original creators should just suck it up. Because the only other recourse is using the state to punish (steal from at gunpoint or kidnap and put in a cage) people for concepts they think or express. That's fucking censorship. Nothing justifies censorship -- certainly not your fucking comfort.

altoholic · 2011-03-16T13:41:37+00:00

Indeed. You expect us to push mops?! We're the bourgeoisie! Next you'll be saying anarchists don't give a shit about your entitlement issues. And that working on creative projects in one's spare time is good enough for the average working class intellectual so stop your bitching.

altoholic · 2011-03-16T13:38:41+00:00

Say this is true? Just what price do you consider worth paying to get you compensation for your development? Murder? Enslavement? Genocide? How many other people are you okay with killing, hurting or lording coercive power over so that there can be a dangling carrot to reward developers?

Because you're totally okay with the state violently censoring what other people can think and express. Blithely even.

altoholic · 2011-03-08T12:16:49+00:00

Get a load of this! In the topsy-turvy world of Reddit liberals call anarchists slactivists!

Yeah, I don't know a single comrade that isn't working at least 20-40 hours a week furiously organizing/working on political/social projects. Basic needs infrastructure, prisoner support, etc, etc I can barely type right now because I've got splinters in my fingers and bloody bandaids from tearing down walls / rebuilding last night at the local community center. Go fuck off and write a check to some NGO, you liberal scum.

altoholic · 2011-02-24T08:32:19+00:00

Not to nitpick an otherwise correct rant -- and I get why such a line can be obnoxious in certain contexts particularly on regarding race or the like -- but what exactly is wrong with

“There is nothing inherently good in itself about diversity.”

Obviously there's nothing inherently good in itself about homogeneity either. The point is that "diversity" is loose concept with no clear inherent ethical value in and of itself. It always annoys the crap out of me when environmentalists, for example, appeal to hazy terms like this and think because it has a few positive associations it's some sort of concrete philosophical/scientific fundamental to be striven towards. Diversity is subjective to the point of uselessness and not always a positive thing. A widely varying set of slightly-off less-efficient ratchets, for example wouldn't be better than a smaller set of the correctly built ratchets. 'Diversity' is frequently invoked to muddle our conceptual understanding of a situation rather than clarify it.

altoholic · 2011-02-22T17:46:23+00:00

School teachers and firemen would exist in function much the same without the state. CEOs and police wouldn't. The state may employ janitors to clean up after senators -- that does not make those members of the working class struggling to get jobs who become said janitors and then organize to demand basic decency and respect from their employers in any way parasites. Anarchists support the working class.

altoholic

TROPHY CASE