-criticism on letterbombs and propaganda of the deed-

Peace doesn't work anymore. It used to, before the bosses got there hands on pepper spray and a massive police force. Now all it does is get the protesters attacked by the bosses armies. If we kill, we show them that they are weak and that the system can change. Violence is the answer, especially in the capitalist police states of today.

Out of curiosity, in what context do you feel that this form of violence is justified? I think that it would be a mistake to engage in this level of violence, before a coherent revolutionary movement with clear objectives has been developed.

Surely showing the bosses that they are weak is at best irrelevant and at worst counter-productive. We've no particular interest in the bosses reshaping conditions, we care about the working class reshaping conditions. It's building working class power that we care about, not showing the bosses that their power is dependent on our complicity and/or repression (a lesson they have already learnt). The most likely outcome of attacking bosses independently of building working class power is to bring down repression on yourself and those like you and giving a rational to the boss class to enhance their repressive apparatus in general.

Why would it hurt the movement. It would show the people that the oppressors are not invincible. We would be proving ourselves to the bosses and driving fear into their hearts, as long as we make sure there is no pattern in the killings, so that nobody knows who is next...

It didn't work in the 1880s, it won't work now. Have you studied the historical experience of insurrectionist anarchism? From where I'm standing it was a massive failure. Anarchists tend to come a lot closer to their goals with methods which can accommodate mass participation. Also, letter bombs are immoral. Didn't the Galleanists blow up some judge's house in New Jersey, only to injure the man's maid rather than the man himself?

The establishment are not afraid of individual acts of violence but acts of mass insurection. We have to be aware that acts of terror are used out of impatience; only the working class can liberate themselves by their own hands and all over the world the working masses are begining to move. Its this mass action that has to be supported not individiual acts which will lead to the movement been discredited and comrades ending up in jail when they should be helping to build a mass movement.

Yes. I mentioned this on another thread about a recent letter bomb supposedly by anarchists.

Here is an extract about it from Sacco & Vanzetti by Bruce Watson.

Dozens of bombs were sent to major US officials. The only person hurt by it was a working class black woman. Moreover, in the eyes of many Americans, working class included, it justified the massive red scare and brutal state repression of various radical, and not so radical, wings of the labour movement.

Terrorism is utterly pointless from a class struggle perspective and totally inhuman from that same perspective!

And anyone who might think about arguing that certain 'sacrifices' need to be made in order to advance the struggle ought to stop posting on libcom and go to a church where that kind of nonsense is taken for great wisdom.

What level of significance do you think that, if by bosses you mean managers, have in the perpetuation of capitalism? There is a wide range of institutions, and ultimately social relations that must be extirpated.

While certain instances of propaganda of the deed can be somewhat admirable, it more often than not fuels a media frenzy, marginalizing ourselves from the working class. I think that the original post by afunke conveys the negative aspects of propaganda of the deed with much clarity, in addition to all other posts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Berkman

You wouldn't happen to be a cop, would you? Vanguardism is a far cry from Libertarian-Marxism.

1. I call cop.

2. If you're not a cop, you're going to meet them very soon if you carry on like that with nothing but an alias to anonymise you.

What? I don't believe in vanguardism anymore. I was mislead by the PLP to believe in it. I am an anarcho-communist now that I read the "anarchist FAQ's" on infoshop. I have individualist leanings though, and I don't want to identify with any particular theorist's work.

Yeah, I guess I just made myself eligible to go to 20 years of prison under the smith act.

Turning away fellow anarchists based on their methods is terrible. There is no right or wrong way and there is definitely more than one road to your goal.

Dunno about cop but Ravineman is definitely admin: no flaming, especially of new posters. Especially as you yourself have complained about people being rude on libcom!

Ambrose, I'm all for turning more of these fuckwits away. There's no right or wrong way? What a pile of wishy washy rubbish. While there may indeed be disagreements over the right way to go about things, some methods clearly undermine our movement and are just plain wrong.

Build working class resistance or maim a minion? As Sesame Street used to say, 'one of these things is not like the other...'

Okay.

Vanguardism or individuals bombing our way into communism?

this is the right way

There was another thread on this forum recently that discussed comments made by a Romanian anarcho-syndicalist who thought that raping women with fascist views was a legitimate political tactic. Now I think those 'methods' are wrong. And disgusting. I'm all for people trying to figure out what methods work for them, but one of the basic insights of anarchism is that we should act in a way that pre-figures the society we want to live in. So we should not be fine with whatever methods people chose, only with methods we think can help build things like solidarity and equality on which we rely for the overturning of this society and the introduction of a new one.

While I'm inclined to agree in principal (that there is more than one way), I fathom propaganda of the deed, especially letterbombing, is not especially helpful. Counter-productive, even! So harsh criticism is not out of place.

One question this raises for example, is what's so anarchist about blowing up proletarians? I think it's been shown that those in power never actually open those letters themselves, some poor secretary usually gets the hit.

The other end of it might be RAF-style target killings. While there's a bit of a disagreement about how much violence alienates people from us, this strategy is not doing much in terms of abolishing existing conditions or making the world a better place. It just puts you in prison and gives those in power more reasons to tighten their iron grip.

I think this is a cliche example (and proves Godwin's law at the same moment), but think of the Reichstag fire. What did that help?

Bombs are pretty fucking appalling for anyone calling themselves a friend of The People tbh, while with assassinations, yes they're applicable tactics in a time of open war, taking out the enemy's smartest operators is a good plan if you want to win quickly, but it's not an applicable plan here for several reasons:

1. This phase of the class war is structural, not visceral atm, but if you started assassinations you can be damn sure the ruling class would do the same and with way more ferocity, resources and expertise (just look at the dirty war in Spain against ETA, which had far more public support than a bunch of anarchists could manage in today's West). Raising the stakes is something you do once you have the strength, not something you do with a non-existent support network. And if you have that strength, assassinations will be no more than a sideshow issue compared to the main event.

2. I don't think you quite understand who it is that would need targeting. The "1%" is massive, it's 60,000 people in Britain alone, let alone the support networks for the franchise which lead to around a third of all Britons identifying as Tories. Tie in the international networks which actually run the business of capital and you're talking millions of elites, maybe billions of lackeys. It's a relatively small number compared to the 7 billion-odd workers who stand to benefit from revolution but these people are not going to be scared away by the murder of a couple of front men in any single country.

3. It's a repugnant idea, which outside of wartime no-one will think is acceptable and which goes against the very core of anarchism as a creed drawing its legitmacy from mass decision-making. It's worth reading Berkman on this, he describes how his attempted killing of Henry Clay Frick turned the workers he was doing it for against him - they never asked for it, they faced vicious reprisals because of it. Fundamentally they weren't killers but Berkman tried to turn them into unwitting accomplices in his push to spark revolutionary violence through propaganda of the deed. I like Berkman as a anarchist writer, he was a smart guy but that was the stupidest decision he ever took and he acknowledged as much.

It certainly is. "Prison memoirs of an anarchist" is (among many other things) the story of him coming to realise what a stupid decision it was, as well as an account of his change of attitude to the working class.

I'm not advocating, I'm saying it's impossible to force every anarchist to turn away such things as letter-bombing. I can understand how violence turns people away, and a peaceful resolution should be sought at all times. But there will always be those who are tired of what they have to endure, lone-wolves who take matters into their own hands.

We all remember the bombing in Oslo. I have no idea what kind of impact the Oslo bombing had in Norway, but I'm not hearing it in the news like I did with 9/11. I have the feeling most American's have forgotten it ever happened. Where as with OWS leftists are being accused of acts they aren't even doing, I've heard several times people say the OWS folks are violent and deserved the heavy-handed police response. Meanwhile I hear from people at the spot that they are hard-core pacifists to the point of abandoning their fellows, submitting to the same mindset as those I just mentioned.

If it had been leftists who had bombed Oslo, I sincerely believe it would have received much more media coverage. Our disposition is what it is and because of it the media will always portray us negatively to the public eye. Most people will be turned away by violent action, but perhaps they would have been turned away no matter what action we undertook?

Some will despise us no matter what we do, some will praise us. Revolution is a tasty way of saying civil war and there will always be those who will curse us for provoking state action, those who have faith in the state and it's rightness. There will also always be those who will say it was necessary, who would say such conditions would be suffered at some point. Father against son, brother against brother, that is revolution.

And as with every revolution or similar military campaign, the majority of people will be uninvolved, the middlemen and women, those who are simply trying to live their lives and raise their families. Some will blame us for causing them hardship, some will blame the corporations and the state for enacting their hardship, and still others will believe both at once.

But I do not condone bombings. I believe action is better than inaction. I believe the more we as a group try to control such things as letter-bombings the less control we will have and the more our principles will be forgotten. It will happen as it has happened in the past and we can't control it, we shouldn't even desire to control it for it is the only way to push society to the crisis point necessary for people to do something.

Self initiative is key, and while I may disagree with letter-bombing, I know I can do nothing to significantly change it.

A few of these arguments really rub me the wrong way. Edit for clarity: not necessarily the conclusions, but the support you give for them.

You know what, maybe that's true, but it's very clear that there are people who are profiting off of death, murdering, and personally oppressing others. Seeing as how they do all of this here and now, I wouldn't exactly cry if I found out that one of them blew up. When you're being attacked you have the right to defend yourself.

Congratulations! You've just recreated what every liberal at every protest I've ever been to has told me. "We can't walk into the state building! Then we'll justify a reaction from the cops! We can't march in the street! Then the cops will react! Stay on the sidewalk! We can't link arms! The cops will get scared and attack us! We can't do anything but stay in the pre-approved protest area and hold out signs and do everything the police tell us!"

This is a really lame sauce argument. Guess what, any widespread radical activity will lead to more repression. If everyone starts their own gardens, or community gardens, that can't be bought out while boycotting major food suppliers it would lead to more repression. If people start joining the IWW en masse it will lead to more repression.

Viewing "us" as something other than "the general public" is probably more of a statement about the speaker than the movement. I don't do things that are good for my ideology, I do things that are good for my class and my community.

Not to split hairs, as I overwhelmingly agree with most of your post, but women have a long history of partaking in insurrectionist activities.

But letterbombs are really stupid, btw.

Being against letter bombing does not make you a pacifist! There is a huge difference between terrorism and the kind of violence we see used by revolutionary workers (during the Paris Commune and the Spanish Revolution or even by protestors occupying buildings and confronting police today).

Being against the murder of civilians for political gain is not the same as being non-violent. That should be obvious.

If the IWW retains it's radicalism as it did at it's peak in the early 20th centuary, then surely as brilliant day light leads to pitch black night, there will be state repression. The IWW was destroyed by state agencies with ruthless leaderships. The same goes for any movements or organisations that seriously challenge the state's monopoly of overwhelming violence within it's territory.

That's not to say there won't be a time for "violence". I would rather wait until there develops a substantial working class movement thats capable of formulating a clear anti-state and anti-capitalist programme. In the here and now, I think militants should be focused on helping to build such a movement and shouldn't advocate the use of "terrorist" methods. That only leads to the legitimacy of overwhelming state sponsored violence against workers movements and the isolation of militants.