People like authority i think

Kind of makes you despair of the post-revolution anarchist world, dunnit? I can just imagine it now: rather than debate with minorities in the assemblies, we'll just take the piss. Hmmm...some brave new world.

My...so eloquent, it's easy to see that you're from the land of Joyce, Yeats and Heaney.

And, of course, you're right, it is incredibly witty to take the piss out of people and sooooooo much more amusing when they react to the provocation. We used to do that at school, only in those days we called it bullying.

So, "comrade" (runs to check meaning of word in dictionary), you might as well "give up the struggle" now, because I'm fucked if I can see much in the way of comradeship, solidarity, understanding or the rest of it in your most recent posts. My understanding of anarchism means more than just going through the motions by writing pamphlets and going on demos. It means respecting your fellow human beings and seeking to respect diversity in society- not ridiculing it. Of course, it's easy to act anarchist, but to actually think like an anarchist means struggling against behaviour that you've been socialised into and that's a struggle that you appear either to have given up already or not yet started.

bigdave's a minority now?

i've tried engaging with bigdave and his own unique special worldview that he's entilted too just as much as anyone else and its precious and speical and blah blah blah. He said i was determined to perpetuate ignorance and was doing the equivalnet of killing thousands of people a day for not teaching them how to tell the time

now we can bang on about respecting diversity all we want but the only way where going to find respect for other people is through holding there beliefs upto scrutiny and defending are own. Its through dialouge rather than passive acceptence that respect is built. Now i quite respect bigdave for single mindedly banging on with his curious opinions no matter what people say. Doesn't mean i don't think there crap and slightly troubling.

and why ain't humour or ridicule a legitimate form of debate? Surely you should respect the multiplicity of duscursive techniques, or some such...

captain mission and revolt what did you think and feel as you read big daves post - were you filled with fear of the unknown or did you feal threatened by the ideas presented - did you feel angry - did you think about the idea - did you conduct an intelectual argument within your head that disproved the ideas - did you feel stupid or think that big dave was calling you stupid -

big dave posted and was attacked why what was the reasoning behind it - do you know your reasoning do you understand how your mind works

if you think what he has said was incorrect it would be adult to present us with new information that can help us and big dave re-assess what was written - it is childish to stick your tongue out and run away - it would be adult to ask questions that force big dave to justify his ideas - and force the rest of us to think deeper into the idea - it is childish to put your hands over your ears and say im not listning

now if you were my children i would ask you to leave the room and allow the adults to continue there discussion - but since this is an internet forum all i will say is if your not interested in the subject matter stay off the thread.

now ive got that off my chest - lets get on with the discusion

looking outward and upwards for a belief system - needs further exploration - all we know about the world comes from outwith ourselves - it is not the search for knowledge and understanding that is wrong - the mistake comes in fettering that knowledge into a belief system - the mind held in a belief system is like a bonsia tree stunted and distorted - and although the tree can be considered beautiful - it is not the majestic tree it could have been.

the bonsie tree that is untied is weak and scarred and struggles until it has had time to re-adapt to stand alone - perhaps for a while it even needs a crutch to lean on. what we are dealing with in society is stunted bonsai trees minds - it will be different than starting with a new tree before the manipulation has taken place. i think the second part the quote above deals with it best we are scared that there is no alternative so we cling to alternatives like anarchy to comfort us. but i think the fear is deeper - to do what you say and let go means relying on our own limbs stunted and distorted - and we fear that WE cannot stand without our supports. we need to take our own individual responsibility for who we are and how we make the world better. we need to believe that we can interprete the world and guide our own actions - without the aid of anything but our own humanity

what if i am wrong - what if i fail - what if im not liked for my stance -

but at the end of the day all we can really change is ourselves, our consumption, our understanding of the world and our actions.

Chairman Right then, Comrade García Oliver, you´ve got the floor.

CGO Yeah, well, as a member of la FAI, I´d just like to inform the assembly that I've been offered a job as the Minister of Justice in the givernment and I plan to take it.

Federica Montseny Oooh, are there any other openings that need filling? I've always fancied Minister of Education.

Assembled revolutionaries Well, that's that then. Hey, let's take the piss out of the spotty kid.

revol68 Yeah. That'll be fun.

Humour is a perfectly legitimate form of debate, but when you ridicule somebody, you are implying that their argument isn´t worth debating. And we know what happens when people aren't given the opportunity to actually debate their ideas. I think you're spot on when you say that dialogue is how respect is built, but ridicule pretty much shuts off the dialogue.

Now, as far as Big Dave's theories go, I haven't really paid them too much attention so I might be missing the animalism side. I can't see that it differs from fairly well established psychological theory like constructivism. We build our knowledge of the world through our cultural history and our experiences. Language is the main tool that we use to explain the world and to think about it. If you restrict the language of the peasants by giving them a shitty education, offering them crappy tabloids, entertaining them with dross on the TV and radio, then you are restricting their ability to think. If they are unable to think too much, concepts such as anarchism and revolt and critical analysis are that much more alien to them which means a docile workforce and a capitalist class which is free to mess with our heads.

Quite where the animals come into it, I don't know (although linguists will argue that our language and our use of it to reflect upon the world is what makes us human...so less language, more animal?)

There you go...comradely debate

well no they can use humour or ridicule back can't they? Sorry i'm not using the language of 'Joyce, Yeats and Heaney'. would that be better?

sorry but HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, you can't even be bothered to look at what bigdaves actually saying? Nice job of respecting diversity there

Well as far as i'm concerned the 'peasants' can think for themselves, they don't need no group self important politicos telling them what to think. I didn't need some one to tell me how to 'liberate' myself thankyou very much. But i guess i must just be 'resticted'. It's Just patronising wank as far as i'm concerned.

the poor darlings, not having understanding of critical theory! You right we just have to look at history to see all those examples of simple minded complicant 'peasants' being docile, whislt the well educated middle class had a revolution for them.

Far as i'm concern people can educate themselves fine, without having the self appointed enlightened teach them how to think for themselves and take away their tabloids

My boss took away our tabloids at work. Said the subscription cost was an unneccessary expense. Bastard.

All joking aside, this thread's fucking hysterical We can learn to love each other through laughter guys.

Ummm...revol68 (great name...'cos it manages to actually get across the ideas of, like, revolution which is like cool, man, and it's like what we're all about when we are, like, in the struggle sort of thing and yet, at the same time, it reminds us that in 1968, like, which was kind of in the past, there was a kind of middle class uprising in France when all the students like me but in France went out in Paris and demanded more beaches in the city and that's like really iumportant because the poor people should have holidays too. In fact, the poor people really suffer and that's why I am a revolutionary, you know? I'm sick of all my neighbours on the Malone Road who just like exploit the workers and the workers must be really think to put up with it. ANyway, I'm going to help the workers learn what's good for them and kill the nasty neighbours.)...what I think you meant to say is that you don't understand my user name. My advice is to google it and then you can come back and pretend you understand it. It's actually a very good username and played on a scrabble board, as first word down, would be worht hundreds and hundreds of points. Of course, you'd have to be playing in the Basque Country because foreign words aren't allowed. And your opponents might point out that you can't use people's names in scrabble so you might actually not get any points and lose your turn, but that's what the struggle is all about, innit?

I thought captainmission was just being a bit of a tosser, but I now see that he has difficulty reading. I looked at what bigdave was saying (the pointer might have been the fact that I then responded to it). I just haven't paid it a lot of attention.

Are you taking the piss? Because what you have written is such a mangled interpretation of what I have said that I can't imagine that you're being serious! If you try to look at all the words, you will see that you are writing about something that isn't there. Oooh, it's a bit scary, isn't it?

It's interesting how you drop words into other people's mouths. First you referred to "humour and ridicule" when I had used "ridicule". Then you started spouting off about how you "don't need no big mo'fuckin' politico telling you what to think, girlfriend" when I had described the present rather than prescribed the future. Now you're beating yourself into a frenzy about critical theory when I have only talked about critical analysis.

OK, OK, OK...you've got me there actually. I've just gone back to my history books and read them like I imagine you read (inserting weird things that aren't really there) and I can now see that Lenin was actually a baker, Fidel Castro was an unemployed plumber and Che Guevara described himself as a painter and decorator.

Well, you might want to start up another wee literacy class because you have no fucking idea about how to read! You look at a text but it seems to change by the time it gets to your brain and it appears to say the opposite to what the writer said. Of course people can educate themselves, ya daft slobbery shite! If you tried reading without imagining that only you know what anarchism is and everyone else is wrong or having a pop at you, you might be able to see that you're making things up.

It might help the debate a wee bit more than using the thought process of Beckett, yeah.

How much?

olenxzererrt - I think you're looking at the things the wrong way. You seem to be thinking that people need educating by an elite to rebel because of a flawed analysis of history. You point out "great" "leaders" as examples of revolutionaries would seem to imply that you fail to realise that actually revolutions were created by millions of people - mostly not-well-educated workers and peasants.

Those "educated" types you mention generally were ones who got themselves installed in positions of power on the back of these popular movements and destroyed the revolutions.

Are you a Leninist, btw? Cos that would explain the disagreements...

And the lack of humour

I certainly wouldn't think of myself as a leninist. Nor do I think that I have referred to "great leaders" nor do I think that I have implied "that people need educating by an elite to rebel because of a flawed analysis of history". I'm suggesting that the majority of people don't rebel because they are prevented from developing anything other than a false consciousness. That is done through education, manipulation of the media and many other means. Now, it's a pretty big leap from that to extrapolating from it, "Therefore we just need to brainwash the proles into thinking differently." And that's a leap that I didn't make: you and others did.

Come to think of it, I don't even think that I have said that it was the middle class revolutionaries who "created" the revolutions although I can see how I left myself open to misinterpretation. To clarify, I think that the middle class revolutionaries shaped how the revolutions turned out (with a great many of the working class going along with them for whatever reason). Just to preempt, that doesn't mean that I am unaware that a considerable number of working class revolutionaries didn't go along with them and were killed or jailed for their resistance.

As for the lack of humour, I think I'm a gas. Perhaps people who concur with the eloquent revol68 prove my schoolteachers were right when they told me, "You wouldn't find it funny if people treated you that way."

So the communist party leadership invented the soviet did they? And I'm sure the workers were just begging the bolsheviks to restore one-man management. Hmmmmmmm.

Sure, in Russia, China, Cuba etc the ruling party laid down the law pretty heavily once they had the chance, but that only happened because in those cases the working class weren't strong enough at that time to fully take power, like I think revol68 mentioned before in this thread.

Individuals don't change anything. The people that make the revolution shape the revolution.

Well I've certainly been laughing at you.[/i]

I'm sorry, could you point out where I either said or implied such things? Hmmmmmmmm indeed.

Um... the quote of yours I was responding to. It's pretty much all there. You're saying the middle class leaders of the revolution shaped the revolution, which funnily enough is implying that those leaders were responsible for all the awesome bits of the revolution (like taking the factories, soviets, mutinies in which the ship's captain is burnt alive inside a barrel, awesome etc) and also that the workers somehow complied in the shift to Stalinist dictatorships "for whatever reason". Like they just got fed up with siezing the means of production one day. Great analysis of revolutionary you've got there.

So what is it you've got down the idea of the working class being able to liberate itself?

Umm...let's just have another look at what I said, seeing how relying on your misinterpretation isn't going to get us much further. I wrote:

Let's look carefully at those last two words. Mmm...slightly different then...

Hmmm...

Is this more of your not bothering to read stuff?

What are you on about? Let's just be clear: you quoted me as saying that the middle classes shaped the revolution. I quoted myself (accurately) as saying that the middle classes shaped how the revolution turned out. Your somewhat bizarre rebuttal of this is to quote yourself saying that the ruling classes crushed the revolution (shurely agreeing with me then?) and ask if I bothered to read it!

Is this some sort of tactic: when confronted by logic, respond with non-sequiturs? Are you going to come back with, "My granny never said that!!!"

Well, that's hardly news, is it?

Pfft. It's basic Marxism. Small groups don't affect anything, it's the economic situation in a society at the time, that gives those small groups their roles. A weak working class meant the revolution couldn't be finished. If the workers had been able to completely sieze power the middle class parasites wouldn't have been able to take control. Sooooooo... yes, obviously revolutions like Russia, Cuba, Portugal etc got crushed or subverted, but only because the economic conditions weren't quite right for a full revolution, it wasn't those groups shaping history. It was more a case that history was shaping them.

the workers have never been able to seize full power - why not - could it be their consiousness was lacking - could it be that they looked to someone else to do it for them - could it be the masses were led to revolution when they were not ready for it - all revolutions - accross the board why has the masses failed to take full power

then fuck knows what shape the british revolution will be - ALL the groups with an answer for the masses - will be jumping up and down on the revolutionary bandwagon - shouting about all the other groups who are aboard till the wheel falls off - and the blood of the masses fall upon the road - again

I refer the right honourable member (member, he he) to the answer I gave earlier:

"The movement' can go fuck itself. Revolution is about emancipating ourselves from statist capitalist forces, not watching the fuckers wave red flags in Trafalgar Square.

(...)

Leninism, Stalinism, the RMT leadership, Ken Livingstone, Liberal NGOs, Religious wackos, Nationalist wankers, handwringing charities... Where is this opposition to capitalism? This whole movement thing is bollocks. Mass working class action makes revolution, assorted state capitalists fuck it up."

Right, redyred. There's a couple of things you should know: the first is that what you probably meant to say is, "I'm sorry, I misunderstood what you were saying and that's why my previous posts (and this one) have shag all to do with anything that you have written." The second is that your marxist explanation sits quite neatly along with my Vygotskian explanation (Vygotsky was, after all, a marxist psychologist).

You say that the economic conditions weren't right for the workers to consolidate the triumph of the revolution. I say that (quite possibly because the economic conditions weren't right) the consciousness of the revolutionaries was still prepared to accept leadership by the "higher classes". Whilst I almost agree with what you say, I think you slightly misunderstand "basic marxism" and now I'm going to use some big words (just so all the students can get really riled up and use the internet to try and assert their "working class credentials" by bitching about how I'm a middle class intellectual wankah ). I would have thought that rather than a dichotomous relationship between history and people, "basic marxism" would have defined a dialectic relationship. That is, it's not a case of history shaping people or people shaping history. It's a case of history shaping people and then people shaping history, n'est-ce pas? (French for, "So what the feck are you bitching with me for, bitch? )

So, all I've really argued throughout this thread is that people should respect Bigdave (not necessarily his opinions) and be prepared to debate with him rather than ridicule him. Then I moved on to say that I thought his theories weren't that different to the well-established psychological theories of constructivism (although to be more precise, with Vygosky's socio-cultural theory of mind). Then I said that this theory argued that as language was a tool that controlled how we interpreted the world and how we thought, anybody who had been restricted by the upper classes in their language development was likely to be less able to think critically or to reconcile things like anarchism with their view of the world. This restriction is done by feeding the masses piles of shite through crappy education and populist media. This is often referred to, outside a Vygotskian analysis, as "false consciousness" and that too seems to be a fairly well established analysis. People here have taken that to mean that I suggest brainwashing the proles into believing what we believe in (perhaps revealing their own lack of vision) or that I am eulogising (ooh, get him ) the middle classes (a hackneyed anarchist insult) whereas all I am saying is that is why I think people are prepared to accept authority. If people were here to debate (as opposed to mentally masturbate), they might have asked me what I saw as a solution to this rather than just assume that because they are really anarchists and I (appear to) disagree with them, I must be a liberal, marxist, arSeWiPe.

Of course, this neatly pigeonholes me as a leninist windbag who wouldn't know a good joke if it crossed the road hanging out of a chicken's arse. I apologise profusely. I hadn't realised that this forum was another place where (mostly) men came to engage in pseudo-trolling. I had thought that this board was a place for anarchists and like-minded individuals to engage in debate. It's pretty sad to see that for what is supposed to be a group of (comradely) libertarians standards for debate are about as high as any other bulletin board on the web with people bitching and insulting and flaming. Durutti battered on about the new world he carried in his heart. I'd add the idea of carrying it in your head as well. For the revolutionaries that they undoubtedly are, I'd suggest that revol68 et al. are still pretty much welded to the consciousness of here-and-now.

Someone asked (rhetorically, I suspect) what was wrong with ridicule. Perhaps I should have said then that it is just another form of authoritarianism. It's about slapping down people that you disagree with. Pigeon-holing people does the same. It's much easier to treat someone like a wanker if you can dehumanise them enough to label them as a leninist, a marxist, a SWPer, a middle class parasite etc. Of course, as long as you do that, your anarchist dream is going to remain no more than a sticky stain in yer bed.

I would have thought that an anarchist forum should be distinguishable from all of the other forums because it would exhibit comradeship, debate, the words, "Sorry, I misunderstood" etc. Perhaps there's still hope. Personally, I think that spoilers like revol68 who have sidelined this debate and infringed any one of a number of the conditions about treating people with respect and not being insulting etc, should be kicked out. If they want to engage in "humourous" repartee, let them go to the many other talkboards rather than polluting this one which can then get on with debates.

So, I've restated my opinion about why people appear to welcome authority. Anyone want to get back on topic?[/i]

Fucking arseholes.

Is that what Vygotsky would have said?

FAced with the likes of you and your bizarre discursive style, quite possibly...although he did specialise in people with special educational needs 8)

Well, you should be ashamed of yourself. Are you suggesting that redyred has a learning disability?