Liberty and Solidarity

It isn;t new, the focus put on it by people like the IWCA and HSG is new, and its been getting more coverage as membership of the labour party has completely plummetted. Point is you can put out some sort of position paper or whatever on localism and community action but you aren;t going to be doing any of it as L&S in the near future so to me it hardly amounts to some sort of radical break with the rest of the ''anarchist movement''.

I don't think it is anywhere near as bad as you make out.

Devrim

Most of it was pretty unexceptional stuff and largely the consequence of a small organisation rapidly taking on new membership and attempting to accomodate that. It probably isn't worth getting into the nitty gritty of the changes themselves (not because I don't think they should be made public but because it would be quite dull), the main focus however was improved communication (both within and outside the fed), greater accountability on decisions that are collectively made, a re-focus on internal education and a greater effort to build up sustainable activism/campaigns. There were also some reaffirmations of strategy but that is till in progress right now and wont be tied up until a summer conference we established.

There is no group called love and solidarity?

Devrim will you please fuck off? The obvious reason for that is WE HAVE NO INTEREST IN A BIG, PAINFUL, SLANGING MATCH. We wish the AF all the best, we have a different system of democracy and different priorities, end of. Secondly, as i have said countless times, this is not a 'split with the AF'; people have wanted a platformist group for a while in england, they found each other. We are not going to characterise ourselves by making our first order of business a slagging off other groups. Only people like you revel in that kind of thing.

my comrade said it better here:

innit.

Cheers to knightrose and Red And Black from the AF on this thread too. I agree with what you've both said, including to a certain extent it being a shame we never got to see the debate around the reforms. But, we're both better off where we are now, and thats that

People like me revel in what sort of thing. We actually have good working, and personal relationships with many people we disagree with. I think the biggest problem here is that you don't imagine you can make a simple political statement without having a ' BIG, PAINFUL, SLANGING MATCH'. No one is suggesting that you should start 'slagging off other groups'. It says a lot about how politically messed up the anarchists in the UK are. You don't even feel you can discuss political differences.

Devrim

You should just call the new group - no the whole fucking anarchist milieu as represented here on Libcom - Monty Python's Flying Fucking Circus.

You're all mired so deep in your own irrelevance that if you try to pull yourselves out of it your antique class struggle boots will be sucked off! How many people are we talking about in all of the groupuscules discussed above put together? Ten? Fifteen? Enough to hold a combined conference in a modest greasy spoon in Hounslow?

For what it's worth, I like the name Liberty & Solidarity, it's just that firstly it doesn't tell me much that differentiates platformists from anyone else who might consider themselves an anarchist, and secondly I don't really believe all of this stuff about how important a name is.

Anyway, isn't anonymity great?........ Power without responsibility and all that!

Best of luck with the new revolutionary vehicles,
A.

I wish i had antique class struggle boots No but seriously, i'd really love to hear what you think we should be doing right now instead of our antique class struggle ways to make ourselves more ''relevant'', come on give us a twirl and a quick list.

I didn't think it was a complete derailment. Sorry, I guess it's always a good idea to wait until you don't need a fag to contribute to a forum.

Erm, a quick list of things to do instead of wearing antique class struggle boots (they can be very fetching by the way, just not always practical in this day and age)? Well, I don't have all the answers - needless to say - but I would note that perhaps a wholesale reconsideration of where we are going and what we are doing and why we try to work in the anarchist tradition might be a good start.

- This is not a particularly welcoming site for people who aren't basically Marxist in their analysis, and I think the vehement attacks that some different voices come under here are regrettable.

- I really really am not trying to be sarcastic or smart-arsed but whatever it is we are doing as anarchists right now isn't really working and hasn't been working for a long time. I find it hard to believe that harking back to platformism, or indeed staying the AF, is going to change all that.

- You could read all night long on this site about Marx and Marxism; you can catch up on the all the latest news about organisations slightly less significant to the cause of social change than the Chichester Green Bowls Club; you can debate ancient history with intellectual dinosaurs who haven't noticed that the world has changed since 1936; oh, or you can go over to Libcommunity and exchange insults with people whose primary interests appear to be in-jokes. As soon though as someone says "er, excuse me actually I don't quite see the relevance of this guy Marx and why exactly do we celebrate someone whose most important contribution was a stack of impenetrable equations about the labour theory of value?" it's as if every anti-missile battery on the decks of a fucking US carrier group has opened up on the last of Saddam's scuds. If you suggest for a moment that there is something decidedly creaky about the prevalent form of class analysis and the calls for class struggle you're immediately a "liberal" or more likely just a tosser, and if you suggest that we might do something constructive in the here-and-now you're something else...... I can't even remember the word.

- If from time-to-time I feel frustrated and do a little gentle de-railing, well I reserve the right to do it because it has seemed to me since I first realised that I wasn't the only anarchist in the world that it's a whole hell of a lot easier to dream of Barcelona or even 1968, than it is to properly consider how we might make the powerful ideas we share relevant in today's world to people who really really really don't want to read the AF's latest dry as tinder paper or be bored to death by someone proclaiming the virtues of The Platform in language that was already out of date by the time Orwell wrote 'The Road to Wigan Pier'.

Other News - It's cloudy here in the Ariege, but I dug the first of my spuds yesterday........ if you really want to know so that you can pigeon-hole me properly, I paused halfway through writing this to make love and eat cake in the afternoon; in a little while I'm off to pick up my home schooled children from a neighbour's house, and before I go to bed tonight I'll have to shut up the chickens and my two goats..... so stick that in your workerist pipes and smoke it.

Fraternal sentiments to you all, peace & liberty,
A.

Oh, you're so right. Can we come and stay with you in the Ariege for our holidays?? (Maaannn)

Was what I was commenting on, and your tone in your first couple of posts was what I was having a go about. If you're prepared to have a civil conversation without saying things like:

Which just makes it look like you're lumping the attitudes of all the regulars into one, ie. stereotyping, then fair enough. What are your minority views? It's all very well saying libcommers have no new ideas (though I'd have huge issues with that as a statement in itself, a lot of new planning and idea sharing has been organised or debated via libcom), but it's just whinging unless you have some of your own. Start a new thread for them tho, obv. If they're good ideas, they'll get a hearing. if they aren't, amongst the bullshit will be some genuine analysis explaining why not.

Monster.

I think the problem is that your ideology seems to be, basically, that we should all go on a nice life-long holiday to France - which, personally, I'd quite like to do, but unfortunately I can't afford it.

Why should it be my responsibility to remain civil with you when you start off from an aggressive position? Rule one of civil debate, show as much respect as you expect to receive. If you start with slagging people off, don’t be surprised by narkey replies – if I was sharp-tongued in my response, it was to head off a continuation of this attitude. I’m certainly not known for being arsey in general debate. Fair enough with the apologies though.

I don't know how carefully you read this site, but while yes there are arsey exchanges - as every polticial board does - there's also a lot of well-thought out stuff which often gets lost in between the slanging matches which is worth persevering with.

The difference is I'm not getting hung up on what is essentially a failed gossip thread and catapulting it to the status of 'indicative of libcom' or indeed indicative of a failure in the class struggle movement. How familiar are you with the workings of the various federations? Enough to justify sitting in judgement?