Duplication of effort?
Jan 11 2011 18:26
Jan 11 2011 19:26
yeah i would certainly say duplication of effort. i'd say libcom.org really rules for a hub for libertarian communists, especially in the UK...i wish there was an equivalent in the USA. for now i am going to be content uploading as much stuff as i can to here though.
it is started by some young looking fellow in nebraska...i sorta feel for the guy, if i was in the middle of nowhere i'd want to make an on paper effort as well probably...
Jan 11 2011 19:48
Do you know where in Nebraska? Because there's definitely a IWW branch in Omaha. Some of us here know some other anarchists there that hosted one of the meetings to establish a midwest anarchist 'neteration' and they also held the national Food Not Bombs gathering. Seems like a mixed crowd, but the group of people we met, one of which was a former Pittsburgh Organizing Group member seemed pretty solid despite our apparent political differences.
Jan 11 2011 20:45
the person doing it is one Brian Ellis, you could probably find them on Facebook
Jan 11 2011 20:46
ps: deric just proposed on ABC that maybe we start up our own hub for CSAC, i'm thinking to propose it as a working group/commission a la the labor one, would you be interested?
Jan 11 2011 21:06
Quote:
Our immediate goal is to facilitate networking and cooperation between the world’s various libertarian socialist organizations and to create a sense of solidarity between these groups. We also wish to provide an easy way for people to find out about libertarian socialism in general and about groups in their area which they may affiliate with. Our future aims are uncertain but we have discussed a quarterly publication and the possibility of forming a libertarian socialist confederation – a platformist organization with the intent of bringing libertarian socialist groups together based on the views they hold in common.
At least you can't say they're not ambitious. Although I would take them a bit more serious if they didn't link to anarchy.no on their organizations page...
Jan 11 2011 21:18
Ok, cool. I also asked a non-IWW anarchist I know in Omaha.
p.s.- check ABC
Jan 11 2011 21:22
checked! i generally agree with you.
a plus is the person doing it at least seems to do organized activist activity with other anarchists in lincoln, ne
Jan 14 2011 06:03
Howdy y'all (had to fit that Nebraska stereotype),
Hey I ran across this thread when I was doing a check on google hits for the site. I am "that dude" who is behind the WLSN page. Thought I would drop in and say "hi". I also wanted to comment on some of what has been said. I don't see the site as a duplication of effort. The reason I started the site is because I haven't come across any site that tries to bring together all of the LS/LC organizations in the world...well I guess I shouldn't say I haven't come across any but the ones that I have come across all seemed to be doing a poor job. There are good resources like the Anarchist Yellowpages, but they only highlight small collectives; and these are mostly disparate groups falling under that huge umbrella term "anarchism". Personally I find little in common with many "anarchists", since the term is used to articulate a wide variety of often conflicting ideologies. Other sites like World in Common, again, are very good, but that particular site seems quite outdated...and frankly maybe worse off aesthetically than WLSN.
I want something simple - without fancy crap - a site where I can go to get news and find similar groups all over the world. Simplicity is a huge thing for me and from surveying others I have found many people have a hard time navigating the web to find accurate info about social anarchism/libertarian socialism. Libcom is an awesome site, but networking groups all over the world does not appear to be one of it's priorities. I do not see a list of organizations anywhere.
@ Yorkie Bar - about the banner, was that a compliment or an insult? Just kidding, I know it is mediocre - sucky. Which illustrates why I need help from other people! I am not a web-designer. I have gotten input, suggestions and a little help from comrades but mostly this has been a solo project. I am looking for people to help out if they support the idea. Admittedly the FAQ was written in a presumptuous manner. I was assuming a lot of groups would want to "affiliate" but pretty much the responses I've been getting are akin to: 'we want to be on the site but we are unsure of affiliating.' Which is understandable...it has to go to a vote and everything. Direct democracy definitely doesn't equal expediency, but of course it is the most intelligent and just way to get things done. So for now the site will basically be a catalog or libertarian socialist (or communist) groups of the world. The FAQ should be amended soon.
@ Juan, yep, I am involved with several groups, The Nebraska IWW being one of them. I also work with the local Food Not Bombs, the LUNk Collective and a few others groups. Thanks for wanting to hook me up with others though! I was an isolated radical for a long time.
@ Felix - yeah, that was a goof on my part. I meant to put up the real AIF but I couldn't find their page. I googled and found that one but didn't bother to look at it, thinking it was what I was looking for. Big mistake. I was alerted by a couple different people. When I looked at the site I was like WTF?! It was all non-sense with a little bit of good mixed in...but very few and far between. Whoever made that page is either a nut or it's some kind of disinformation tactic being used by some group.
I hope you all will continue to provide input, criticisms, suggestions. Thanks!
Jan 14 2011 17:22
Hi Brian.
Helping individuals and groups network is a big part of the role of libcom.
However, due to previous efforts we made of even trying to provide listings of libertarian groups in the UK alone we found impossible to keep up-to-date. For better or worse, libertarian groups come into existence and disappear all the time, and they are impossible to keep up with.
It does not seem clear from your site, but how do you see your forums for example being different from ours?
Jan 14 2011 18:48
When I first saw the site, it reminded me of another project of some years back.There was a bulletin published by Frank Girard of Michigan, US (now deceased) called "The Discussion Bulletin" Frank was a much older person than the current comrade, spent years in the De Leonist SLP.
"The Discussion Bulletin serves as... independent forum of a relatively unknown sector of political thought that places the great divide in the "left", not between anarchists and Marxists, but between capitalism's statist leftwing of vanguardists and social democrats, and the real revolutionaries of our era: the non-market, anti-statist, libertarian socialists. They are organized in small groups of syndicalists, anarcho-communists libertarian municipalists, world socialists, socialist industrial unionists, council communists, and left communists."
The DB was mainly used by folks from the socialist libertarian left, but anarchists and left communists used it as well. As did many De Leonists and ex-De Leonists. It was funky and electic, but mainly interesting.
The DB started publishing in the 1980s, the issues from that period up until 2000 or so do not appear on-line. Some issues of the DB can be found on the historical webite: http://libertariansocialism.4t.com/
Jan 16 2011 06:17
Steven,
Yes, the main difference would be that the WLSN would place a priority on maintaining an up-to-date list of these organizations, regardless of how meteoric they may be. I would like to see libcom do something like this, maybe they could delegate this task to one or two comrades in particular so that it gets updated constantly. Like I said before if such a site existed I wouldn't feel the need for the WLSN.
As for the forums, there is really no difference, and I don't expect these forums to become very popular. I think libcom has a niche that it fits very well. My hope is that the WLSN will occupy a separate but equally important niche - as a resource for finding LS/LC orgs and networking.
Syndicalist, I wasn't aware of that site but I will check it out. Maybe I can link to it on the WLSN site.
Jan 17 2011 02:21
sabotage wrote:
yeah i would certainly say duplication of effort. i'd say libcom.org really rules for a hub for libertarian communists, especially in the UK...i wish there was an equivalent in the USA. for now i am going to be content uploading as much stuff as i can to here though.
At various points (although not much recently) we've discussed trying to build stronger links with other 'hub' sites like www.alasbarricadas.org etc., and/or having some kind of region-specific ways into the content on the site (like us.libcom.org or similar). We get more overall traffic from the US than the UK, but proportionally at least, regular posters tend to be from the UK (although I reckon it was probably about even before a lot of IWW and NEFAC members stopped posting and went to abc).
Jan 17 2011 02:33
Brian wrote:
Steven,Yes, the main difference would be that the WLSN would place a priority on maintaining an up-to-date list of these organizations, regardless of how meteoric they may be. I would like to see libcom do something like this, maybe they could delegate this task to one or two comrades in particular so that it gets updated constantly. Like I said before if such a site existed I wouldn't feel the need for the WLSN.
Hi Brian, no-one has asked about this for a very long time (pretty much since we removed the original link list in the first place). If you just wanted to maintain a single page with a list, this could be done as a library article (any registered user can create one), possibly as a book if it needs a few pages. Something like a proper directory is less likely since we'd need to set it up in the first place (and I have a massive backlog of other stuff that needs doing).
Jan 17 2011 05:44
@ Mike: That would be something to consider. Perhaps when I have compiled an extensive list.
I am not familiar with ABC. What is that site?
Jan 17 2011 05:52
ABC = Anarchist Black Cat - it's a forum run by the various neo-platformist organisations associated with Anarkismo.
Jan 18 2011 00:53
Ah. Very good. I will have to link those.
Jan 18 2011 07:09
If anyone wants to do a directory, they would be welcome to take over the Anarchist Yellow Pages project.
It's a bit out of date and in need of a good purge of undesirable elements, but would be a good starting point.
Jan 18 2011 08:16
Felix Frost wrote:
If anyone wants to do a directory, they would be welcome to take over the Anarchist Yellow Pages project.It's a bit out of date and in need of a good purge of undesirable elements, but would be a good starting point.
yeah, it would make much more sense to improve an existing resource than try to start a massive new one from scratch
Jan 19 2011 05:43
How does one plug into that though???
Edit: seems easy enough, new thing to do while bored.
there is also this project...
http://wiki.infoshop.org/Anarchist_Neighborhood
Jan 19 2011 22:05
Brian wrote:
Steven,Yes, the main difference would be that the WLSN would place a priority on maintaining an up-to-date list of these organizations, regardless of how meteoric they may be. I would like to see libcom do something like this, maybe they could delegate this task to one or two comrades in particular so that it gets updated constantly. Like I said before if such a site existed I wouldn't feel the need for the WLSN.
As for the forums, there is really no difference, and I don't expect these forums to become very popular. I think libcom has a niche that it fits very well. My hope is that the WLSN will occupy a separate but equally important niche - as a resource for finding LS/LC orgs and networking.
Syndicalist, I wasn't aware of that site but I will check it out. Maybe I can link to it on the WLSN site.
Hi Brian,
I'm surprised you didn't know of the DB as it is one of the Links featured on the World in Common site, which you say you are familiar with. You can probably find links that will be of use to you on the following:
http://www.worldincommon.org/links.html?id=222
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/worldincommon/links
and a fair, but very incomplete list, of blogs here:
http://spacesofhope.blogspot.com/
Good luck!
arminius
Jan 26 2011 22:43
Thanks to everyone for suggestions. Arminius, I made the changes you suggested. Thanks!
@ Felix: I like the anarchist yellow pages but my problem with it is, like I said before, I don't usually identify as just an "anarchist", and I am skeptical of groups that identify as such until I know what they mean by that term. Like you stated, if you went through that list I am sure you would come across a lot of groups that don't mean the same thing by anarchism as we do. I have found that a lot of anarchist groups are a mishmash of leftists, new-age nuts, primitivists, and whole other assortment of "anarcho" tendencies. Whereas when someone identifies as a libertarian socialist or libertarian communist I have a much better understanding of where they may be coming from. Hence the WLSN.
I don't plan on including anarchist groups of the above variety on the site unless they are a valuable resource - like infoshop.org
Jan 26 2011 22:45
@ arminius - I am aware of the WIC links page but I found a lot of them to be out of date. I would like to work with WIC though in some way.
Jan 27 2011 01:44
You've got the WSM listed as 'left communist' in your organizations page; which is incorrect (you made it seem like you didn't want left communist, councilist, etc groups on your site?)
Loren Goldner's website has a number of good links on it (spanning the ideological divide between libertarian communists, left communists, Wobblies, etc):
Jan 30 2011 13:40
Brian wrote:
@ Felix: I like the anarchist yellow pages but my problem with it is, like I said before, I don't usually identify as just an "anarchist", and I am skeptical of groups that identify as such until I know what they mean by that term. Like you stated, if you went through that list I am sure you would come across a lot of groups that don't mean the same thing by anarchism as we do. I have found that a lot of anarchist groups are a mishmash of leftists, new-age nuts, primitivists, and whole other assortment of "anarcho" tendencies. Whereas when someone identifies as a libertarian socialist or libertarian communist I have a much better understanding of where they may be coming from. Hence the WLSN.
I mostly agree with this, and it's one of the reasons why I have decided to not continue with the AYP project in its current form. If anyone wants to take over the project, they are welcome to make any changes they like (including changing the name for that matter). I've been planning to post an announcement about this for a while, I just haven't gotten around to it.
Feb 6 2011 20:16
@ devoration 1: You stated "you made it seem like you didn't want left communist, councilist, etc groups on your site?"
I don't know where you got that impression. I hope it is not implied in some way. This is from our FAQ:
"Libertarian socialism is an umbrella term which encompasses several different socialist tendencies, which although may disagree on certain tactical “means”, do not disagree on “ends”. Within this umbrella group are the tendencies known as social anarchism (aka anarcho-communism), anarcho-syndicalism (a social anarchist theory focusing on industrial unionism as an agent of social change and societal organization), council communism and left-communism."
The WSM does not label itself ideologically other than the often misappropriated and vague term "socialism". As an ex-member I would categorize them as either libertarian socialist or left-communist, but if you have a better descriptor let me know.
Feb 7 2011 04:47
Yeah, the thing is, left communist groups don't generally consider themselves to be libertarian; socialist, yes, but not libertarian. Also many libertarian socialists, including some -- I won't try specifying quantitatively -- here on libcom wouldn't consider them libertarian either ... or maybe, some of them possibly, others, e.g. the Bordigists, definitely not. Is that sufficiently confusing? 
Can comment on articles and discussions
Very strange. They "exist as a loose, world-wide network of organisations" but the "organisations" section of their site doesn't list any - instead listing organisations which are not currently affiliated.
Plus their logo looks like something I would make.