there is nothing secret about revolution.

of course you do, everyone would if they could!
...you mean you agree now that organising collectively where we live and work to fight for better conditions is better than individually dropping out to survive as best we can outside of the system? that is good news.

It's been done before. Remember the counter culture? Didn't work so well, and certainly didn't end capitalism.

You're really not interested in bringing about the end of capitalism so much as your bohemian anarchist crutch are you? You are either a joke account or drunk.

It develops class combativity and consciousness of their material conditions and interests.

That's because they were all white middle class kids with trust funds, highly educated that easily got well-paid jobs after they started working in the "system" again and brought their consumerist vision of social change into the 80s and beyond.

On their communes they were almost always in conflcit with the locals, who most of the time were poor folks of colour, and more often than not the gender divisions on the communes were just copied from the ones existing. The counterculture was nothing more than a lifestyle aimed at individual change in consciousness. What did it do in the end? Nothing.

Fuck off to crimethinc.

Well that's fine and well so long as you're part of something that isn't really a threat. The authorities don't give a crap about what you think and say, at least, not right now - because it doesn't have any traction in the face of their overwhelmingly powerful media and propaganda machines.

But should shit hit the fan, you'll want to protect yourself. It's not going to be la-de-da then ... people will be getting raped, tortured, and killed and you must protect not only yourself but the people around you.

How arrogant. People in domestic intelligence are fully exposed to all the political arguments and are completely aware of the nature of the system they work for. Looking at your life isn't going to result in any sort of epiphany for them.

Idunno, it depends on what your idea of "better" is. My idea of "better" isn't to reform capitalism so that it can last forever; I'll leave that job to the social democrats. My idea of "better" is the total collapse of capitalism, and reforming the workplace and the market doesn't lead there. It perpuates it. It's an awful thing, but every instance of police brutality and repression, every job loss, every expansion of the service industry, every cut to social welfare, every horror war, every ripped-off consumer, cheated investor, homeless person, all of it brings us closer to the end of capitalism. I deplore these things, but at the same time, I'm not really enthusiastic about prolonging the situation by cushioning people against its effects. Reform just creates what is called a "moral hazard", which is where people behave differently because they are insulated from consequence. This is not my goal.

Wrong.

What is that supposed to mean? Rambling again, like most of your nonsense.

I'm not sure anything can be forced by will at all. I see collapse in swelling ghettoes, drugs dens, rooming houses, sleeping bags on a sidewalk. Lower class kids bitching will be there, and will probably have a role in shaping things. Until then it is as meaningless as you suggest.

Ever see stock markets take a dip over an outbreak of autonomous thought? What kind of threat is it?

Sustainability is the only threat. There is none other.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Yes we all participate, like it or not. No one can drop out, except to disappear in the forest (if that's possible). Some contribute more and some contribute less to the system. That's all.

There are no current consequences to be insulated from. If there are consequences in the future, I see no insulation.

I don't know why I'm bothering, as you clearly won't take any notice, but for the love of god, please think about what you post.

I don't want to sound patronising, but perhaps this might help? Social anarchism or lifestyle anarchism

Also, you really need to lose the chip on your shoulder about Marx. I probably accept less of Marx's economics than many posters here, but the kneejerk Marx = bolshevism/stalinism view you have is just ignorant.

The thing is, organising to fight against attacks on our conditions is the only thing that has ever brought us close to achieving the kind of society we'd like to see. Spain '36, Hungary '56, Paris '68, they were all examples of working class people organising collectively to fight against oppression and exploitation.

exactly. 'the end of capitalism' if not brought about by class struggle could be a hell of a lot worse than capitalism.

Close doesn't count. And several of those examples don't exactly represent some sort of organized resistance to the state under otherwise normal conditions - Spain, for instance, wasn't a situation brought about by anarchists or class struggle at all. It was the collapse of a capitalist republic in the face of fascist agitation, and the anarchist element occurred in that context. The Febuary Revolution was also the collapse of a capitalist state. Hungary, even, was a state in utmost distress, after having been through the war years followed by Stalinist repression and the looting of the nation. Not exactly business as usual ... the only example there of anarchists organizing and mounting resistance to a typical republican/parliamentarian capitalist state is Paris.

In other words, two thirds of those examples occur in the context of collapsed states or something worse than capitalism.

Well, I don't think class struggle has shown itself capable of pushing capitalism over the edge. Capitalism is far more likely, I think, to simply collapse from internal structural flaws, or as the result of interstate conflicts or fascist agitation. You're right that there's a huge danger of something far worse taking its place, and this has in fact happened in states where it has collapsed, including some of the above examples, along with many others. Still, I have hope that anarchist efforts in future collapses have the possibility of being far more succesful, if only for the simple reason that disaggregated armed force is far more succesful on the battlefield than it was in the mid-20th century. Franco would've had a hell of a time these days, and it's quite likely that if the Russian Civil War were happening now, the Makhnovists would've presented a far more formidable challenge.

Historically, the big problem that anarchists have is in the armed defence of the new society from state militaries. Anarchist societies have appeared, and even shown themselves to be capable of organizing production sufficient to form a viable economy that meets the needs of the populace - none of them failed economically, they all failed because they were crushed by armed force. But this new century has seen the adoptation of stateless armed force by a number of groups - not out of any political objection to the state, but because such forces are, today, extraordinarily effective against conventional military force.

No could be about it. The Congo or Somalia shows quite adequately the kind of future a collapsing capitalism has in store for us if we don't get rid of it.

really? so it was just a fluke that the fascist forces were confronted and defeated in the streets by armed workers, many of whom were CNT militants? Spain had a long history of often violent class struggle in which anarchists played a not-insignificant part leading up to '36.

no shit, otherwise we'd have communism already mind you the closest we've seen in history; russia in 1917, spain in '36 etc were the culmination of massive class struggles. the states didn't just 'collapse' on their own, they became unable to manage the contradictions of the rising class struggle (hence sections of the spanish bourgeoisie/landowners turning to fascism).

well fascism is a form of capitalism, not an alternative, and the end of capitalism through inter-state conflict sounds like pretty much the worst thing ever. gambling that anarchists would triumph in an asymmetric conflict without any kind of base in the wider class seems like wishing for barbarism to be honest. i mean you're right that non-state militaries can defeat conventional forces (even in spain the militias held their own, and the republican army capitulated), but wishing for world war and then hoping anarchism will spontaneously arise through guerrilla tactics seems proper mental like.

A fluke? No, a response to the rise of fascist power.

The Spanish Civil War, and the collapse of the Republic, was not the result of anarchist activity. Anarchist and communist forces took up arms in alliance with Republican loyalists to oppose the fascists who were executing a coup d'etat on the state.

Class struggle did not cause the situation - it was a reactionary response to constitutional reforms initiated by the republic. Structural flaws related to class divisions within the state may have had a role to play, but collective organization on the part of the communists and anarchists did not precipitate the coup.

But let's just say for a mintue that it did. Then where are we? Class struggle then, historically, is actively working for the very collapse you fear, and in most cases ultimately resulting in the kind of situations that are worse than, or more severe forms of, capitalism. So, really, we're right back where we started - the new society emerging amidst crisis. If collapse and armed conflict with totalitarian pretenders to the throne is something you say we should not desire, then we should certainly not engage in class struggle on the basis of historical examples such as Spain or the Russian Revolution.

I don't think choice or desire have any role to play in the inevitable. No reasonable person hopes for tragedy, but that doesn't preclude seizing opportunity from crisis, in whatever sphere - politics, work, relationships. This isn't any different.

If you agree that class struggle cannot topple capitalism, then how do you see the new society emerging? Me, I see it either emerging from ashes, or in the context of the "shell of the old society" (ie capitalism). I think agitating for revolution is simply forcing the hand of history prematurely - either it has no effect at all, or a bad one (eg the USSR).

which was itself a reaction to the inability of the republic to contain the class struggle.

where did spanish fascism come from, pray tell? what were those sections of the bourgeoisie so afraid of that they turned to Franco? You really can't just discount the 80 odd years of class struggle and anarchist organising as "incidental" without being completely ahistorical. it was a major contibutary factor, and the reason why the reaction to the coup by many workers was revolution, not defence of the republic (which had imprisoned and persecuted militant workers itself).

clearly i don't, as i've been arguing throughout...

even if you believe in the historical inevitability of the demise of capitalism amidst warring states, surely you'd need organisation in the here and now to take advantage of the 'inevitable' collapse. again, it wasn't a coincidence that the CNT had a massive influence in '36, it was because of its history of organising and the influence it had amongst the class in the period beforehand (with large scale strikes, rallies attended by tens of thousands of workers etc).

i've just noticed you've edited your post since i replied...

my whole point, stated explicitly, is that hoping for anarchism out of a collapse not precipitated by class struggle is not a good idea, not that we should never try and bring about the collapse of the state per se. it's precisely this distinction which makes the difference in outcome, as without it there's nothing but the hope that our ideas will spontaneously take root instead of reactionary ones, and i'm not sure there's any precedents for that for all your dismissal of the history of class struggles.

Anti-secular sentiment from reactionaries in response to constitutional reforms, mostly. It would be a mistake to think that the reactionaries had no disagreement with the republic and just wanted to get at the anarchists and communists - the ruling classes are as capable as any other group of internal division and conflict. This was what precipitated the crisis.

I meant that the ability of anarchist groups to commence armed resistance was incidental - that is, it was dependant on the crisis, and probably never would have occurred otherwise.

So you're saying that if Spain in the 1930s had been an eden of social peace the Spanish Civil War would have happened anyway? The reforms were an attempt to contain the struggle through a bourgeois political framework, but failed and had the opposite effect - they increased class combativity, hence the fascist response, leading to an uprising by this confident and agitated class. And to say that there was no organisation before the war is, as JK has said, ahistorical and plain wrong.

It was the bourgeois republic which crushed the workers, not the fascists.

You seem view the collapse of capitalism as something to be passively awaited, an act of nature like a flood or a storm. We see capitalism as a specific form of socal relations, comprising private ownership of capital and wage labour, being transformed into collective ownership of the means of production by conscious agents. Some kind of apocalyptic crisis in capitalism cannot benignly place production in the hands of workers, they must sieze it. Disastrous collapses in Somalia, the Congo etc have only lead to savage gangster capitalism. So we're not where we started at all, we're looking at combat for political and economic power between organised classes - fascism, as has already been pointed out, is not a "pretender" to replace capitalism, but a specific re-organisation of it.