Kevin Keating

transitional program, punching you in the face

Nah, just pricks.

good to see these disagreements staying on a political level.

Can i sign your cast, mate?

Some of his articles written a decade or more ago are quite good -- like "Mutinies" about GI anti-war activity in Vietnam -- but since then he's been slipping. His latest ones are so full of invective and attacks on the personalities of those he disagrees with that they can't be taken seriously. Take a careful look at his "Muni social strikeout - The failed transit fare strike in San Francisco, 2005" and then compare it to Tom Wetzel's accounts and our "Muni Fare Strike!" here on libcom. Concerning what actually happened on the streets, you'll find many similarities between Tom's and ours (with accounts by 10 participants, including Tom), with the differences being around organizing strategies. From Kevin Keating's you'll get all the mental health problems and character flaws of those participants he was opposed to -- which by the beginning of the strike became EVERYONE ELSE.

It begs the question whether there should be some editorial policy about smears and ad hominems in articles posted to the libcom library. Kevin Keating's later articles contain many slanders. This clearly makes them historically flawed.

yes i thought that one very good

I guess libcom would be more valuable if it wasn't dominated by mcanarchyists and ultra-leftists with no debating skills.

One of the really sad things is that on the forums where us platformists and others get involved, we consistently shred the arguments put forward by poeple like revol, oliver, etc.. personally I often respond thoroughly and systematically.

Because a lot of the regulars on here are incapable of debating or advocating their opinions ratonally, they resort to repeating the same thing over and over again, each time with more crude statements, to try and get their point home. The poor quality of debate is due to these types of people on here.

Of course the culture of libcom is alienating, but so are the politics of the ultra-leftist "regulars" on here - their politics have no appeal and not a single one of them as, at any point as far as i'm aware, held any position of participation in any kind of significant political movement or action. ever. No that it would be a great litmus test, but defiantely a start.

Personally, I don't take this forum seriously - I only really came on because it's good for a laugh.

define 'significant'

by the way, revol68, I also think the "no soldiers" poicy is a really bad one. Most soldiers are proletarians and, what's more, have always provided a strong contingent of revs in most communist/anarchist movements historically.

I'm a NEFAC supporter now, and I was elected as a member of the executive for BCGEU Local 1201, which presently has just over 5,000 members. I guess that's not irrelevent enough for you people

Rise is that a paid full time position behind a desk or are you still on the floor a significant amount of the time? I would say that's the difference in an anarchist group I would be sceptical of letting in full time officials, though a seat on the executive of a local isn't a big deal. Though yer president is probably full time in a local that size eh?

firstly we aren't going to turn away ex soldiers, secondly we are mostly in Northern Ireland, hence admitting soldiers has alot of extra complications that i can;t be arsed going into right now.

Also the Army in the UK isn't like the US one, it's much smaller, more professionalised and more detached from civilian life.

This isn't to say we wouldn't support any struggles that kick off within the army but at the moment it's a very very long way off and furthermore Organise! is a propaganda group it's membership criteria reflects that.

I know other people have mentioned this, but I'm really curious, what's the reasoning behind not allowing soldiers to join Organise?

Edit: Sorry, just noticed that you posted right before I did. Never mind.

Is that a shop steward position? Are you on the shop floor as part of your ordinary job, are you paid to be on this executive?

btw please stop waving your cock because you're on a union executive, it's not exactly that hard to become a shop steward in alot of industries infact in many they'd near beg you to take it on.

rise:

i think it was devrim who said that a difference between the anarchist scene in the USA and in the UK is the greater influence of left-communism than in the USA.

now, I'd point out this is a fairly recent change. back in the '70s/'80s period, ultra-left thought -- left-communism, situationism, council communism -- was a much more pronounced influence in the anarchist scene in the USA than it is now. but back then the anarchist milieu was very much smaller than it is now, and even less influential. these ultra-left trends played no positive role as far as I can see. in more recent years there are many more ordinary activists in various practical organizing areas or projects who sympathize with the anti-authoritarian left. the turn towards practical organizing activity, combined with the discredit of Leninism, accounts for the larger numbers of non-ultra-left anti-authoritarians in the USA

there are of course a variety of ways that anti-authoritarians can be diced up in the USA, and I'm not here getting into the differences between primos and post-lefts, on the one hand, and class struggle oriented anti-authoritarians. i think that a lot of the ideology of the primo and post-left anarchists here in the USA derives from ultra-left infuences such as situationism.

My position is elected and not renumerated, so i do all the extra work before and after my regular work hours.

That being said I would support a paid official being a member of an anarchist organization. I just think people get caught up in ideological points that they don't know how to apply practically on an organizational level, and it leads to alienating a lot of good people on spurious grounds.

I hold two positions, both elected - one as a shop steward, another as a member of the local executive. I am not paid to be on the executive, or as a shop steward. I spend the same time "on the floor" at my job as any other employee.

btw, I'm not "waving my cock" around about my union involvement, I'm making a point of highlighting it as a counterpoint to the anti-union bullshit being spread on this forum.

it's not some purer than thou nonsense it's about workers being in control of their own struggles and that will mean them coming up against the union hierarchies, again that's not abstract theory it comes from historical and ongoing experiance, the simple fact is that if workers want to be effective in their struggles they will be forced to move beyond union structures, to give two fingers to the full timers and co ordinate their own struggles. As such it makes sense for anarchists not to get sucked into the union bureacracy.

There really is nothing mystical or pure about it,

The key thing here is that this is a "simple" fact -- it is a little piece of ideology that, while vaguely and abstractly "true", or recognized to be the case, is being applied on a very specific level - one which was never intended by the vast historical and theoretical experience of many generations of committed anarchist-communists.

The complex reality is that many union officials, but not all, are people who have been radicalized by struggles within society or in the workplace, and as a result have sought greater participation in one of their only outlets to do something on a class level for the benefit of themselves and those around them. Often times, some of the most radicalized workers are not only "shop floor militants", but volunteer and paid union elected officials and staffers.

On a broad theoretical level, yes, it is untenable to have a revolutionary movement claiming to organize people when they are merely using the existing union structures to secure leadership positions within their organization. However, to suggest this is happening anywhere in the world with regards to anarchism is not only patently false, but wildly delusional. To even imply this is to grossly overestimate the influence of the anarchist movement within society.

I am pleased that ultra-leftists advocate a line of alienating active union volunteers and officials, because it means their fucked up politics will be less accessible and, hopefully, they will alienate less people to the term "anarchism" before more credible people with radical politics can approach them about what anarchism *really* is.

Anyway, this is a general problem with the ultra-left -- decontextualizing a scenario and applying macro-level theory on micro-level practice, almost always incongruently.

I'm not following your point here? The issue isn't about the 'anarchist movement' per se but the overall workers movement. Workers with no explicit interest in anarchism or even politics in general have experiance of having the brakes put on their struggles, of having to fight their full timers and other union bureacrats before even getting round to fighting their bosses, this often leads to split aways, which we don't see as very useful yet are atleast are testimony to the frustrations many workers have with their unions.

An Organise! comrade was a shop steward in the railway for a very long time, he's plenty of stories of full timers screwing them over, of having a plus 90% vote in favour of industrial action being stroked off, of full timers trying to lay down when the rank n file could hold meetings to discuss issues.

Also it's not a mere matter of full timers deliberately sabotaging workers struggle because they are bourgeois running dogs or out for personal gain, it's the simple matter that their job depends on the union, they have bosses, the unions are essentially big business, with huge assets and investments, they aren't going to allow these to be put on the line, which is why they don't back wildcats and seek to keep all struggles under their control, a full timer who couldn't do so would be out the door pretty quickly.

I mean how long do you think you'd last on a committee if your union officials took issue with your support for a wildcat?

have you ever?

I'll put it very simply, for workers to wage effective struggle, to empower themselves and realise their own power they are going to have to extend their struggles beyond the unions, as such it makes sense for anarchists to be working at a shop floor level, to be independent as they can be from the union structures, to build networks and groups that can break away from the unions, such a movement is going to be alot harder if the most militant workers are sucked into the union apparatus.

Self-deluded post of the year?

A rare moment of insight?

You and Joe ironed out your proposals for standing WSM members in Union elections yet?

now you're getting too pedantic and sectarian, devrim. the situationists are very positively regarded by for example Kevin Keating, who identifies as a "left communist" and are positively regarded by most ultra-lefts (using my terminology) around here that I am familiar with.

eh it's quite simple rise labels any sort of attempt to uphold basic principles like internationalism or anti electoralism as ultra leftist, basically anything that stand sin the way of short term oppurtunism is abstract ideology in his eyes.

It baffles me that Platformists, that is people from a tradition that imagines itself in continuity with the Friends of Durruti and who see their role as battling reformist tendencies within the workers movement are so quick to jettison principled tenants of anarchist thought.

Edit: Comment moved here - http://libcom.org/forums/thought/banning-paid-organizers

I don't know if you are acting dumb for the sake of defending parasite organisers or you really are failing to grasp the issue.

It's not that they are employees of big business's it's that they are employees of big business's whose jobs are managing workers struggles, they are 'professional' organisers who are paid to organise other workers, it's completely repellent to the very basic principles of anarchism and especially to anarcho syndicalists who put special emphasis on how self organisation is the starting blocks of building the possibility of libertarian communism and in the short term breaking down the specialisation of struggle.

If union organisers in nefac want to engage in class struggle they should start by fighting their own bosses, instead of acting as paratroopers for the Union movement, afterall if the IWW ever got anywhere in a large industry the scum fucks of the mainstream unions would drop a ton of Thugarist's onto your heads, but hey I didn't think this would need pointed out to a wobbly.