This is an ongoing, open space for anyone to characterise the participants of Libcom, including oneself. Soory if anyone feels left out—Battlescarred,...—but for obvious reason we stopped at twelve. Far be it for us to blaspheme against the First Man of the Libcom Collective, its Iesu Kristos, JK.
westarfromhere — self-righteous, "crackpot", "mystic farmer", 'Khmer ["One who is wholesome"] Situationism: for a society without spectacles.'
fozzie — Haussmann
adri — Marxist-Engelist
steven — red fascist union, "wanker"
darren p — fawn of academic communism
Craftwork — Labourist
Fleur — jackboot
samfanto — absentist (the Absentist does not truly feel that nothing in the universe is good, but rather that neither of the two conventionally offered possibilities for virtue are good, and that there must be some kind of alternative.)
Indo — fetishist of KAPD/Council Communism
Red Marriott — nice fellah
Alf — Assisi
factvalue — account erased by management
factvalue wrote: Serge Forward
When Jews were sent to the gas chambers by the Nazis, this was not on the basis of their religious belief.
On what (real) basis then?
goff — the thirteenth disciple
Rest in peace auldbold
I was thinking "mystic…
I was thinking "mystic farmer" for you, but self-righteous crackpot also works.
I prefer Khmer Situationism:…
I prefer Khmer Situationism: for a society without spectacles. 👓
Craftwork wrote:...for a…
Although most perceptive of you, Crafty, my major concern—having been partially blinded in my right eye (anyone know why one eye should be affected and not the other?) by mobile phone use—are these little blue screens. The two modern conveniences are interconnected, as my blindness resulted from a visit to the optician, who advised against prolonged use of blue light emitting devices, and to keep such devices at a good distance. Both points of his advice I subconsciously contravened on a Saturday morning in bed. My only comfort is the one of my flesh, yourselves, and the words of masiah:
Appreciate your perceptive…
Much appreciate your perceptive mystic farmer comment too, adri. What is not appreciated is a tendency, I perceive, for two personages to be combined in one, after the habit of the Christian doctrine that amalgamates three in one. Perhaps you, and the Church, are right, and are merely reconciling self-affirmation and objectification? Yet, shouldn't the holy Trinity, and Duality, be admitted of its female aspect, Menen, Mary and Lizzie, Helene and Jenny? Be made whole.
Syndicalist - I am who I am.
Syndicalist - I am who I am.
syndicalist wrote:…
Syndicalist: does what is says on the tin.
westartfromhere wrote:…
Not meaning to dominate you intellectually, but common sense told me, Yes, most people have one dominant eye, meaning their brain primarily relies on the visual input from one eye over the other, similar to how we have a dominant hand (left or right) for most tasks; this is a normal trait and is often referred to as "ocular dominance".
syndicalist wrote:…
Surely, the syndicalist is, I am because we are.
What's the tin? The toilet?…
What's the tin? Seemingly an over the pond expression.
*rolls eyes* these Americans…
*rolls eyes* these Americans... It means 'what you see is what you get'. You better get with the programmmeee syndicalist, or else we're sending you to Coventry.
syndicalist wrote: What's…
lol, it’s the slogan for fence paint. This thread, and the many many others like it, are my worst fears of what anarcho society would be. It’d do your fucking head in.
An anarchical society…
An anarchical society mediated through the World Wide Web is merely another appendage to capital: a part of the new digital order. Long will live Order!
Still, the echoes of an ancient communism reverberate through the fibre.
Coventry used to have a…
Coventry used to have a militant workers tradition, if I recall.
Thanks for clueing me in everyone. And indeed, the tin is right
Whatever happened to Joseph…
Whatever happened to Joseph Kay? They used to post a whole bunch
He was brutally murdered…
edit: Removing my reference to Kafka's Trial after realizing that something might have actually happened to him... I had also noticed that he stopped posting on twitter around 2019 and that he wasn't listed on this collective statement. I certainly hope he's doing alright. I thought the Out of the Woods articles (and book) were great stuff.
syndicalist wrote: Coventry…
Still has. Tradition is passed on, 'Man's Immortality Lives in His Progeny Memories!'
Perhaps we can raise him from the dead (bourgie circle of friends)?
syndicalist wrote: Whatever…
Forums are dead, so very few of those that used to post here frequently don't anymore (me included, I just lurk these days).
Khawaga wrote: syndicalist…
I actually miss the forums.
I think we are agreed on the…
Joseph Kay, libcom.org responds
We do not want you to share our "socially necessary menial tasks", i.e. productive wage labour, "in an egalitarian manner". We are the working class, and it is labour that defines our class, and it is on this basis that we are imposing our dictatorship over you.
Unlike Herr Engels and Mr Kay, we are unprincipled.
Forums are dead, so very few…
I'm not sure if Kay's vanishing is just because people don't use the libcom forum as much as they used to. I don't guess it's any of our business really, but he sort of completely disappeared it seems around 2019 (here's his twitter). I guess someone could reach out to one of the Out of the Woods people to see what happened.
syndicalist wrote: Khawaga…
Me too.
I mostly remember the forums…
I mostly remember the forums as being a cesspit.
There was some pretty…
There was some pretty horrible stuff in the old threads if you went back and read them. But at the same time forums on here and other places were a great source of information and an education in the noughties. As well as being places where I picked up a few friends.
Yes, they were cesspits, but…
Yes, they were cesspits, but as Fozzie says, a great source of info and education. It's the latter I miss, but still, warts and all.
I thought it a big missed…
I thought it a big missed opportunity. Loads of great stuff on the site and there were decent people on the forums. But it's still mostly it being a cesspit I remember.
Oh, I know people were…
Oh, I know people were turned off libcom due to the nastiness of the forums. They did improve considerably, but IIRC that was right before people migrated their discussions to Facebook.
Still remember the first…
Still remember the first words that I read of yours, Khawaga, directed to the Collective, with reference to a commentor critical of a Joseph Kay blog, "We've got a live one here"— follower of the Way in a pit of hungry lions. More Roman amphitheatre than cesspit.
To what and to whom, readers may discern themselves.
These discussion forums certainly set one up for the World Wide Web, this nest of vipers.
I read Bookchin’s Social…
I read Bookchin’s Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism the other day and realised how influential it was on the forums. Exact same snidey way of talking to people who were ‘wrong’.
Probably a good time to revive it, it’s not like there’s competition and social media is on death’s door.
It seems nobody wants to…
It seems nobody wants to address the fact that hundreds of old threads are no longer accessible. They don’t show up in any search. It looks like they have been deleted forever.
Agent of the International…
Search engines will show some threads that don’t appear in the internal search. Besides, don’t you want to abolish the past and create the future? Imagine the new permutations of arguments to be had now.
I have searched by both the…
I have searched by both the internal search and by using google search, and still hundreds, maybe thousands of threads are missing. Also, new discussions can’t recreate all the valuable discussions that took place in those old threads. This forum had incredible posters whose contributions meant a lot to me. Now, I can’t find those posts. New discussions threads nowadays can’t come close due to the lack of posters willing to participate.
Agent of the International…
Deleted threads; deleted comments; deleted articles; nullified user accounts... It is theft of the producers' own intellectual property, pure and simple.
Also, by removing the ability for users of the site to trace their activity, as was possible on the previous format, only the administrators—the effective owners of the site—retain that function. The function of Private Messaging other users was also removed. It does beg the question, Who do these changes—this new permutation—benefit? Certainly not the common user of the site.
Perhaps these changes have had a positive effect of traffic on the site, but as no traffic reports are any longer forthcoming, who knows?
The worst danger is never the determined opponent, but one’s own compromise.
Who can forget those long…
Who can forget those long forum posts by that one ex-ICCer who alleged the ICC raided his home and took back their mimeograph machines or whatever they were lol?
The discussions that spring…
The discussions that spring up first in my memory are of those between the advocates of progress, apologist for the capitalist catastrophe, and those of regression, the primitivists, the ignorant romanticist. Don't recall a third voice, of the realists, in those debates. Here is an example of the inability of the progressive to distinguish between the tool and the machine, and the reason for being of each, usefulness and exchangeability, respectively:
If anyone cares to follow this link, undoubtedly they will find an example of the primitivist's ignorance of the actual communalist society that predated the young pup, so-called civilisation, i.e. Asiatic class society.
Craftwork wrote: Who can…
Mad as a box of frogs the ICC
https://libcom.org/history/open-letter-international-communist-current
I seem to remember they went very quiet when Ingram started posting here.
nastyned wrote: Mad as a …
I only know the ICC on this site. Alf never struck me as mad. Never claimed to be the daughter of Henry VIII, or such like. Perhaps you should address your accusations to him?
The "logic of the asylum" (Ingram) is that the lunatics take over. Perhaps Ingram prefers the purveyors of Persian rugs over the anarchy that oftentimes holds sway on the wards?
The ICC were pretty big on…
The ICC were pretty big on the nonsensical idea of a semi-State.
Agent of the International…
Nonsense, fine, but don't belittle the suffering of the victims of psychiatric oppression with slurs like "barmy", "mad", "crackpot"... Please
In the early libcom days,…
In the early libcom days, there was a person whose name, I believe, was Tony.
Although seemingly British white, he had dread locks, as I recall. I met him
when he was in Manhattan on a visit. Nice person. Not sure what happened
to them.
syndicalist wrote: Although…
? Is this not normal or am I making a terrible mistake?
goff wrote: syndicalist…
Apologies if not properly written. I was trying to describe them. "Tony" is such a generic name. If there's another way to describe them, please help me out.
syndicalist wrote: goff…
Just a bit of fun, I actually have a fashionable haircut. We would probably call Tony a crustie.
"We would probably call Tony…
"We would probably call Tony a crustie", or former bass player with Sigue Sigue Sputnik..
Saw I made your list…
Saw I made your list westartfromhere, I am actually Christian so that’s weird. I consider Mary Magdalene the first but she could be the thirteenth, the luckiest number. Or maybe replacing Judas is more fitting. “For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother…”
Agent of the International…
"Nonsensical", and yet the Makhnovists created the Kontrrazvedka.
Craftwork wrote: Agent of…
“The apostles also began to argue about which one of them was the most important.”.
goff wrote: Saw I made your…
I'm very happy to hear.
Craftwork "Nonsensical",…
Craftwork
I am not familiar with the history of the Makhnovists. But assuming they actually put things into practice that contradicts their own principles, does that mean all subsequent anarchists are guilty of the same thing? Do you think most anarchists today would advocate such a thing. The ICC advocates semi-States as something that’s unavoidable. Is there anything anarchists advocate currently that is equivalent to that?
Agent of the International…
The dictatorship of the proletariat and organised repression is inevitable.
It doesn't matter what anarchists' principles are or what they advocate. Reality forces all revolutionary regimes to establish some apparatus of repression and social order to fight counterrevolution. Militia, prisons, courts, espionage agency, the Makhnovists and the Spanish anarchists had to resort to these methods. This is a vindication of the Marxist position.
Craftwork It doesn't matter…
Craftwork
Despite using this website, you still seem awfully unfamiliar with what anarchists have always said on this issue. Anarchists have always believed in workers organizing some kind of communal self-defense, after a revolution, against reactionary elements, as long as it is under popular control. What they don’t believe in is organizing in a hierarchical manner, or even a state to accomplish that. The Marxist position that is supposedly vindicated often advocates for the latter, or considers any libertarian organization of society with collective self-defense as a state. Obviously, anarchists disagree with that.
I find it surprising that someone would resort to such an argument on this site. But I guess when your a Marxist, you probably only consume Marxist material on this site, and hold on to common Marxist stereotypes of anarchists.
Agent of the International…
I'm plenty familiar with anarchist history and theory.
You claim anarchists "don't believe in organizing in a hierarchical manner", clearly you haven't read the Platform then ("In order to coordinate the activity of all of the Union's affiliated organizations, a special body is to be established in the form of an Executive Committee of the Union"). And what anarchists believe has no bearing on what they're forced to do in reality due to the exigencies of social and military conflict. Thus every anarchist insurgent movement has a general command, a security apparatus, etc.
You claim that this isn't a state, but I ask you a simple question: should an anarchist militia impose communalism/collectivism on the territories that it captures?
As you might be aware, not all anarchists believe in democracy. For example, when the Iron Column forcibly communised the territories they moved through, they were not acting democratically, they were imposing communist relations, they acted dictatorially.
So in my view, the Marxist position is vindicated. Anarchist insurgent movements have resorted to coercion, repression, and dictatorial methods to enforce their principles on territories they seize. This is an example of para-state organisation. You might even call it a semi-state ;-)
Nah, it's liberatory.
Nah, it's liberatory.
Nah, it's liberatory.
Nah, it's liberatory.
You claim anarchists "don't…
Anarchists advocate federation whereby base units, such as unions, form communes, consisting of councils of recallable, mandated delegates. All decision making power rests with the base units. Separate committees can be created to help carry out their decisions; no decision making power is invested in such bodies. This is not a hierarchy in the sense of some people having power over others.
I think that in order for the revolution to spread, they need to convince others outside of their territory of the values of socialism or communism. I can’t even imagine how it would work if the people living in those areas aren’t on board.
Your pointing to these historical examples doesn’t prove that the Marxist position is vindicated. And you can’t just dismiss what anarchists advocate for. Would you argue that a federal organization of society briefly described above is a form of state?
I mean, I get your point about circumstances anarchists might find themselves in. But you seem to think, based on those historical examples, that their only option is to abandon what they believe in and form a state or whatever to deal with those situations.
Craftwork, Would you agree…
Craftwork,
Would you agree that a social revolution thoroughly committed to anarchist principles is feasible? Usually, in these kinds of discussions, it is a common argument from Marxists that a federalist anarchist organization of society is still a state. Would you also argue that, or is it only the case in those historical examples you pointed at?
Chinese proto communists led…
Chinese proto communists led by a mystic that says the sky will turn yellow: 360,000
Who is more uwu, Karl or Mikhail (in 2025): 8 people
factvalue — account erased…
In the darkness that is the ongoing holocaust of the population of Raza by the State of Israel (the "Jewish State"), let's examine any potential reasons for these users being banned by the administration of libcom.org.
Firstly, there is the blanket term, "Jews", applied to the victims of National Socialism in Europe. Let's be clear, the victims of the slaughter during the Second World War are best epitomised, not by any ethnic, religious or other basis, but than by their social class. The same applies to the slaughter in the Middle East and beyond, past and present.
Secondly, there is the spurious notion that it is the religion of the Jews that drives its existence. The social relations of Jews, like any other body politic, is driven by the economic relationship between composite parts. Who benefits among Jews from the war on the proletariat? Its bourgeoisie. Its Rothschild's, to use an antisemitic trope.
well! i've learned from all…
well! i've learned from all of yiz, and at the risk of omitting others, Red Marriot's posts have been very illuminating.
Red hit this one on the nail…
Red hit this one on the nail as foretelling of the subsequent period worldwide:
Red Marriott, on September 23, 2007
But I was only talking about…
But I was only talking about the specific situation for Bangladeshi garment workers in 2007, not at all predicting the global future. https://libcom.org/article/garment-workers-struggles-escalate-again-bangladesh
Yet the specific conditions…
Yet, the specific conditions of the Bangla working class are general to our class as a whole. The clothing industry points of production are an integral part of its points of consumption. Can the cessation of production of 4000 factories in Dhaka by wildcat strikes be isolated from the chain? You posed the question, Insurrection, bloody repression, who knows?
The answer is, Everybody, now.
Footnote: In terms of the political economy, the 2007/8 Financial Crisis was a crisis of too much capital, overcapitalisation; the reaction of 2019/20, one of too much product, overproduction. Hence the need to damper production by means of its momentary suspension, and latterly its destruction, of both its means and its motor, us.
Well, if you read my Bangla…
Well, if you read my Bangla articles you would see that that I don't think that "the specific conditions of the Bangla working class are general to our class as a whole". Their whole existence and conditions are a consequence of the relocation of garment manufacturing by global capital to the East; a restructuring creating a new young proletariat under conditions very different from the older Western working class. The lowest wages in the world, no functioning union mediation of struggles, massive wildcat strike movements, minimal welfare state etc. All in stark contrast to Western conditions where strikes have been at record lows.
I think the attempt to over-simplify and want to see neat patterns in diverse conditions and struggles (or lack of struggle) is a wishful thinking desperate to find some unifying force or connection in what remain, on a global scale, fragmented movements. Marxist theory has a long history of this in the name of supposedly 'grasping the totality' which blinds it to the actual particular strengths and weaknesses of diverse struggles.
I hear so many people on…
I hear so many people on here talking about Marxism. Outside of this site, in real life, the only time I've ever heard it mentioned was by lecturers at Warwick University for the short time I spent there.
...creating a new young proletariat...
The coolie man ain't young. They go back hundreds of years, thousands even. You need to drop this Marxism bullshit. It's clouding your judgement Redman.
Hindi and Telugu word "kulī" (कुली), meaning "day-laborer" or "hireling,"
... "a new young proletariat…
... "a new young proletariat"; the Bangladesh garment industry is little more than 40 yrs old. Around 85% of workers are young women from peasant villages, the first mass industrial employment in Bangladesh of females. So, yes, definitely new and young. It's your understanding of the particularities that are clouded by schematic over-generalisation. Yeh, Marxism, that stuff you're repeatedly quoting, copying & pasting on the threads here.
So each generation of…
So each generation of proletarians is "a new young proletariat". OK
Microchip technology is approximately 40 year old, therefore, producers of this technology are "a new young proletariat", not a part of an historic class that can be traced to the genesis of capitalism. Got you
About 5% of workers chew gum. Interesting fact
My family lived in the Pale, a predominantly peasant society, just three generations back; my wife's family have been industrial proletarians for twenty generations. So what!?
I've never quoted one Marxist—aside from "libcommers"—in all the time I have posted on this site. You're lying.
westartfromhere wrote: So…
"So each generation of proletarians is "a new young proletariat".
There you go over-generalising again; as already explained above, I was specifically commenting on post-1970s decades in Bangladesh.
"I've never quoted one Marxist—aside from "libcommers"—in all the time I have posted on this site"
The marxist Barrot v the marxist Aubheben, article submitted by you; https://libcom.org/article/retort-aufheben
In comments under article here you quoted the marxist ICT; https://libcom.org/discussion/solidarity-proletariat-abolish-israel-and-palestine
Other marxists; in comments below article here you quote Pankhurst, also Lenin. I could cite other examples. https://libcom.org/article/workers-dreadnought-vol-5-no-21-17-august-1918
"You're lying."
Your clearly false accusations and comments are little more than childish attention seeking.
I disagree that there is a…
I disagree that there is a new proletariat, in general, or in particular. There is one historic proletariat from time immemorial.
Does Gilles Dauvé claim to be Marxist? Do Aufheben claim to be Marxist? Both describe themselves as communist, as Jesus Christ and Thomas Müntzer are communist. It is a stretch to say either and all are Marxist. Marx does not claim to be Marxist. In fact, the only known reference by him to that title is in refutation.
Admittedly, I quoted the social-democrat Lenin, who's self-description is Marxist although he is the ultimate antipathy of Marx, as Paulus [the "ultimate" status is a squabble between Calvin and Luther] is the antipathy of the man who he claims the legacy of.
Once again, I would advise dropping this Marxist bullshit, the preserve of academics.
Far from seeking attention, I avoid it.
Just out of curiosity, do you have some cataloguing system to retrieve these irrelevant discussions, or are you making notes on my activity on this site to be used in evidence against me at a later point?
westartfromhere wrote: Red…
Really, you are being too modest. In analysing a particular instance and area of our class struggle you have made a prediction of the form of class struggle in general for the foreseeable future.
Isn't prediction the marker of true science? It is easy to describe phenomena after it (period of revolutionary upheaval) has occurred and whilst in the midst of it (reactionary period of bloody consolidation).
I know exactly what I meant…
I know exactly what I meant when I wrote that - but your egotism and/or lack of comprehension leads you to delude yourself that you know better. You seem to be on a massive ego trip based on supposed possession of some great over-arching 'historical' 'theory' that appears based on an ahistorical grasp of the proletariat as an eternal category from "time immemorial".
adri wrote: edit: Removing…
Just to reassure people, Joseph is fine. He just has other things in life he is dedicating his time to these days.
We have addressed this many times. In the past, we had different commenting rules, and some rules we had weren't very well enforced. So over the years we have unpublished significant numbers of old threads containing breaches in posting guidelines.
If there are any specific threads you are looking for which you cannot find, we can look for them, and see if we can tidy up the threads and re-publish them.
If you don't want libcom to be able to moderate comments, don't post comments to libcom.
Lol, we can't do that either. As we said when we launched the new theme, we had to fix loads of extremely broken things with the site. These included the fact that new users had been unable to register for years, people couldn't do password resets, and the 50% of users browsing using a phone couldn't properly see the site. We have been gradually adding more functionality and hope to be able to reintroduce this at some point.
Private messaging was being abused by spammers. We had over 1 million spam accounts on the old site, who were sending millions of spam messages. This was not possible for us to deal with. Private messages are also insecure and unencrypted, and we cannot rectify this. Many users included confidential and potentially legally problematic information in private messages to other users, which was unsafe and insecure. So we had to remove this entire functionality to protect users of the site. You are welcome to use secure tools like Signal to communicate with encryption outside of the site.
If you think we are evil people scheming against users of the site and doing nefarious things with your comments, there is a really simple solution. Don't use it…
In the past, we had…
That can’t possibly account for all those threads. There is like many of them. You and the other admins actually investigated each of those threads to determine they are no longer suitable to be published? Instead of removing those threads, you could have just left an editorial comment or something.
What happened to the…
What happened to the ComradeAppleton thread, named something like “Reading Recommendations for a Fellow Anarchist”? It is an example of a thread I can’t find anymore. What posting guidelines were violated there? As far as I can recall, that was just an innocent debate between individualism vs socialism. I can’t really imagine anyone writing anything that broke the rules.
What stops you from scraping…
What stops you from scraping and archiving the forum yourselves? "Theft of intellectual property" tell me never to take you seriously without telling me
Agent of the International…
As requested, have gone through that thread and re-published it, here: https://libcom.org/discussion/reading-recommendations-fellow-anarchist
As for what breaches did it contain, it contained racism, multiple spurious references to sexual violence, and personal abuse.
We had hundreds of thousands of comments in tens of thousands of threads to go through to tidy up. Inevitably in doing this we probably hid some by accident, and would have had some which would be possible to tidy up relatively easily by removing a few problematic comments. However, did not have time to do this. But as we said each time we did a mass clear up, and as we have said multiple people who have asked this question, is that if you let us know what threads you are thinking about, we can look for them and may be able to resurrect them.
As requested, have gone…
Thanks. I think it would be best start another thread where we can request the republishing of older threads that are currently unavailable.
I have forgotten most of that stuff. Come to think of it, the only thing that comes to mind is ComradeAppleton’s racism toward Africa.
Agent of the International…
Do feel free to start that
Thanks for your explanations…
Thanks for your explanations Steven, and for your work on the site.
Red, it is our position that class society is over arching from its beginning to its end. We do not restrict the term proletariat to modern industrial labour but use it to encompass wage labour, and its equivalence, in general.
The undersigned,
ChumpChange, J.M., westartfromhere, Schmoopie, whirlwind, Jah Bread, Guerre de Classe
westartfromhere wrote:The…
So you write your incomprehensible gibberish on behalf of a group?
Agent of the International…
Apparently; group, tendency, sect, multiple personality syndrome, whatever... Despite endless copy & paste Marx quotes, they don't believe in primitive communism or feudalism. Or that the proletariat emerges from other classes, eg, the peasantry.
westartfromhere says they…
westartfromhere says they are not a fan of social democracy but the Proletariat must constitute itself as a Party. Everything they say just comes across as essentially social democracy. They are just providing a pretense that that their words are a new, “radical,” interpretation of the Holy Bible, the works of their master, Karl Marx.
Craftwork wrote: Indo —…
He is also a noted sage of bad poetry.