i think there was a nun at the direct action workshop

by dunk - fuspey Tue Oct 21, 2003 21:01

youre right lish
ideas, interaction, respect, creativity, fun, DOING.

things are changing, it is the most exciting time to be living at present,
yes theres bad stuff, but in challenging it we grow, learn, make friends, do amazing things, are begginning to communicate to US more and starting to communicate with ALL.

ISF rocked, all there will agree i think
but we must do more than pat ourselves on the back

we must communicate more, push our ideas further, let more people know what is going on (in a positive way)

past indymedia was a ranting space, one fine idea was to create a ranting space on the site, so those with that inclination can be happy there. and leave the site free for progressive, interactive flow of ideas

we put a screening on here in DIT last week- it was billed as indymedia public screening, we need more of these
virtual charactrers know each other on this and other sites. thats not enough. ISF showed how good it is to really meet those people you have known only by email for so long.
with meeting physically meeting up comes interaction and more ideas. and so on......

we are going to put on an exhibition/ festival of sorts @ may, if that is the demo time?
doing the demo is great, but its, for the most part, the same old heads.
get more invovled
make it exciting and attractive. let them add to it, let it all grow,

we are getting a new place set up which amongst other things will act as a creative, lively, zone for indymedia screenings, party, drop in.

soon imcNEWS going onto the streets and doing a news from a tv, a simple piece of both funny and serious street theatre. i hope you come along

link attached is more on development of indymedia, the most efficent tool we have to communicate together

i was at that workshop too.
doing the demo or blockade is great,
it doesent stop there
micheal albert? US thinker/ activist of high regard talked about
"fighting the good fight"
doing things because its good, not really believing you are going to actually change things
bolix to that
look at the problem, see why things are not working, create improved techniques, go at it again
so do the action, but also publicity events around it.

for me, some of the people who do direct action, do it because its cool, and couldent be to arsed about going somewhere new and trying to let people know about stuff. which is actually more challenging?

from that talk, concrete steps have been taken for IMC outreach and publicity workshops and events

all in all though, things are already great.
but they are getting better
it is the most exciting time in ireland
roll on the ISF

by red - star Wed Oct 22, 2003 14:02

"we don't need one group,leader, steering committee, direction or goal. this is a movement about autonomy, & tolerance for other actions, priorities & tactics. "

i think thats a little bit of lazy reasoning. All campaigns need a gaol of somewhat. For example the goal of the bin charges is to get them stopped. Alsoo we need some form of structure. i have found in my experience groups with no structure are usually alot less democratic than those with, as it comes down to the stronger (or simply louder) personalities taking over. Also to organise a campaign well you need to organise together and to co ordinate. The bin charges is an example of this.
Autonomas and tolerence I'm with you. Although once its more than simply a buzz word. Never ceases to amaze me how popular italian auto marxism is with irish anarchists simply because of the word. In truth they were 100 times more leninist or stalinist even than any irish left party. And tolerence cuts both ways too, too often certain anarchists have preached tolerance while actining very very differently.

by Chekov Wed Oct 22, 2003 14:13

"how popular italian auto marxism is with irish anarchists"

Coz it's news to me! Actually there is one Irish anarchist who I know that is particularly interested in Italian autonomism, I wouldn't say that most of the rest know too much about it or are very interested in it. Personally I find it to be a bit of a game of intellectual showing off, where you try to say the most obvious things in the most impenetrable way possible.

by lish - unaligned Wed Oct 22, 2003 17:58

interesting points red, much debated currently.

i reckon there is no end goal to achieve, just a continual process.

being too goal-oriented can miss how horizontal, rather than top down, organising involves a high level of personal responsibility, co-operation and most of all trust.

the community i want to live in is democratic & concensual, a continual tightrope to balance - definitely not the lazy option.
how can we ever have this if people have no practise living this way?

making decisions & mistakes instead of leaving policy to leaders leads to an amazing shift when you realise if something isn't happening you can do it yourself instead of waiting.
this attitude, along with widespread co-operation, is the most positive change i've seen in ireland recently

it seems there are many organisations that intend to give power to the people, but not yet because they don't trust them. when will they?

i really recommend one no many yeses as a good description of what's important about many different groups finding their own solutions for their communities because they're the only ones who can.


left wing...right wing. who can fly on one wing?
a quote from underground source:

by red - . Thu Oct 23, 2003 17:16

its been mentioned quite a few times here, also a anarchist group in belfast had some sort of meeting on the subject and through talking to them myself. For me really though I thought it was some form of anarcho marxist thing till I read into it. I agree its really alot of intellectual nonsense. And very strict leninist, one anarchist I spoke too said, "it wasn't supposed to be this way" it was. In the end all I could conclude is people like the word automonist without actually seeing what it meant. Probably the same with the black block.

by Joe Thu Oct 23, 2003 18:08

There is not much from autonomists in English and much of what is (Negri) is pretty unreadable. The other English stuff tends to be from neo-autonomists like Harry Cleaver, or the Midnight Notes crowd whoare pretty much libertarian marxists.

The original Italian autonomists where leninists who took the idea of struggle seriously, but they were still leninists. The working class was to be autonomous from capital, not from the party, indeed at the core of Negris writing (and writing style) is the need for the intellectual elite to set the direction for the class (now multitude) to follow. Negris current post leninism arises because he belives history has moved on, it is not a critiue of lenin whom he still believes to be right in the historical period of the Russian revolution.

All this means it is possible to mistake the autonomists for something other then what they are. Perhaps some anarchists do that but not many I think. The interests of others is not so much an embrace of autnomism but a realisation that Italy in the late 70's is the nearest thing we have seen to revolution in an advanced economy. So whatever problems there are there is perhaps more to be learned from the concrete experiences of the autonomists and others then there is to be picked up by the scribblings of trot academics in Britain.

by maalox - Auto-erotic anarcho-sexual deviants Fri Oct 24, 2003 17:16 maalox at safe-mail dot net

>its been mentioned quite a few times here, also a anarchist group in belfast had some sort of meeting on the subject

Of Italian auto-marxism? I don't think so. I mean seriously, that really doesn't sound like us at all- you may have been confusing 'meeting' with 'chat in the pub after a meeting'. One recently departed member of the most prominent Belfast-based anarcho group particularly disliked Italian 'so-called autonomists'.

On the other hand there is a group called Socialist Democracy (certainly NOT anarchist) which holds meetings and debates on subjects like that. They also once held one on anarchism, and recently one on direct action, so if you're new to the 'scene' (i don't know whether you are or not) you may have mistakenly got the impression that these guys were anarchist. A minute's discussion with them would clear that up.

Unless of course, some new autonomist/anarchist group is operating clandestinely in Belfast and it's just passed me by.

> and through talking to them myself. For me really though I thought it was some form of anarcho marxist thing till I read into it. I agree its really alot of intellectual nonsense.

I didn't understand enough of it (Empire) to properly disagree with it. It's very badly written, or at least very badly translated. I got the distinct impression that it was a lot of wank, though. I await someone putting it into basic english: 850 words.

by Joe Fri Oct 24, 2003 17:31

I don't think it is badly written in the sense you mean it. It is MEANT to be impenetratable because Negri is writing for the 'intellectual leadership' and not the 'multitude'. So it's not so much badly writen as writen in a avery delibertly elitest style.

From an anarchist review at the link below
"A criticism that has to be made right from the start is that this is not an easy book to read; In fact large sections of it are almost unintelligible. Empire is written in an elitist academic style that is almost designed to be understood only by the qualified few. The subject matter and broad scope of the book would, in any case, make it difficult but the authors also delight in obscurity, a very simple example being the common use of Latin quotations without any adequate translation or explanation.

This is particularly off putting because they are quite capable of writing in a clear fashion. Indeed, their strongest arguments seem to be by far the ones that are expressed in the clearest language. It is when they are on their weakest ground that it becomes increasingly difficult to unwind what is actually being said.

This elitist academic style is also part of the Italian autonomist tradition and illustrates how their use of the word autonomy does not carry the same meaning as that given to it by anarchists. We aim to build working class organisations that are autonomous from the state and political parties. They intended the working class to be autonomous only from capital. The worker will apparently still need be led by the intellectual elite who are the only ones, in the autonomists eyes, capable of reading the changes in strategies needed in the battle against capitalism.

Even other Leninist commentators have attacked the "highly elitist version of the party that emerges" [5] although given the record of the organisation concerned (British SWP) it is easy to suspect this is based more on jealousy of the influence of autonomous Marxism then anything else. But of course the autonomists views are quite consistent with Lenin's insistence in 1918 that "there are many....who are not enlightened socialists and cannot be such because they have to slave in the factories and they have neither the time nor the opportunity to become socialists" [6].. Autonomist Marxism is part of a rich history of 'left-communism' in Italy which represented a break with the reformism of the Communist Parties but only partly or not at all with its authoritarian politics."

by *-! Sat Oct 25, 2003 13:39

& read the link.
now go look at the photo at this page:
http://italy.indymedia.org/news/2003/05/276455.php
now go to this page and click on the video clip.
http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=58932

They record a moment in the spatial temporal flow when elitism met down to earth slapstick communication. Observe the expression.

by red - . Fri Oct 31, 2003 17:03

I could have sworn their was a dicussion last year, possibly grass roots. Anyway stand corrected if wrong.

The basis of the auto marxists in Italy was in the PCI, and they believed that the party was no longer able to carry through the revolution and more importantly was irrelevant to modern workers. They began by running studies in factories using questionaires and psycology etc and tried to be more relevant. from here on in it went downhill as they became more and more intellectual and in fact became much more irrelevant than the PCI. They also became ultra leninists, although they were always leninist to begin with.
They did ebventually create Lotta Continua and Il Manifesto which both had about 100,000 members each. But they didn't last long into the seventies.

One form of Modern workerism basically has workers organised in the factories without party, there is one group called Operi Contro (workers against) and they only concern themselves with issues directly effecting their membership and believe only industrial workers (operai) have any role in changing society.

Negri himself has seemed to have completely left these ideas behind in Empire.

I discovered one book on it called "storming Heaven" i can't remeber the writer. I can't tell you enough
not to read it, most intellectual and boring book i've ever read in my life.

by Joe Fri Oct 31, 2003 17:18

The SWP and SP regularly have lectures with titles like 'Is anarchism and alternative to marxism'. This doesn't make them anarchists :-)

More seriously some anarchists do read the autonomist stuff and borrow what is useful in it for the reasons already outlined. And some autonomists, particularly in the Anglo world have broken with leninism/party centred forms of organisation and moved closer to anarchism as a result. Harry Cleaver for instance who would be the best known anglo autonomist includes Kroptkin in his course on autonomism.

Most anarchists are a lot more open to learning from other traditions then trots. As a whole the autonomists are a bit whacky but quite a bit of their work is useful in getting you to think 'outside the box'. The Midnight Notes book 'Midnight Oil' springs to mind as does Peter Linebraugh's 'The many headed Hydra'. Empire however does not really fit into this category.