Got an email from somebody last night and wanted to share it, and my response, with ya’ll.

Greetings,

I have just discovered your music, and am liking it very much. I am not a great fan of typical hip-hop, but your music is something different. I also agree with the majority of your political views. However, I have a question, something that has been bothering me for a while:

You speak of abolishing governments and living as anarchists (an admirable ambition), but I wonder how you intend to accomplish this? Do you support a violent revolution? If so, how can you reconcile the inevitable killing of innocents that would occur with your anti-war lyrics? If you see another way, then I would like to hear it - the only thing that is stopping me from becoming directly involved in anarchist activism myself is my opposition to violence and my inability to see a feasible method by which the system could be implemented peacefully.

Best wishes for 2009 (a.k.a. 1984 :P),
S

S,

Thanks for the email, I’m glad you enjoy the music.  as for the ‘how’ of revolution, well that’s the big unresolved question now isn’t it?  anarchism is a big tent and includes everyone from devout pacifists (the tolstoy / gandhi -inspired anarcho-pacifists who believe that if enough people absolutely refuse to participate in violence the state would crumble) to insurrectionists who’d like to light the world on fire and hope something better rises from the ashes (personally I don’t know that it’s even accurate to describe Insurectionists as Anarchists, they have much more in common ideologically with political Nihilism then with Anarchism.  It’s a fuzzy line but there is a line there).   Anarchosyndicalists believe that the switch can be best achieved by building autonomous working class organizations (primarily labor unions but other orgs as well) capable of fighting for workers rights and power in the short term and supplanting and abolishing capitalism in a massive general strike, followed by the takeover of  the means of production by the working class, as organized through anarchist labor unions.  sort of an economic coup.  mutualists think that the best way to make the change is to create directly democratic community owned credit unions and collective businesses that can work together to supplant capitalism by out-competing it in the arena of the marketplace.

honestly, I don’t know that any of those strategies can do it, but i’m inclined to think the transition will probably involve elements of all of them and more besides that no one has thought of yet.

that’s the thing about anarchism, there are no garauntees.  it’s not like marxism that claims our future has already been written and the transition to a post-capitalist society is an inevitable byproduct of development.  instead it offers a set of tools that people who want a better world can use to try to build that world.  mutual aid.  solidarity.  democracy.  consensus.   direct action.  local control.  personal freedom.  if the tools are useful then by all means use them, the labels are unimportant.  what really matters is the principles.    we make the path by walking it - the means are the ends.   So I can’t claim to know which path  is ultimately the best, that’s not my place.

So I guess the short version is that if violence apalls you and you want to build a peaceful world then don’t walk a path that entails violence.  there are many very strict pacifists who are anarchists - in fact I would argue that one cannot truly be a pacifist without being an anarchist because capitalism and the state both rely on violence and coercion in order to function.  rejecting violence - really rejecting violence - means rejecting the legitimacy of all organizations that employ violence.  Amon Hennessey used to make that argument and it’s one I’ve found very convincing over the years.

As for me, I’m not a pacifist any more because I believe there are times when violence in self defense is the only viable option.  I oppose capitalist wars because they are wars for the benefit of capitalists at the expense of everyone else.  But I don’t personally see anything inherently wrong with (for instance) putting the people responsible for the bloodbath in Iraq on trial for crimes against humanity and applying the death penalty when they’re found guilty.    other people may well disagree and I respect their right to walk their own paths.   In any case, I don’t see offensive warfare as a viable means of creating an anarchist society, I think we create that alternative society -and that can happen through any or all of the means described above - and then defend it against those who would drown it in blood.  but we don’t kill innocents.  If we did we would cease to be Anarchists.

I hope my response is helpful, best wishes for the new year.
lynx

Posted: January 1st, 2009 under politrix.
Comments: none

the number 1 story from Project censored - the death toll for the iraq war has almost definately passed 1 million (it’s hard to confirm because the US hasn’t bothered to count the bodies reliably).

Now stop and think to yourself how your average American would feel if a hostile foreign power that we had never once attacked or done any harm too (remember, Iraq didn’t have a damn thing to do with the destruction of the WTC) invaded the USA, occupied our country for 8 years, and murdered a million people.  Now take into account how tiny Iraq’s population was to start with and realize that 1 million people is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/6th of their total population.   Think about that for a second.  1 in 6 Iraqi’s have been killed in a war ostensibly launched to eliminate an oppressive (US backed) dictator and his (nonexistant) WMD’s and “liberate” them.

Now that’s some kind of liberation.

Over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 invasion, according to a study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB). These numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the mass killings of the last century—the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia’s infamous “Killing Fields” during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s.

ORB’s research covered fifteen of Iraq’s eighteen provinces. Those not covered include two of Iraq’s more volatile regions—Kerbala and Anbar—and the northern province of Arbil, where local authorities refused them a permit to work. In face-to-face interviews with 2,414 adults, the poll found that more than one in five respondents had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, as opposed to natural cause.

Authors Joshua Holland and Michael Schwartz point out that the dominant narrative on Iraq—that most of the violence against Iraqis is being perpetrated by Iraqis themselves and is not our responsibility—is ill conceived. Interviewers from the Lancet report of October 2006 (Censored 2006, #2) asked Iraqi respondents how their loved ones died. Of deaths for which families were certain of the perpetrator, 56 percent were attributable to US forces or their allies. Schwartz suggests that if a low pro rata share of half the unattributed deaths were caused by US forces, a total of approximately 80 percent of Iraqi deaths are directly US perpetrated.

Even with the lower confirmed figures, by the end of 2006, an average of 5,000 Iraqis had been killed every month by US forces since the beginning of the occupation. However, the rate of fatalities in 2006 was twice as high as the overall average, meaning that the American average in 2006 was well over 10,000 per month, or over 300 Iraqis every day. With the surge that began in 2007, the current figure is likely even higher.

Check out the full story at ProjectCensored.

Posted: November 17th, 2008 under politrix.
Comments: none

Last night around 8pm I was at a house party here in Oakland getting ready for my band’s set when somebody across the room shouted out “Obama won!  he did it!” and the whole room broke out in cheers and clapping.   I pulled out my cellphone and sent a text message to my friend Labrie (who’s been pulling hard for an Obama victory and recorded a couple songs supporting him and his candidacy) saying “Grats to ya boy” and went back to working on getting our sound set up.  Later that night as we closed our set with ‘None of the Above’ several of the Obama supporters, including my bandmates wife, waged a bit of a counter-insurgency, shouting out “Obama!” every time the chorus of “Which one?  None of the Above!” came up.

Such is the fate of an Anarchist among Liberals.

Seriously though, I know this is a big day for a lot of folks who’ve put time and energy into getting dude elected, and in particular - as even McCain acknowledged - it’s a big day for black folks in America.  For over 200 years black folks have watched white Presidents completely ignore their issues and support policies that hurt them.  Now, thanks to Obamas historic win, poor and working class black folks get to have their issues and their needs ignored by a person with the same color skin as them.  That’s an honor that poor and working class white folks have enjoyed in isolation for far too long.  It’s only fair to spread the joy around a bit. Read more »

Posted: November 5th, 2008 under political theory, politrix, race & racism.
Comments: 7

first thing is the presidential race, which is (finally!) about to be over. after a year and a half of watching this stupid puppetshow drown out all the real news I’m well past ready for it to be over.

fuck john “bomb iran” mccain and barack “invade pakistan” oboma. how is that even supposed to represent a choice? we’ve got 2 war mongering capitalist douchebags with slightly different strategies for fucking us all over, and yet people get all excited about it as though our votes actually counted or something! I’ll never understand it.

So here’s my official election endorsement, for everyone who hasn’t already seen it:

As for the rest of the ballot, in California at least we have a little bit of direct democracy, and that to me is worth voting on. As an anarchist I’d like to see direct democracy used for just about everything, so while the ballot initiative system isn’t perfect, it’s at least a step in the right direction. Here’s my list: Read more »

Posted: November 3rd, 2008 under politrix.
Comments: 3

I don’t care what your doing, you need to stop it right now and go read this woman’s blog.  Yes, I’m serious.

It’s an anonymous blog from a young Iraqi woman talking about her life, her hopes, her fears, and the sheer brutality and anti-human horror of life in occupied Bahdad.  I know all the conservative assholes who keep goign on about how “we” are “winning” in Iraq will never take the time to read it - or any of the other accounts from people who’ve lived through the hell our Fuher has engineered - but for the rest of us who continue to go on with our daily lives doing the best we can to get by even though we know there is a horrible crime being committed in our name, for the rest of us it’s incredibly important to stop, shut the fuck up about everything we THINK we know, and just listen.

Baghdad Burning.

Go. There. Now.

Posted: October 14th, 2008 under culture war, gender & feminism, news, politrix.
Comments: none