8/4/2009 The Authority Smashing! Hour
A Brand New Smashing! Hour!!!
Some links from the show:
- Smack a White Boy Part Two: Crimethlnc. Eviction
- My Experience as a Working Class Anarchist.
- Michael Albert’s full interview with Jonathan McIntosh on Market Abolition.
*For those who enjoy the show, please spread the word anyway you can 🙂 For those with the means and feel strongly enough about the show to support it financially, we can use some of your material support as well. Thank you.
7 comments on “8/4/2009 The Authority Smashing! Hour”
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The Authority Smashing! Hour 
Really good show this week guys. I’d just like to make some comment about the article discussed this week “My Experience as a Working Class Anarchist”.
It was a very long, but worthwhile read and the guy makes a lot of what I believe to be extremely valid points about the futility that seems to be inherent in the anarchist movement. While I sympathise greatly with the disillusionment that this guy has experienced during his time participating in various groups I can’t help but think that he is confused in some respects. He seems to believe that anarchism is a “movement” when, at it’s most basic it is not. It’s a philosophy, a state of mind if you like. Any action that comes out of that philosophy is not anarchy … it’s activism. So he seems to have subsumed the principals of anarchy into his idea of the action that this philosophy can lead to rather than turning that relationship around so that activism becomes subsumed by the principal that is anarchism.
I also believe that his apparent obsession with “no war but the class war” hasn’t helped him at all. I understand the importance of recognising class issues but in my opinion anarchy is nothing to do with class war. Class is merely a cobweb created by the spider that is the hierarchical system. You could spend your whole life concentrating on clearing away cobwebs but as long as the spider is still alive, it’s going to keep spinning webs.
So although his story is most disheartening in some respects (ie in regard to “activism”) it has helped me more clearly understand that the shortfalls of any anarchistic “movement” does NOT shake my belief in the principals of anarchism.
I’m w/you CF … the article didn’t shake my resolve as far as anarchism. And, I think it provides an interesting complement to the nonsense that happened at the crimethinc convergence.
Here’s where I’ll differ w/you … the significance of these two things (one personal the other communal) is that they call attention to what I think is anarchism’s greatest weakness right now: we seem to have lost sight of the most basic materialist (in the philosophical sense) critiques.
We have lost sight of the fact that the economic & political systems fund and fuel hierarchies. I think too many anarchists are preoccupied w/treating the symptoms rather than trying to cure the disease.
The (very real and very evil) problems associated with racism, sexism, homophobia, etc … must be confronted, to be sure, but …
if that confrontation is not primarily concerned with overturning the economic system that perpetuates the hierarchies that lead bosses being able to discriminate in the work place; if that confrontation is not primarily concerned with overturning the political system that allows rapists to hide behind layers of laws … then our progress seems more superficial than systemic.
Besides … ultimately, we seek a society free of oppression and exploitation, not a “liberal” society where everyone is “free” to oppressed and exploited equally.
>[i]”… the article … provides an interesting complement to the nonsense that happened at the crimethinc convergence.”[/i]
I agree. It would appear that anarchists also need a healthy dose of the Dalai Lama’s “moral enlightenment” just as much as (if not more so than) capitalists and state conformists. We only make ourselves look ridiculous and hypocritical by engaging in such internal strife. I mean FFS … either we’re anti-authoritarian or we’re not eh? How anybody can call themselves an anarchist whilst at the same time trying to enforce their own ideologies on other anarchists (never mind the population at large) is tantamount to f**king criminality. I’m sick to death of seeing “anarchists” like that on YouTube videos and in the comments acting like f**king children at kindergarten. To them I say … STOP DOING THAT SH!T.
>[i]”Here’s where I’ll differ w/you …”[/i]
It would appear from your following comments that you do not in fact differ with me at all. I agree with you on every point. =D
Can you guys have the shows available for download, please?
Just found you guys when looking at the new Finkelstein interview on Chomskyan’s youtube. Super neat!
Hi J, I think you can download the show from iTunes. Search for BTR or Blog Talk Radio, and our show’s name The Authority Smashing! Hour, they should have it available for downloads.
Glad you enjoy the show.
in “The Great Financial Crisis” Magdoff and Foster put forward a pretty convincing argument for the rise if finance capitalism. Basically the idea is the economy began to stagnate with monopolization and the excess of surplus capital (that could not be reinvested into “real economy”). Financialization became a way for companies to increase profits without actually investing in anything real. The book is coming from a Marxist/Socialist perspective.
great show, especially the interview.
its kinda funny how people compare market = democracy.