Re: AUT: Me and my interests

[Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx>]

Kube wrote:

  In the end, this is what sit offers that marxism doesnt --
  individualism. On the other hand, what it lacks is power
  of organization, in which respect it struggles to even
  do as badly as classical anarchism. Some kind of fusion
  of collective values and physical practicalities with sit
  critique is what I came insearchof...

Not a critique, just a bewilderment of how the same terms
gives different people different associations. As I see it,
the question of organisation is precisely a field where
what I think of as "classical anarchism" has more to contri-
bute than autonomist marxism, even if in need of rethinking.
It could be my ignorance, but it seems to me that these is
a field autonomist marxism - whatever insights it otherwise
has contributed with - has avoided, while it has always been
at the center of the mainstream of classical anarchist
thought, though for sure there has always existed along with
it more chaotic and purely individualistic tendencies.

Much of post-68 anarchism on the other hand, under much
of the same influences as S.I. inspired currents, and often
blended with those, as well as a manifold of other more or
less counter- or sub-cultural currents, pretty much fits
your description, though depending somewhat on the country
of reference. As a general rule the less of a classical
anarchist tradition, the less also the focus on the
question of organisation. Maybe the most organised anarchists
I ever met where to young girls who stayed in Norway for
a while who were born and brought up in Barcelona within
classical Spanish working class anarchism.

However this is, this is an interesting question. I sure
would like an up-date on whatever new thoughts and currents
within autonomist marxism regarding the organisational
question.

As for "situationism" today, I am no longer sure what
that is. I have an affinity to the old SI and then in
particular the Guy Debord tendency within it. As for
the post-SI Vaneigem, I have hard to see that he has
any longer any political relevance, though he may still
be a good writer. And when it comes Hakim Bey, all I
can say is that I prefer Allan Ginsberg as a writer
of fiction. I have general feeling that if you take the
class perspective out of situationist theory it lends
itself to just about everything, not at least, para-
doxially enough, to the culture industry, and then of
course to "lifestylism" as an ideology. On the other
hand it provides excellent instruments for a critique
of such phenomema, or for that sake to end with what
is perhaps a provocation and an overstatement: the
spectacle of events such as in Seattle.

Harald


  in solidarity,
  Harald Beyer-Arnesen
  haraldba@xxxxxxxxx



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