Re: Anarchist Cookbook for 21st Century (formerly: Our "National Emergency":...Leading to What?)

[Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol@xxxxxxx>]

At 12:53 PM 1/14/98 -0800, Tom Walker wrote:
>Sometimes I get the impression that leftistes are more wedded than anyone to
>institutionalized financial support for political/educational work -- as if
>a board, a  bureaucracy, and a charitable tax number (in other words,
>legitimization in the eyes of the state) were the sine qua non of
>effectiveness. Yeah, sure, buddy. Send me a proposal, a feasibility study, a
>marketing plan and we'll see if we can find a funder. Oh yeah, and it would
>help you have some assets you could put up for collateral.
>
>If Christ were alive today, the Christians would crucify him. If Marx were
>alive today, the marxists would give him advice on what agency to apply to
>for a project grant to write Das Kapital.


Tom, that is not exactly what I had in mind.  What I did have in mind was
how to subvert the system rather than how the so-called Left can play the
assigned role of a safety valve in it.

A bueraucratic organization is a bureaucratic organization is a
bureaucratic organization regardless of its ideological legitimation as
governnment, private coporation, nonprofit organization, a union, a
communist party, a church or what not.  In each of the cases the mission
(or ideological superstructure in Marx's lingo) may change, but the
material base remains the same, as each one of them is the embodiment of
abstract hierarchical order that replaces traditional social solidarity
ties with individualistic rationality i.e. predictable individual responses
to  cues handed down by authority figures.  As long as unions, nonprofits,
academe etc. act within that system, they reproduce it without posing any
serious threat to the status quo.  They merely play the assigned role of a
safety valve, a face that appears on the screen in the Orwellian minute of
hate.

My idea was to subvert that system altogether, introduce elements that
would render it partially or completely dysfunctional.  Otherwise, I would
have titled my project the 'Reformer Cookbook for the 21st Century.'

Regards,


wojtek sokolowski
institute for policy studies
johns hopkins university
baltimore, md 21218
sokol@xxxxxxx
voice: (410) 516-4056
fax:   (410) 516-8233