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Title: On post-left nonsense
Author: Bato the Black
Language: en
Topics: post-left, dialectics, theory, philosophy

Bato the Black

On post-left nonsense

This is in response to ‘Notes on post-left anarchism’ which is basically

a confession by Bob Black as to his role in creating the ‘post-left’

nonsense. Apparently our ‘western’ comrades have lost their minds and

the rest of us so called ‘classical anarchists’ have to suffer this

madness. Yes everything Bob is saying is true but the way it is said is

wrong.

Creating a distinction like ‘post-left’ while at the same time admitting

that you don’t know what ‘left’ means should already be a red flag.

Leave the naming of nonsense for the scholars. The reason others accuse

post-left of dogmatism, even though it is without dogma, is because what

they are doing is setting themselves up as the gatekeepers of anarchism

so it has the same effect. By declaring themselves ‘post-left’ anyone

who doesn’t misunderstand these terms along with them is ‘not a real

anarchist’ while labeling them as those all anarchists are already

differentiated from, sometimes rightly so but for the times it is not

that’s why we don’t. Anarchists are always inclusive, it is others who

exclude themselves.

What ‘post-left’ describe as 'post-left anarchism' is the way anarchists

always are, it is the system that changes, that recuperates words, that

tries to adapt. The post-left comrades are looking at the names being

used within the spectacle and reacting to the 'popular' usage and image,

like the word ‘comrade’ itself so they have to ask for your pronouns.

Just because scholars use their formal ways to try and tell people

anarchism is this or that doesn’t change the way anarchists always are.

What ‘post-left’ describe as ‘left’ is what ‘liberals’ or ‘scholars’

always are. Yes they compromise, misapply theory and try to work within

the system because they don’t understand how and why they become the

thing they think they are against. Declaring yourself ‘post-left’

doesn’t help anyone understand anything and just creates more confusion

among comrades. Anarchists are part of the left and the left is part of

humanity. There is no socialism without anarchists, our ‘critical

theory’ and the ‘dialectics’ of ‘idealists’ is the root of the negation

and thus the revolution, it is others who try to compromise it. I

understand where post-left are coming from and why they felt the need to

‘define’ and differentiate themselves from the cold war propaganda but

such oversimplifications come with a cost, like inadvertently creating

‘ancaps’ with shortcuts to theory.

Notice how post-left rarely speak of private property, that’s what

happens when you get your understanding of theory from analytics and

shrinks instead of dialectics and observation, everything becomes about

you and your ego. This is a fundamental divide not only in philosophy

but as a ‘philosophical perspective’ it plays an important role in how

things are perceived and how and why we 'do and don't do' things which

are then named in situations such things as 'morals or ethics,

personality or character, practice or theory' etc. The ‘western’

comrades are ‘analytical’ so they primarily look at the parts from an

‘individual’ and thus more of a subjective perspective whereas the

‘classical anarchists’ are as they say ‘continental’ or dialectical and

look at primarily the whole from a ‘collective’ and thus more of an

objective or systematic perspective. One isn’t right or wrong and you

can’t have one without the other, they create each other just as 'left'

and 'anarchists' are intertwined and just as ‘left-right’ are

intertwined within the spectacle of the system.

This is not the divide Bob is speaking of but it is at the root of the

confusion in all these things especially when using terms like

theory-practice, collective-individual, left-right, far left-left,

gov-state, ‘organizing’, ‘defining anarchy’, dialectics and the nonsense

that is ‘dialectical materialism’. It is baked into the languages we use

and the propaganda everyone is constantly being fed, if you can

understand the whole then there are no contradictions. This is not one

thing and can’t be explained as one thing, it is a process, an ongoing

discussion which can only be revealed through further discussion as it

is not what it is, it is what it is not.

With all that said, I like Bob and the contributions he’s made to

anarchism but the post-left need to chill the fuck out and listen to

what others are saying once in a while. They become as deaf and arrogant

as their western states trying to export their version of ‘democracy and

capitalism’ to all the other ‘simple minded savages’ who just refuse to

understand how great it is. Post-left isn’t saying anything new, every

anarchist can agree with what is said about being 'anti-political',

'hedonist', skeptical and all that but all those things mean different

things to different people at different times in their lives living in

different parts of the world under different stages or cycles of

systematic accumulation and conditioning, the same cycles of which

‘post-left’ is itself a product.

A fundamental part or perspective of being an anarchist is to be able to

see past all the material nonsense, the image of things, the spectacle

and propaganda in order to understand things as they always are, without

names or labels. So understand this post-left, you cannot be ‘post-left’

no more then you can be ‘post-feminine’ or ‘post-negative’. No more then

the yin can be without the yang, no more then the ‘yang within the yin’

can be without the ‘yin’. That’s the way things always are, deal with

it.