One of them songs. One of them songs is a gonna be sung.

The sun burns at 5,778 K (5,505 °C). Hottern’ hell. When the sun rises the birds start chirping. Then light slowly seeps through the trees. I’m awake!

Panic! Panic! Panic grips the steel! Panic makes the day! Panic goes on by! Panic is my name! Panic is the wind! Panic is the sky! Panic is the day, I gently go to die. Panic is the seed. Panic is the root. Panic is the pajamas. Panic is the fruit. Panic is glorious and wondrous. Panic just walks on by. Panic is in a whirlpool. Panic is having fun. I believe in Panic!

The Panic Movement was a performance art collective in Paris in 1962. They did various things such as a dressing in motorcyclist leather, slitting the throats of two geese, taping two snakes to their chest and having themselves stripped and whipped. Other scenes included a staged murder of a rabbi, a crucified chicken, a giant vagina giving birth to a grown man, naked women covered in honey and the throwing of live turtles into the audience.
The Ya̧nomamö of Brazil are a very warlike people. They believe that through ingestion of a substance known as ebene (also known as yopo) they can activate and embody the spirits that live in their chests. When a shaman is under mystical intoxication he is able to travel as a spirit does: swiftly and without being seen. He may travel to an enemy village where he will eat the souls of the enemy villagers. This is called magical death. Just about every death that happens in Ya̧nomamö culture is a magical death. What happens is that the soul is eaten by the enemy shaman and soon after the flesh dies too.

The Kwakwaka'wakw participate in the potlatch described by Marcel Mauss in his book The Gift, which is about gift-based economy amongst indigenous peoples. The potlatch is a ceremony by which the host gives many of his goods up for the guests. The guests are in turn expected to hold a follow up potlatch, which presumably would be even bigger than the last one. And the attendee’s of that potlatch would be obliged to hold a potlatch that is even bigger, until the potlatch gets so big that the whole world is in the potlatch and everything is free. At least, that’s an idealistic interpretation. The Kwakwaka'wakw are also a warlike people, but not to the same extent as the Ya̧nomamö. The Kwakwaka'wakw get most of their violence out through what is called the cannibal dance. The dance may or may not have involved the actual eating of human flesh in the past. It’s hard to know. But now it is a healthy way to channel feelings of anger and hostility into dancing. There is also evidence that the Kwakwaka’wakw actually did practice cannibalism.

So tired. So long. So so. Welcome to the longest day. The last day. The judgment day. The day of reckoning. Where you will be fed the longest poison meal. Until you vomit blood. You will cry and put tears in your libations. Whine all you want, the pain is not over. Then you will be stuck with needles all over. Then you will be strung together with other lost souls on a string like Christmas decorations made from popcorn. Ultimately you will die, but not for a long time. This is existence. A classic staged play of pain and suffering. A tragedy. Where everyone dies at the end. I am not sad, though. I live each day to the fullest, as the cliché goes. I take on the day. I fill my lungs with air. I break wind and begin. Society for the greater part carries on its own organization. Each man pursues his proper occupation, and there are few individuals that feel the propensity to interrupt the pursuits of their neighbours by personal violence. When we observe the quiet manner in which the inhabitants of a great city, and, in the country, the frequenters of the fields, the high roads, and the heaths, pass along, each engrossed by his private contemplations, feeling no disposition to molest the strangers he encounters, but on the contrary prepared to afford them every courteous assistance, we cannot in equity do less than admire the innocence of our species, and fancy that, like the patriarchs of old, we have fallen in with "angels unawares."
– William Godwin

The Christian Children of Oblivion. Follow the leader. Why do we feel the need to follow? Hitler, Manson, Jesus, Koresh, Jones? No Gods, No Masters! God is dead as Nietzsche said. And we killed Him. Nihilistic Catholics. Is it worth it to care anymore? Nothing is true! Everything is permitted! Some philosophers are just skeptical of everything, but for someone who’s supposedly agnostic about anything, they sure seem to think they know everything. Even Buddha is worshipped. Jesus said he didn’t want to be king. “My kingdom is not of this world,” he said. And they labeled him “King of the Jews” anyway. Rasputin, the mad Russian, was a puppet master. He controlled the Czar with his magic powers. Is magic behind every door? Some say the Illuminati controls things, and they’re an esoteric cult that practices witchcraft. I’m ambivalent toward this view. Some will tell you that lizard aliens are the rulers. Still others will tell you it’s demiurges, or Yaldabaoth. “Now the archon (ruler) who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas (“fool”), and the third is Samael. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, ‘I am God and there is no other God beside me,’ for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come.” - Apocryphon of John
Yaldabaoth is the half-maker of the corporeal, or tangible, or material universe. He is a deceiver, much like the evil genius talked about by Descartes. This Gnostic account refutes Descartes’ belief in a perfect God, and instead speaks of an imperfect archon who fucked up the world with his clumsiness. We are all clowns of the underworld. We are all waterboarders. We are guilty, we are sinners. Repent and you shall be forgiven. The dollar is a sin. The bible says you must not be a usurer or commit usury. “If he has exacted usury Or taken increase -- Shall he then live? He shall not live! If he has done any of these abominations, He shall surely die; His blood shall be upon him.” (Ezekiel 18:13) Landlords and bankers, you will die. Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers and drove them out with a whip. Read what he told the rich: Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25 The Jerome Biblical Commentary is a standard reference work found in many libraries, written by Catholic scholars. Its commentary on Matthew 19:24 states bluntly, "the figure of the camel and the eye of the needle means exactly what is said; it does not refer to a cable or a small gate of Jerusalem." Dada hurts. Dada does not jest, for the reason that it was experienced by revolutionary men and not by philistines who demand that art be a decoration for the mendacity of their own emotions. … I am firmly convinced that all art will become dadaistic in the course of time, because from Dada proceeds the perpetual urge for its renovation. - Richard Huelsenbeck

Cognitive Dissonance (examples): Anti-abortion/pro-war. Skepticism/believing in science as absolute truth. Ben Franklin said of a political opponent, “I did not ... aim at gaining his favour by paying any servile respect to him but, after some time, took this other method. Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book I wrote a note to him expressing my desire of perusing that book and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately and I returned it in about a week with another note expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends and our friendship continued to his death. This is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says, ‘He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.’” Many religious people experience cognitive dissonance as well. They believe in the Universality of God’s love, yet believe in eternal torture in hell. They also condemn people when Jesus said to love your enemy. Ben Franklin was a deist, NOT a Puritan or a fundamentalist as some who insist that the US was built on Christian principles may think. Deism holds that the existence of God can be proved by reason, but that God does not intervene in human affairs. There is also a belief that organized religion is unnecessary, and that no particular religion is any more desirable that another. Franklin himself seemed to have a bit of cognitive dissonance regarding slavery. The Declaration of Independence held that all men are created equal, but the Constitution of the United States, on the other hand the original Constitution contained four provisions tacitly allowing slavery to continue for the next 20 years. Section 9 of Article I allowed the continued "importation" of such persons, Section 2 of Article IV prohibited the provision of assistance to escaping persons and required their return if successful and Section 2 of Article I defined other persons as "three-fifths" of a person for calculations of each state's official population for representation and federal taxation. Article V prohibited any amendments or legislation changing the provision regarding slave importation until 1808, thereby giving the States then existing 20 years to resolve this issue. The failure to do so contributed to the Civil War. Ben Franklin's views on slavery changed over time. When he was a young man he bought and sold slaves in his shop. Later on he became a staunch opponent of the practice and founded an early anti-slavery society known as The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.

http://zeroanthropology.net/about/

In the esoteric ectoplasm the ghost wades. That lonely spirit. Waiting for god. Time to meet yr maker sinner. The truth cannot be known. That is, there is no truth. It’s a subjective thing, a vibrant thing and above all an esoteric thing. The ghost waits at the door wanting love objects. The object of affection. The ghost is patient, and good things come to those who wait. The zephyr blows in from the west. With the tempests the ghost does play. With the playthings of time. Under the weeping willow tree I shot him. I shot him down and the ghost still haunts me. I wish I was someone. I wish I was famous. I wish I wasn’t a ghost.Or else I wish I wasn’t the last man alive. In my private struggle I quietly sit. This is the war inside my brain. I cannot achieve in death what I want to in life. Therefore I must live as though I am alive. As though I am being born for the first time. That way I will remember the things I forgot. I can advance to the next phase.

In Greek mythology, Lethe (λήθη; Classical Greek [ˈlεːt̪ʰεː], modern Greek: [ˈliθi]) was one of the five rivers of Hades. Also known as the Ameles potamos (river of unmindfulness), the Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness. Lethe was also the name of the Greek spirit of forgetfulness and oblivion, with whom the river was often identified.
In Classical Greek, the word Lethe literally means "oblivion," "forgetfulness," or "concealment". It is related to the Greek word for "truth", aletheia (αλήθεια), meaning "un-forgetfulness" or "un-concealment".
Was I bound in chains by a demiurge? Did I walk too close to the ebb and flow of Lethe? Did I deface the bust of Goethe? Did I turn lead to gold? Did I find the philosopher’s stone? Did I fart too loud? Was my fart too pungent? Oh my god why did you break the mold? Was my face torn by the steel tongs? Were my knees weak and did I need them for long?

One of them songs. One of them songs is a gonna be sung.

Georges Sorel was once an anarchist who turned to the darkside, supporting monarchist and right-wing fascist politics later in his life. However, his contributions on the virtue of revolutionary violence and his remarks on the power of the “energizing myth” remain important concepts in anarchist thought. Contrast this to the anarcho-Christian pacifism of Leo Tolstoy who felt that violence was an inevitable result of the dialectical relationship between the state and the oppressed. So what is the anarchist discourse on violence all about? Well, it’s a slippery slope. The man who shot McKinley claimed he was inspired by Emma Goldman, a onetime Rochester resident. What were Goldman’s reactions to this action? Well, she didn’t want to advocate such outright acts of violence, but she also didn’t want to condemn them. The classic slogan “Propaganda by the deed” had become synonymous with anarchism at the time, giving anarchism a bad name. This lead to the scapegoating of many anarchists during the first red scare. Sacco and Vanzetti are examples of this. Goldman herself was deported to the icy tundra of what then became known as the USSR. Individualist anarchists deplored violence by their anarcho-communist cousins and used the bad name that anarcho-terrorists had given anarcho-communism to denounce it. 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building in the German capital was set on fire. Hitler blamed this on communists and used it to further persecuted communists and anarchists. Later anarchists would make an assassination attempt on Hitler. Many pacifists are foiled when the subject of WWII comes up. Militant self-defense, of course, is very different from “propaganda by the deed.” The Black Panther Party in the United States advocated violent self-defense in the spirit of Rob Williams, author of “Negros with Guns.” Martin Luther King denounced these tactics, taking the more masochistic stance of Ghandian non-violence. Today the debate over violence is odd. There are those who advocate violent revolution, however assassination and terrorism are no longer part of the discourse, especially post-9/11. “Diversity of tactics” and “Direct Action” are the slogans of anarchists today. Direct action can include breaking store windows, as they did in Seattle in 1999, or it can include confrontations with the police. The purpose of these actions is never to hurt anybody, just to express the anger that the system has created. Despite the fact that many pacifists see these tactics as violence, they appear to me to be no less masochistic than Ghandian tactics. Playing cat and mouse with the police may be a good way to get out some anger, but it results in injury to activists, and almost never to cops. Self-defense appears to be the only legitimate use of violence. However, the definition of self defense is also a slippery slope. Is the violence inherent in the system enough to warrant acts of terrorism? The Weather Underground had the slogan “Bring the war home,” referring to the Vietnam war. They engaged in property destruction, but were very careful to make sure no individuals got hurt. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the ELF and ALF used similar tactics. These are symbolic acts, “propaganda by the deed” and many dedicated activists have gone to jail as a result of the “Green Scare.” When considering the use of militant tactics it is important to do a cost-benefit analysis.

In fresh blood I did walk.

We tried to get to Heaven but ended up in Space from Sarah Ellissa Marquee on Vimeo.

some poems by people other than me:

A Boy in Church

“Gabble-gabble,… brethren,… gabble-gabble!”
My window frames forest and heather.
I hardly hear the tuneful babble,
Not knowing nor much caring whether
The text is praise or exhortation,
Prayer or thanksgiving, or damnation.

Outside it blows wetter and wetter,
The tossing trees never stay still.
I shift my elbows to catch better
The full round sweep of heathered hill.
The tortured copse bends to and fro
In silence like a shadow-show.

The parson’s voice runs like a river
Over smooth rocks. I like this church:
The pews are staid, they never shiver,
They never bend or sway or lurch.
“Prayer,” says the kind voice, “is a chain
That draws down Grace from Heaven again.”

I add the hymns up, over and over,
Until there’s not the least mistake.
Seven-seventy-one. (Look! there’s a plover!
It’s gone!) Who’s that Saint by the lake?
The red light from his mantle passes
Across the broad memorial brasses.

It’s pleasant here for dreams and thinking,
Lolling and letting reason nod,
With ugly serious people linking
Sad prayers to a forgiving God….
But a dumb blast sets the trees swaying
With furious zeal like madmen praying.

Robert Graves
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Haiku (Never Published)

Drinking my tea
Without sugar-
No difference.

The sparrow shits
upside down
--ah! my brain & eggs

Mayan head in a
Pacific driftwood bole
--Someday I'll live in N.Y.

Looking over my shoulder
my behind was covered
with cherry blossoms.

Winter Haiku
I didn't know the names
of the flowers--now
my garden is gone.

I slapped the mosquito
and missed.
What made me do that?

Reading haiku
I am unhappy,
longing for the Nameless.

A frog floating
in the drugstore jar:
summer rain on grey pavements.
(after Shiki)

On the porch
in my shorts;
auto lights in the rain.

Another year
has past-the world
is no different.

The first thing I looked for
in my old garden was
The Cherry Tree.

My old desk:
the first thing I looked for
in my house.

My early journal:
the first thing I found
in my old desk.

My mother's ghost:
the first thing I found
in the living room.

I quit shaving
but the eyes that glanced at me
remained in the mirror.

The madman
emerges from the movies:
the street
at lunchtime.

Cities of boys
are in their graves,
and in this town...

Lying on my side
in the void:
the breath in my nose.

On the fifteenth floor
the dog chews a bone-
Screech of taxicabs.

A hardon in New York,
a boy
in San Fransisco.

The moon over the roof,
worms in the garden.
I rent this house.


[Haiku composed in the backyard cottage at 1624
Milvia Street, Berkeley 1955, while reading R.H.
Blyth's 4 volumes, "Haiku."]

Allen Ginsberg

Because I could not stop for Death (712) by Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed us –
The Dews drew quivering and chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –

part II:
and I was biting my tongue
never did lose the soft grip
gold came from lead
and I basked in the glory of the kingdom of god
but the snakes were drinking the wine
but i felt fine
broken sunset obscured by clouds
the fish flapping at my feet
two fish and four loaves
the esoteric ectoplasm
a cryptic crypt
the death of memory
and going into the ground

There are snakes in my rain water
Evolving like children
Never thought it could be so strange
Going over it over and over in my head
Never forget and don't cry for it
Don't waste time and settle down
Be confident and be bold
Judge not for the kingdom of god is within you
Broken chairs on the children's work
Glassy dream
Foggy glass
Down and dirty
Flag the ship down
The silver challis awaits
To make the pain go away
Taking little pills with the water from the rain
A broken dream, an assassin of consciousness
Don't go down, stay with me
Remember a day before today
Never did lose the soft grip

I will swim in my confusion
And drink my own blood
Sangre de Christe

Get up, get down
Children are you ready?

I will walk with snakes
And I will break the mold

Oh my god!

*Rain Song #2*

The rain is little if not beautiful
It's raining on the inside
And everything is just coming down
Someone hits me in the skull with a hammer

There's a fire in my stomach
I can see everything clearly
Everything seems to blend together
Like painting in the shower

The past and future all look the same
And God is losing me again...

*Rain Song #1*

Gravity brings down the rain
Fiery droplets of mayhem
The sky is falling
Gravity is heavier today

It's like a rainforest
I can hear the clouds exploding
With a supernatural pop
And the flash of a camera

A prayer to banish the darkness
Cold is the absence of heat
In the city weather is so incidental

║╔╝╔╗╔╗╔═╗╔╦╗!
║╠╝║╚╝║║╠╣║═╣!
╚╝═╚══╝╚═╝╚╩╝!

*Pop Song*
I saw you in the club last night and you looked as good as I remembered.
It's been 6 long months since our little thing in mid December.
Girl you looked so fly that I hardly believed my eyes.
You were dancing with another guy and you gave me a look of sad surprise.

{Chorus:}
Let me know how you feel
Send a message on the cell phone
I want to know if love is real
I'm sick of spending my nights alone

So I approached her and she said, "hey how ya been?"
I said, "I'm doing fine. Do you think that we could go home tonight?"
She said, "Well I can't ever understand men."
I said, "That's fine, I'll just go home alone again."

{Chorus}

Look At Yr Game Girl

Faces of Recuperation
Situationist International #1 (June 1969)
THE IDEAS OF the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: the class which is the material force of society is at the same time the ruling intellectual force.
If we detach the ideas of the ruling class itself and attribute to them an independent existence, without bothering about the conditions of production and the porducers of these ideas, we can say, for instance, that the domination of the aristocracy was really the domination of the concepts honor, loyalty; the domination of the bourgeoisie was really that of the concepts freedom, equality. The ruling class itself on the whole imagines this to be so. This conception of history, which is common to all historians, particularly since the 18th century, necessarily comes up against the phenomenon that the more abstract the ideas (that is, the more universal their form), the more they hold sway.
Once the ruling ideas have been separated from the ruling individuals, and, above all, from the relationships which result from a given stage of the mode of production and in this way the conclusion has been reached that history is always under the sway of ideas, it is very easy to abstract from these various ideas, "the idea," as the dominant force in history, and thus to understand all these separate ideas and concepts as "forms of self-determination" on the part of the concept developing in history. It follows then naturally, too, that all the relationships of men can be derived from the concept man, man as conceived, the essence of man, man. This has been done by the specualtive philosophers. Hegel himself confesses at the end of The Philosophy of History that he "has considered the progress of the concept only" and has represented in history "the true theodicy." Now one can go back again to the "producers of the concept," to the theoreticians, ideologists, and philosophers, and one comes to the conclusion that the philosophers, the thinkers as such, have at all times been dominant in history. History as dominated by ideas and those who "explain" or "produce" them.
This whole semblance, of the preeminence of thinkers, and of the rule of a certain class as only the rule of certain ideas, comes of course to a natural end as soon as society ceases at last to be organized in the form of class-rule, that is to say as soon as it is no longer necessary to represent a particular interest as general or "the general interest" as ruling.
The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class. The function of theory is to always renew the struggle against the perverting influence of bourgeois though on the thought of the proletariat.
The Comedy of the Re-appearance of Economic Tragedy
Leninist theory explains as always that the negation of capitalist society is of economic necessity. The historical negation amounts to the realization of planned economy, through the correction of Bolshevik practice. The Leninist theoretical exclusion of the question of who plans in the planned economy (assuming that the true realization of planning represents the adequate condition for the realization of the individual) signals the continuation of the impoverishment of the individual, deflected by the appearances of economic equality and rationalized productivity.
Baran and Sweezy emerge years after their writings to provide the theoretical economic base of the contemporary leftish movement in the United States. Throughout their material they implicitly reduce the spectrum of socialist ideologies to historical variations on an evolving socialist model, and in which these ideologies will recover their essential unity at a future point in time. Their unification of an appearance becomes thoroughly transparent as the socialist countries continuously reveal themselves as familiar regulators of social control. In this light, socialist theory justifies manipulation and coercion through scientific (quantitative) analysis. It is the illusory theoretical base of the illusory alternative.
In Monopoly Capital, Baran and Sweezy argue that the contradictions of capitalism are with us still, but that they have been modified since their original expression; that is, the capitalist epoch had proven capable of more productivity than anticipated; and yet, profit oriented production creates economic stagnation: limited market outlets cause underconsumption (waste of products) and unemployment (waste of labor) and underutilization of machinery. The essential modifications of capitalism manifest themselves in imperialist war, racism, domestic and foreign exploitation, bad housing, moral despair, sexual repression, poverty, poor education, and so on and so on. The means of the critique suggest its ends. Baran and Sweezy approach the problem of capitalism by dividing it into separate (separated) problems that are then arbitrarily linked to one another, an approach compatible with the solution they seek, which is a series of reforms. To say that the capitalist system has been kept alive by 'stimuli' is to imply that it can always be kept alive by 'stimuli.' They forget their own active historical role as 'stimuli.'

There is thus no mystery about the performance of the United States economy in the postwar period. With the aftermath boom triggering a great upheaval in the living patterns of tens of millions of people, and with arms spending growing nearly fivefold — from $11.4 billion in 1947 to $55.2 billion in 1963 — it is probably safe to say that never since the height of the railroad epoch has the American economy been subject in peacetime to such powerful stimuli! What is really remarkable is that despite the strength and persistence of these stimuli, that familiar symptoms of inadequate surplus absorption — unemployemt and underutilization of capacity — began to appear at an early stage, and apart from cyclical fluctuations, have been gradually growing more severe...
What needs to be added is that the unemployment situation... was considerably worse than the figures indicate...

The problem, as they put it, is that in advanced capitalism the forces of production — men, techniques and machines — are blocked from total utilization. They are constantly being unemployed. Baran and Sweezy reduce the problem of alienation of the practice of rationalization (which is the full use or the full absorption, of the social product).
Their critique of the quality of life emerges because they can demonstrate only dangerous times for the bourgeoisie on economic grounds. So they tell us that the "sexual excess," like the economic excess, can only be adequately absorbed (sublimated) on a rational basis in socialist society. Nowhere does the individual, or even the worker for that matter, enter the critique, for the very reason that he does not play a central role in their revolutionary model. So-called Marxian science sustains the notion that the negation of capitalism is a given one (the socialist model). By rendering the problem and the solution scientifically (quantitatively) they suggest the necessity and inevitability of expertise, that is, authority.
As Leninists, Baran and Sweezy can do nothing more than quantify, that is, mystify things. For they begin and end withthe position that the revolutionary project is merely to accelerate the evolving quantitative processes of history. Leninism is the separation of quantity and quality on a permanent basis, in which an endless stream of party specialists redistribute production on behalf of the producers. Qualitative change is exiled to a distant future.
Baran and Sweezy confine the proletariat to a condition of 'morla despair' that permits of clinical (quantifiable) solutions. Beyond what they (and the rest of the social scientists) cannot quantify is that which belongs to the human imagination and a future objective-subjective reality whose material foundations and mere beginnings will be the unmediated, autonomous production of all aspects of life by the producers.
Authentic proletarian autonomy is not simply the adequate negation of hierarchy (though even proletarian autonomy is a possibility which the Leninists refuse to consider essential) but the free play of the individual himself, whose only remaining relation to the necessity of his labor is that he devises th appropriate conditions for its elimination.
(Ernst Mandel, Belgian Marxian economist, soon to be published in three volumes by Sweezy's Monthly Review, argues the impossibility of workers' control, in view of the failure of the Yugoslavian experiment.
In order to absorb class tensions, the Yugoslavian experiment with workers councils was administered by the state bureaucracy and passively established within the local factories. This technique restricts the worker to the factory place and immediately parcellizes the concept of worker autonomy to one aspect of life, when in fact the council form is effectuated at the historic point where it determines all of its aspects. Bolshevik centralization or decentralization are anodynes for the proletariat playing the central, that is, unmediated role in decision, execution, and production. What the problem is for the proletariat — to become conscious of apparent solutions — is not the problem for Mandel at all.)
Above all, Monopoly Capital merely demonstrates the alienation of the industrial capitalist economy from itself. Baran's Political Economy of Growth strengthens this minimal argument by taking great pain and length to demonstrate U.S. domination of underdeveloped countries. The purely objective (so-called unbiased) character of this economics becomes explicit when Baran defends the oppressiveness of Bolshevik industrialization:

The 'revolution from above' that consolidated the socialist order in Russia and that marked the actual beginning of comprehensive socialist planning led to a sharp deterioration in the immediate economic situation, to a grevous disruption of the normal flow of agricultural (and consumer's goods) production, and caused a painful drop in the standard of living. In this it was very much like most revolutionary breaks in history. Yet while the illness that it provoked was acute and painful, it was manifestly an illness of growth: it reached its crisis with enormous speed and yielded to convalescence in a few years. By the end of the First Five Year Plan the worst 'squeezing' of the consumer was over, by 1935 rationing could be abolished. . .
What the experience of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries clearly demonstrates is that the actual economic surplus need not be maximized in order to secure tremendously high rates of investments and economic expansion. These are fully compatible with a consistent and sizable rise of people's standard of living. They are possible on the condition of a correct allocation and rational utilization of such economic surplus as is made available for productive investment. While the former has to be governed by the long-term requirements of economic growth rather than by the desire for immediate rapid increases of consumable output, the latter consists of maximal exploitation of all available capital...

When consumer trends, capital accumulation, heavy industrial equipment build-up, and size of GNP serve as central criteria, concomitant elements of social coercion can be excluded from the analysis of social progress, becoming in fact a separate problem, if a problem at all. Bourgeois and Marxian social science exclude the 'human variable' from a central position in the analysis at equal rate.
The individual continues to serve his life sentence in the realm of chance, again sacrificed to the realization of historical necessity.
It appears that History allows the individual a single choice: to be strangled to death in the hands of the bourgeoisie or in the hands of the Leninists. The Leninsit "negation" of bourgeois society is the instrument of its perpetuation.
Baran and Sweezy in effect merely elaborate the core of Leninist-Stalinist theory: revolutionary change in the advanced capitalist countries is not an immediate possibility; at the stage of monopoly capital, the underdeveloped countries suffer the former agonies and express the former antagonism of the proletariat in the advanced countries (this proletariat now shares in the tendencies of bourgeois consciousness, temporarily); the emergence of socialist competition on the market along with immanent third world revolt eventually closes outlets for profits; so the cataclysmic depression is stimulated through the explosion of the external contradictions; in the meantime, socialist development must be protected at all costs; this means that the Leninist movements in the capitalist countries must not aggravate the contradictions that could stimulate reaction, even invasion of the Soviet Union. Add Cuba, China, Korea, Vietnam to the list and you have Baran and Sweezy.
In addition, these movements must by necessity, form temporary progressive alliances with progressive elements of the bourgeoisie (united fronts), assuming the temporary postures of reform movements. From beginnings to present, the Leninist movements have sustained their reformist postures. Leninism is the permanent transition; the caustic style of reform.
As it has worked out historically, the restriction of the negation of capitalism to the transformation of a society based on exchange value into one based on use value prolongs the existence of man as commodity. The restricted negation prolongs the alienation of the individual, compelled to develop through the power of others. As the cadre of the Welfare State, Baran and Sweezy invert, at all costs, the irreducible essence of critical thought which is to seek the realization of the concrete situation in which the divisions of the old world cease to be.
In the meantime, house servants remain temporarily in left-over "state bourgeois" homes in Peking; Russian industry remains temporarily motivated by profit and wage incentives; professionals, bourgeois, and so on, temporarily consume rare dishes of pork in restaurants well concealed from the pork loving Cuban people.
Capitalist society is sustained by the emergence of the Leninist enterprise. Can we wait till Monthly Review dies its natural death?
A Doctor of Speculation
Who is Marcuse? What is he? that all opposition adores him?
He tells us in One Dimensional Man that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are still the basic classes in the capitalist world. But the former antagonists are now united in their interest to preserve and improve contemporary society. The proletariat has abdicated its historic role. Class struggle has come to an end in class society. Not only is the proletariat absorbed into bourgeois consciousness, but both classes, now practically one, no longer appear to be agents of historical transformation. The word appear as used by the doctor is curious: we are to assume the analysis of advanced industrial society to be based upon an appearance?
But havng disposed of the proletariat, he waxes sad, toward the end of the book, about even the most acute consciousness which is powerless when deprived of the material force for the transformation of life. Since revolutionary consciousness is impossible without a revolutionary class, we take the acute consciousness to be something other than revolutionary (bourgeois no doubt).
When he says that "the dialectical concept pronounces its own hopelessness," he crowns his mystifications. He has set from the start the condition for his own hopelessness, which is then transferred into the hopelessness of the dialectical conception, and, more largely, the hopelessness of the historical project of liberation. After that when he makes statements that tend to clarify the real relationships in 'advanced capitalist society,' the statements clarify not the necessity to supersede that society, but to reinforce the general hopelessness, and as such the statements become reasons for adjusting to the prevailing reality.
Deprived of a class to end class society, a 'demonstrable agent for historical change,' Marcuse seeks the realization (the emergence of the potential) of bourgeois society not through a supression of its conditions, but by an intensification of the prevailing process. It is not that the system should be other — but that it should be more what it already is. In this he joins Max Weber, who saw bureaucracy emerge to rationalize (Marcuse's word is: pacify) existence.
He delineates his alternative to bourgeois irrationality in One Dimensional Man:

Paradoxically, it seems that it is not the notion of the new societal institutions which presents the greatest difficulty in the attempt to answer this question. The established societies themselves are changing, or have already changed the basic institutions in the direction of increased planning. Since the development and utilization of all available resources for the universal satisfaction of vital needs is the prerequisite of pacification, it is incompatible with the prevalence of particular interests which stand in the way of attaining this goal. Qualitative change is conditional upon planning for the whole against these interests, and a free and rational society can emerge only on this basis.
The institutions within which pacification can be envisaged thus defy the traditional classification into authoritarian and democratic, centralized and liberal administration. Today the opposition to central planning in the name of a liberal democracy which is denied in reality serves as an ideological prop for repressive interests. The goal of authentic self-determination by the individuals depends on effective social control over the production and distribution of the necessities (in terms of the achieved level of culture, material and intellectual).
Here, technological rationality, stripped of its exploitative features, is the sole standard and guide in planning and developing the available resources for all. Self-determination in the production and distribution of vital goods and services would be wasteful. The job is a technical one, and as a truly technical job, it makes for the reduction of physical and mental toil. In this realm, centralized control is rational if it establishes the preconditions the preconditions for meaningful self-determination. The latter can then become effective in its own realm — in the decisions which involve the production and distribution of the economic surplus, and in the individual existence.
In any case, the combination of centralized authority and direct democracy is subject to infinite variations...

The individuals whose "authentic self-determination depends on effective social control" are the same individuals "whose particular interests are incompatible with qualitative change." It is the bourgeois order rationalized (pacified), by a centrally controlling technological rationality (why not like Max Weber use the word bureaucracy here?), leaving the individuals to toy "effectively" at the fringes with their individual lives and economic surplus...
Here then is a program for a social democracy, complete with planners at the top — technocrats or bureaucrats — who are good enough to allow the individual to decide over the secondary: his individual life as surplus.
He warns (elsewhere in his book) about technological fetishism — and then proceeds to advocate it in what he wants somebody to believe is the "chance of the alternatives." If he knows, he does not understand that every advance in technological knowledge is an advance in technological knowledge is an advance int he spectacularization of existence, in slavery: not because knowledge is slavery, but because the ruling strata — bourgeois or bureaucratic, and bureasucratic after bourgeois — can only use knowledge to that end. The liberatory potential of capitalism — removing men from the realm of their total submission to nature — turns into its opposite.
The technocrats are closer than he seems to think. "Every hour of every day the Sectretary is confronted by a conflict between the national interest and the parochial interest of perticular industries, individual services and local areas. He cannot avoid controversy in the whole range of issues which dominate the headlines if he is to place the interests of the many above the interests of the few, and yet it is the national interest, above all, which he has sworn to serve" (The Essence of Security, R.S. McNamara). (McNamara's own statement expresses a contradiction. The 'national interest' is the interest of the ruling class (the few, the parochial interest); but he identifies it here with the interests of the many, as best suits the ideology of a bureaucratically controlled state. This contradiction is the condition of existence of the bureaucracy: it is the foundation of its dilemma, in which it discovers all of its moral, idealistic or whatever, crises. While it carries on the struggle, with state power, for the pacification — rationalization — of existence.)
Beneath the cloak of a doctor of speculation hides a social democrat (one who desires to introduce such institutional modifications as will allow capitalism to sustain itself).
Earlier — in Eros and Civilization — Marcuse had pointed to the assumption in the Freudian theory of the immutability of the struggle against want. The practical possibility of eliminating want obviated the Freudian apparatus as reflected upon an ontological essence of man, and reintroduced it as a moment of thought connected to a moment of histroy. In the light of this discovery, the critical impact of Freudian theory bore heavily upon the repressive nature of bourgeois society. It was this which founded his attack on the revisionists of Freudian theory, in their need to demolish the critical content of the theory, for the benefit of the bourgeois order.
But Marcuse himself was on thin ice. In speaking of perversions, he noted that they "seem to be linked with the general perversion of the human existence in a repressive culture, but the perversions have an instinctual substance distinct from these forms; and this substance may well express itself in other forms compatible with normality in high civilization." The conditional hedging is more than the caution of a careful doctor of speculation: it suggests that Freud, after all, may have indeed uncovered something about the ontological essence of man.
It is questionable whether "timelessness is the ideal of pleasure," but he, affirming without the shade of seeming, employs the notion to reintroduce a "primary frustration" so that repression reenters to make "pleasure itself painful."
And he affirms that the elimination of alienated labor is impossible (forgetting for the nonce that alienated labor in bourgeois society reflects the 'struggle against want') so that he then recaptures the content of Freudian theory as ontological speculation. For the problem, really, is to minimize, attenuate, the more noxious traces of bourgeois domination — for a more rational, more pacified organization of survival, until death itself "like other necessities, can be made more rational — painless." So there it is.
On the level of the every day he is less circumlocuted:

I have never suggested or advocated or supported destroying the established universities and building new anti-institutions instead. I have always said that no matter how radical the demands of the students, and no matter how justified, they should be pressed within the existing universities and attained within the existing universities.

The university is the last bastion of freedom. It is not possible to do without an elite. The working-class needed for the social revolution he has in mind is the working-class needed to set up a new ruling strata. We can understand his desire for selective repressions — for he is not thinking of a revolution. He is thinking of the implementation of a social democratic program of reform within capitalism, and he is thinking of the retrograde opposition to that reform.
At the first skirmish in the streets he rediscovered intact his social democratic past, complete with "non-explosive evolution" and "progressive forms of repression."
The pessimism of his years of isolation permitted him to see that advanced industrial society, as he calls it, is of a piece, a unity founded on the parcellization of existence. But he didn't see it all that well. Rediscovering optimism (through no fault of his own) he rediscovered the fragmentary opposition of his past. Destroy the bourgeois university? Never! You dare, vandal! How can we participate in running it then?
The process of reification has not spared his imagination.
We note (from the same newspaper accounts) that he was impressed we wrote of inspired in France (May-June 1968) — All power to the imagination; Be realistic, demand the impossible. There was, among others, another which he never mentioned: Humanity will be happy the day the last bureaucrat is hanged with the guts of the last capitalist. As for doctors of speculation, they will also pass.
Meanwhile, a glib professor, but a social democrat also, is like a gold ring in a sow's nose.
This text, slightly abbreviated, under the title "The Recuperation of Marcuse,"
was distributed at an apparition of Marcuse on December 5, 1968, at a benefit
performance he gave for the Guardian (small melting-pot of ideology).
Con at Work
McLuhan emerged, and with a banality: man's techniques (technology) are extensions of himself.
He says: "The Gutenberg Galaxy develops a mosaic or field approach to its problems. Such a mosaic image of numerous data and quotations in evidence offers the only practical means of revealing casual operations in history." So we know from the start that as a good logician, McLuhan is going to show that the "numerous data and quotations in evidence" will be the effects.
"technological environments are not merely passive containers of people but are active processes that reshape people and other technologies alike." And so now we also know that the way men make their living penetrates all aspects of life; and that new methods for doing so "reshape" if not elimate older ways of doing so.
He knows this well enough to say that De Tocqueville knew "typographic literacy had not only produced the Cartesian outlook but also the special traits of American psychology and politics."
He also knows that money is the universal commodity, that all things are reducible to — and that money reduces and is the measure of all things — quantifiable relations. "Money is metaphor in the sense that it stores skill and lobor and also translates one skill into another."
That all becomes commodity:
"Typography is not a technology but is in itself a natural resource or staple, like cotton or timber or radio; and, like any staple, it shapes not only private sense ratios but also patterns of communal interdependence." Or, "Typography tended to alter language from a means of perception and exploration to a portable commodity."
His sloppy use of language aside, he runs into an unexamined difficulty here. In the beginning, he was going to show us the root cause (which the title already indicated was the Gutenberg galaxy): but now he is speaking of his galaxy (typography) as a raw material among others for the production of one commodity among others. He describes the capitalist mode of production, but locates it in typography, and nowhere is capitalism directly taken to task. It is only later that one discovers why.
He discovers the power of parcellization as the operational base of the bourgeoisie (parenthical clarifications added from here on):
"The Machiavellian mind and the merchant mind (both: bourgeois mind) are at one in their simple faith in the power of the segmental division to rule all — in the dichotomy of power and morals and of money and morals."
He discovers the universal extension of capitalism, which unifies space as its space: "If Lowenthal is right, we have spent much energy and fury in recent centuries in destroying oral culture by print technology (capitalism) so that the uniformly processed individuals of commercial (bourgeois) society can return to oral marginal spots as tourists and consumers, whether geographical or artistic."
He knows the assembly line quality of life: "All experience is segmental and must be processed sequentially."
". . . the twenthieth century has worked to free itself fromt he conditions of passivity, which is to say, from the Gutenberg (capitalist) heritage itself. . . . The new electric galaxy of events (basis for change in mode of production) has already moved deeply into the Gutenberg (capitalism). Even without collision, such co-existence of technologies (modes of production) and awareness brings trauma and tension to every living person. Our most ordinary and conventional attitudes seem suddenly twisted into gargoyles and grotesques. Familiar (bourgeois) institutions and associations seem at times menacing and malignant. These multiple transformations, which are the normal consequence of introducing new media (new productive means) into any society whatever, need special study and will be the subject of another volume on Understanding Media in the world of our time."
There is something in McLuhan for everybody: the vulgar Marxists and the political economists, the formal logicians of the mysteries of quantification and the con men. And the McLuhan con is well underway. After finding his cause in a 'raw material,' not in capitalism itself, what is at issue is to work out how the new technology (another 'raw material') can be incorporated in "the world of our time," into this society; that is, how can it be made to fit the bourgeois mold.
We discover how in Understanding Media.
The extension of man has become a category which finds its philosophical expression in the phrase: the medium is the message.
Men are displaced. The object is central. Their extensions preempt men. In the bourgeois project of the domination of nature, McLuhan merely discovers for himself that men are dominated by the instruments invented for establishing that domination.
The proletarian project of liberation signifies nothing: men are moved by the unfolding of forces over which they have no control. They are subject to the conditions of existence. To be a man is to perceive the prevailing direction and join it — become one with it.
The global village of McLuhan's dream is universal capitalism, with the new electronic galaxy allowing for a geographic deispersal which is regrouped in the computer. He carries on at length about decentralization, the sine qua non of the new technology. Under the prevailing organisation of life, the new technology, at the service of capitalism, dominates centrally, and imparts the illusion of decentralization. The truth of that illusion is dispersal, centrally controlled. Geographic dispersal is the continuation of the parcellization which he had seen as the source of rule by the bourgeois (Machiavellian and merchant) mind.
Each time he reflects upon general content and uses the term "media" or "extensions of man" or "new electronic technology" — all on need do to understand his message is substitute the word "capitalism." Each time he reflects upon the specific characteristics of the "new media" — all one need understand is that he shows them in relation to the universal extensions and maintenence of capitalism.
His idea of total passivity — which he calls, in his characteristic manner of inverting truth, "involvement in depth" — finds its privileged expression in the reporter who noted about the first manned flight to the moon that it was, through television, "a participatory experience for the individual everywhere — a development that may rank second only to the trip" (New York Times, 12/29/68). McLuhan is full of admonitions on the futility of resistance to the established order (which he would call admonitions on the futility of resistance to change). He himself joined the Catholic Church to point the way.
The Recuperation of Language
The definition of passivity is involvement in depth. The strike (winter 1968) in New York City by the teachers had something to do with a struggle over decentralization. Marcuse masks the dilemmas of the thought of the ruling strata behind the dialectical conception, itself hopeless. A corporation devoted to the control, exploitation and negation of change is called Human Development. . .
The energy for emancipation must be shackled to its prevention. Participation is recuperated from the description of the relation among equals in an activity to become what describes the running of thing as they are — schools, factories, life. The function of such participation of course is to channel energies toward changing existing institutions into more viable forms. These changed forms become powerful tools for the prevention of any real emancipation. What is important to note in the process is the disappearance of any other significant sense to participation.
Before decentralization can be recuperated, it must be weakended in its implications of autonomous power, and of the absence of central authority. Before revolution can be recuperated, it has to mean first simply change; change in fare, small change. After that, the words — having inverted truth, and their truth — man little else.
To recuperate words is really to recuperate what they represent; so that the only activity that words describe is the activity the recuperated words describe. It follows that the true meanings of the words merely bocome aspects of their false meanings, the true activity they describe merely aspects of their false activity.
The SI offers a few definitions. Society: protection racket. The State: the Enforcer. Politicians: gangsters. The sense of the first terms emerge clearly in the second, which is, in fact, the function of definition.
*
We have used the word recuperate, which means recover: the activity of society as it attempts to obtain possession of that which negates it. The word that seems to mean the same thing on the "New Left" is coopt. The word means "to elect into a body by the votes of its existing members": by extension, it would be the act, for example, of Hayden or Carmichael going to work for the Nixon administration. The would, in reverse, be "lost" to their "New Left" organizations (though hopefully they would bring their constituencies with them).
The different word also separates us for the redundant confusion of that luckless state, the "New Left."

How to build a universe that doesn't fall apart two days later.

* If You Were Coming in the Fall
Emily Dickinson *

If you were coming in the fall,
I'd brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.

If only centuries delayed,
I'd count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen's land.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I'd toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.

But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time's uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.

*A Poem*

Honesty breaks the glass under its feet at a Jewish wedding
The place holder takes up horseback riding
And becomes bowlegged in the wind of Aeolus
Commas and punctuation reflection
Aborigine armchair angel
Again with the angels
My spirit guide, my guardian angel.
Broken angel, resurrection Mary
"Place holder will you take up mine"
I am free of myself
Now if only I can free myself from you
God you are my mind
God why did you leave me when I was 16
And why did I find you in a dark alley behind a porn shop?
Why did I find you in endless drinks and candy?
Where are your soldiers?
Where are your myriads of locusts?
When will the resurrection be?
Are Howard Zinn and J D Salinger in heaven?
Traveling in god's channel
(I spell god with a little g because I don't know if there is one or many)
Where are your disciples?
Where have all the Christians gone?
The ones who ignited revolution against the Romans
The ones who engaged in peaceful rebellion
Stephen Stills said Jesus was the first non-violent revolutionary
Where is the king the of the Jews now?
Why have you left us to work out our own problems?
When will the kingdom of heaven come to the earth?
Why have you forsaken me?
If you want, remove this cup from me
And I will embrace the golden bough
On watch for the ineffable golem

*On A Dream*

She was throwing up pennies
And I was afraid
The dog at my side
Was mesmerized by a golf club
And hit the wall
Then at the hospital
The doctor was the devil
And the nurse was a demon
Mom! The mummy's curse!

crestfallen

even his mugshot is hot!

Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God is Within You
- I was thinking while reading this that JW's are have a lot in common with Christian anarchism. Perhaps that's why my "conversion" to an anarchist was so smooth. When I was about 16 I started reading anarchist literature and it struck a chord in me that I then thought was compatible with JW theology. Of course, the so-called "neutrality" stance put me off and eventually I left the religion due to its incompatibility with my belief that "you can't be neutral on a moving train" as Howard Zinn (RIP) said. But, I still maintain my belief that no human government can ever steak a claim to justice as imperfect human institutions are ultimately coercive and no human has a right to command another.

Radical Children's Lit

Anarchy in the classroom

Individualist Anarchism vs. "Libertarianism" and Anarchocommunism
by Wendy McElroy

In short, neither the crushing powers of the centralized State nor the teachings of mutual hatred and pitiless struggle which came, adorned with the attributes of science, from obliging philosophers and sociologists, could weed out the feeling of human solidarity, deeply lodged in men's understanding and heart, because it has been nurtured by all our preceding evolution.
- Kropotkin

Back in school now. Here's a quote from Robert Graves:
Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.

christmas songs:

• Good Friday by CocoRosie

More CocoRosie music on iLike

• The Spirit Is Near by Devendra Banhart

More Devendra Banhart music on iLike

• Must Be Santa by Bob Dylan

More Bob Dylan music on iLike

Antiwar Activists March In Response To Obama's Announcement

Mitchell Jones
ANT 471
Final Paper

Ethnology Against the State: Anthropological Anarchism

Koyaanisqatsi
koy • ahn • i • skaht • see
noun (from the Hopi Language)
1. life disintegrating
2. life out of balance
3. life in turmoil
4. crazy life
5. a state of life that calls for
another way of living.
-(http://www.awok.org/)

The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys:
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches, and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,
A mechanized automaton.
-
- Percy Bysshe Shelly (An Anarchist FAQ 2009)

There are very few anarchist anthropologists. Marxist theory seems to dominate, not only anthropology, but other academic disciplines as well. However, there is a small tradition of anarchist anthropology, although not officially named as such. Anarchist theory offers an evolutionary model based not on competition and survival of the fittest, but on mutual cooperation and reciprocity. Anarchist anthropology looks at egalitarian, stateless societies as desirable, natural, functioning systems. Simply put, anarchy works, otherwise it wouldn’t have made up 99.5% of human history (Azat 2000). In the Oxford English Dictionary, definition b. of anarchy is, “A theoretical social state in which there is no governing person or body of persons, but each individual has absolute liberty (without implication of disorder)” (“Anarchy” 2009). This theoretical social state was once a reality and it can be again. In an article called “Anarchism and Anthropology” anarchy is defined in Anarchy: The Journal of Desire Armed:

The term anarchy comes from the Greek, and essentially means 'no ruler.' Anarchists are
people who reject all forms of government or coercive authority, all forms of hierarchy
and domination. They are therefore opposed to what the Mexican anarchist Flores Magon
called the 'sombre trinity' -- state, capital and the church. Anarchists are thus opposed to
both capitalism and to the state, as well as to all forms of religious authority. But
anarchists also seek to establish or bring about by varying means, a condition of anarchy,
that is, a decentralised society without coercive institutions, a society organised through a
federation of voluntary associations (“An Anarchist FAQ” 2009).

According to Pierre Proudhon anarchy is “the absence of a master, of a sovereign” (An Anarchist FAQ 2009). Anarchist anthropology has something to offer the academy as a new theoretical approach and as a vehicle for social criticism.
Today the capitalist state is encroaching on the way of life of many indigenous peoples who have lived in their way for hundreds or even thousands of years. Bakunin said of the state, “Any State, under pain of perishing and seeing itself devoured by neighbouring [sic] States, must tend towards complete power, and, having become powerful, it must embark on a career of conquest, so that it shall not be itself conquered; for two powers similar and at the same time foreign to each other could not co-exist without trying to destroy each other. Whoever says conquest, says conquered peoples, enslaved and in bondage, under whatever form or name it may be” (1950). We see this process working itself out today with globalization and its destruction of indigenous cultures. Through the work of anthropologists with these peoples an alternative to the capitalist state can emerge. Throughout 99% of human history stateless, egalitarian societies existed (Azat 2000). Some theorists describe these societies as anarchist. I will now explain what is meant by anarchism.
I will first describe what anarchism is not. It is not chaos, and it is not the state. Errico Malatesta writes, “[S]ince it was thought that government was necessary and that without government there could only be disorder and confusion, it was natural and logical that anarchy, which means absence of government, should sound like absence of order” (An Anarchist FAQ 2009). This is an essentially flawed premise steeped in “society-centrism.” “Society-centrism” is the idea that dominant interpretations of the state are essentially biased toward a pro-state point of view. This idea was purported by the sociologist Theda Skocpol (Barkey and Parikh 1991). She points to the state as a “central explanatory variable.” This theory describes the state as an actor with its own goals. This actor is completely outside society. According to Badie & Birnbaum, the state is “a unique social invention devised to solve the specific crises of the western European societies at a particular point in their development” (Barkey and Parikh 1991: 529). Clearly the state did not originate in Western Europe, but the idea that a state is formed out of crisis is a valid interpretation of the origins of the state. Robert Paul Wolff describes a Weberian notion of the state in In Defense of Anarchism. He writes, “The state is a group of persons who have and exercise supreme authority within a given territory. Strictly, we should say that a state is a group of persons who have supreme authority within a given territory or over a certain population” [italics his] (1970: 3).
Anarchism is also not Marxism. Anarchism is concerned, not with advancing one individual to achieve political power, but with operating on anarchist principles. Anarchists define themselves by what they believe, i.e.: anarcho-syndicalists, libertarian-socialists, green-anarchists etc., and not who they follow, i.e.: Leninists, Maoists, Trotskyites etc. (Graeber 2004). Marxism also involves state level political organization, whereas anarchism takes a much smaller-scale form.
Anarchism, according to anthropologist David Graeber consists of five principles: autonomy, voluntary association, self-organization, mutual aid and direct democracy (2004: 2). Many of what have until recently been called “primitive” societies have adhered to these principles. I will focus on reciprocity as an economic concept, or mutual aid, and non-coercive political power, or direct democracy, for this essay.
According to the Yorkshire Anarchist Federation, “Mutual aid is a concept of human interaction that comes from Peter Kropotkin. It is based on the idea that animals, including humans, can survive better and in harmony if they work together to achieve a common purpose” (“Jargon Buster” 2009). The OED defines it as, “Support or assistance given and reciprocated (in later use esp. as a social or political mechanism)” (OED 2009). Direct democracy has been defined as, “A system in which people in a political community come together in a forum to make policy decisions themselves, with no intervening institution or officials” (“Democracy and Citizenship >>Glossary” 2009). Normally, the anarchist organizing principle for such a forum is consensus. Consensus has been defined as “agreement in the judgment or opinion reached by a group as a whole” (“Consensus” 2009). The consensus-model of direct democracy, however, does not necessitate that everyone have oneness of opinion. On the contrary, differences of opinion are welcome, but usually a compromise can be made that everyone can live with.
The Darwinian evolutionary model purports that survival of the fittest is the order of the day for the development of species. This has been interpreted in different ways. One example is social Darwinism. T. R. Malthus’ Essays on Population influenced Darwin and established the idea that “on the whole, the best live” (Claeys 2000: 223). Darwin’s theories have been used to back up individualist as well as collectivist politics. Herbert Spencer actually coined the term “survival of the fittest” (Claeys 2000). This term has been extrapolated to “might is right” and used by capitalists and statists to justify their exploitation of socio-economically weaker, or “less fit” peoples.
Anarchist anthropologists and biologists have denounced this theory. The anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown or “Anarchy Brown,” as he was called in his school days was one such scientist. He studied kin relationships in South Africa and found that joking was one way to diffuse potentially disruptive behavior. He wrote, “The show of hostility, the perpetual disrespect, is a continual expression of that social disjunction which is an essential part of the whole structural situation, but over which, without destroying or even weakening it, there is provided the social conjunction of friendliness and mutual aid” (Perry 1975: 63).
He got the term mutual aid from Peter Kropotkin, an anarchist who wrote during the early half of the 20th century, around the time that Radcliffe-Brown was a student at Trinity College. Kropotkin wrote in his book Mutual Aid on the subject of human societies as well as animal social organization and found their history to be one of cooperation. This cooperation, according to Kropotkin, gave these species evolutionary advantage. Kropotkin writes:

As soon as we study animals -- not in laboratories and museums only, but in the forest
and the prairie, in the steppe and the mountains -- we at once perceive that though there is
an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species, and
especially amidst various classes of animals, there is, at the same time, as much, or
perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defence [sic] amidst
animals belonging to the same species or, at least, to the same society (1902).

He goes on to state, “The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress” (1902). He cites a study done by a Russian zoologist by the name of Kessler in which Kessler concludes that “All classes of animals, especially the higher ones, practise [sic] mutual aid” using empirical evidence collected from burying beetles, birds and mammalia (Kropotkin 1902). Humans are no exception. Kropotkin states, “It is evident that it would be quite contrary to all that we know of nature if men were an exception to so general a rule: if a creature so defenceless [sic] as man was at his beginnings should have found his protection and his way to progress, not in mutual support, like other animals, but in a reckless competition for personal advantages, with no regard to the interests of the species.” (1902).
Radcliffe-Brown applied these concepts to his ethnological and ethnographic work. He wrote, “A social relation does not result from a similarity of interests, but rests either on the mutual interest of persons in one another, or on one or more common interests, or on a combination of both of these” (Perry 1975: 63). Radcliffe-Brown also proposed that the primary factor in the maintenance of society is not governmental pressure, but social pressure. He writes, “…what is called conscience is thus in the widest sense the reflex in the individual of the sanctions of society” (Perry 1975: 63). This means that the skeptical analysis of anarchism, that people would just kill each other, is wrong. Social pressure, instead of coercive pressure would enforce the norms and values of society. The difference between coercive pressure and social pressure is akin to the difference between the two kinds of law described by Roderick Long: “Law may be subdivided into voluntary and coercive law, depending on the means whereby compliance is secured. Voluntary law, as the name implies, relies solely on voluntary means, such as social pressure, boycotts, and the like, in order to secure compliance with the results of adjudication. Coercive law, on the other hand, relies at least in part on force and threats of force” (Long 1994). Thus, the inherent violence of the state can be illustrated. Long is not an anarchist, in fact he advocates laissez-faire capitalism, but his principle still applies.
Other anthropologists have taken the idea of reciprocity further. The French anthropologist Marcel Mauss wrote on gift-giving economy in his book The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. In it he writes, “In Scandinavian civilization, and in a good number of others, exchanges and contracts take place in the form of presents; in theory these are voluntary, in reality they are given and reciprocated obligatorily” (1950: 3). He describes the process of gift giving as potlatch, using the Chinook term. In the Maori culture all goods possess a spiritual power that is exchanged along with the gift. This spiritual power is called hau and the physical gift is called tonga. A Maori juridical expert explains it best:

The tonga and all gods termed strictly personal possess a hau, a spiritual power. You give me one of them, and I pass it on to a third party; he gives another to me inturn, because he is impelled to do so by the hau my present possesses. I for my part, am obliged to give you that thing because I must return to you what is in reality the effect of the hau of your tonga (Mauss 1950: 11).

This system of reciprocity is an alternative to the system of capitalist exchange. In his conclusion Mauss is very optimistic about the elevation of the social over the individual. He writes, “The brutish pursuit of individual ends is harmful to the ends and the peace of all, to the rhythm of their work and joys – and rebounds on the individual himself” (1950: 77). He then critiques capitalism saying that men have not been machines for very long, exchanging their labor for less than it is really worth. He says that the worker expects to be fairly rewarded for his efforts, and that the individualistic type of economy does not do this. He states that there is self interest in gift giving, but it is only self interest in the sense that what is good for the whole is good for the individual (Mauss 1950). This elevation of the social over the individual is an essential element of anarchist thought. The voluntary nature of gift giving maintains an economy that is not coercive.
Another French anthropologist, Pierre Clastres, wrote about the institution of the chief and his role in mutual aid and gift giving. In his book Society Against the State he writes that the chief in so-called “Indian” societies is required to give most of what he has for the greater good of the community. There are no societies without political power, but there is a difference between coercive power and non-coercive power. He states, “The model of coercive power is adopted… only in exceptional circumstances when the group faces an external threat” (Clastres 1987: 30). Normal civil power is based on consensus and its function is pacification. The chief exists to maintain the peace and harmony of the group (Clastres 1987). The chief must also give of his belongings to help the greater good of the community. Therefore, greed and power are incompatible (Mauss 1987). In this way the chief is not so much a ruler, but a servant of the people.
This is similar to David Graeber’s concept of counterpower. Counterpower, according to Graeber, “stands guard over what are seen as certain frightening possibilities within the society itself: notably against the emergence of systematic forms of political or economic dominance” (2004: 35). He states that all societies are to some extent at war with themselves and this war is the playing out of the relationship between power and counterpower. He gives the example of Joanna Overing’s work with the Piaroa, who have what she describes as an anarchist society. However, despite their emphasis on egalitarianism and simultaneous individual autonomy they insist that their culture was the creation of an evil god. They believe that their war is one that plays itself out in the cosmos where wizards have to fend off evil spirits who seek to gain power (Graeber 2004). Thus, counterpower is imagined as a spiritual concept. Freedom is a constant struggle between power and counterpower, or between the individual and the evil spirits.
The argument is also influenced by Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and counter-hegemony. Gramsci argues that there are two factors in society: 1)the state and 2) civil society. The state is a coercive apparatus represented by dictatorship + hegemony. Civil society is dominated by the hegemony of the state, or the ruling class, and thus legitimates the state (Mastroianni 2002). However, there is another force, that of counter-hegemony, that exists in the realm of the proletariat. This kind of hegemony exists to subvert the state. This view differs from the anarchist view, however. Gramsci says that a permanent proletarian hegemony must exist to oust the bourgeois, which he demonizes (Pozo 2007). In the anarchist paradigm there is a constant interplay between power and counterpower that must perpetually exist, without one winning over the other. Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, therefore, is flawed in that he believes that a hegemony of the proletariat will ultimately lead to a successful egalitarian revolution. Put another way, a “dictatorship of the proletariat” is necessary for everyone to have an equitable share. This is contradictory.
Clastres states, “It is in the nature of primitive society to know that violence is the essence of power. Deeply rooted in that knowledge is the concern to constantly keep power apart from the institution of power, command apart from the chief” (1987: 154). In his conclusion he writes, “…what the Savages exhibit is the continual effort to prevent chiefs from being chiefs, the refusal of unification, the endeavor to exorcise the One, the State” (1987: 218)
He also describes marriage relationships as the way of establishing kinship ties to avoid warfare in “Indian” societies. Each community has a certain level of autonomy, but they are also interconnected through the process of exogamy.
The crux of his argument is that the assumption that primitive societies lack something is essentially wrong. He opposes the unilinear evolutionary notion that primitive societies are in an embryonic state and that the state is in the adult phase (Clastres 1987). Thus, the unilinear evolutionary model is wrong. There are many things that are desirable about so-called primitive society that we can learn from.
Finally, Marshall Sahlins writings in his book Stone Age Economics have fueled neo-primitivist critiques of society, although he never associated himself with the neo-primitivist movement. Sometimes called “green-anarchism,” neo-primitivism asserts that agriculture was the beginning of the downfall of society.
John Zerzan is one proponent of “green-anarchy.” He points to the fact that it seems that for about two and a half million years there was little technological development. He writes, “It strikes me as very plausible that intelligence, informed by the success and satisfaction of a gatherer-hunter existence, is the very reason for the pronounced absence of ‘progress’” (Zerzan). Zerzan writes of Sahlins’ work, “A nearly complete reversal in anthropological orthodoxy has come about, with important implications. Now we can see that life before domestication/agriculture was in fact largely one of leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, sexual equality, and health. This was our human nature, for a couple of million years, prior to enslavement by priests, kings, and bosses” (Zerzan).
In the opening chapter of Stone Age Economics Sahlins argues that capitalism is built around scarcity, but that Neolithic cultures had economies based on abundance. Perhaps his most surprising claim is that the average amount of time spent in the procuring of food for the Bushmen of Africa was about four to five hours a day. The rest of their time is spent in leisure and sleep activities (Sahlins 1972). This shows how inefficient capitalism is and how much more “affluent” hunter-gatherers were. Affluence is described by Sahlins as the ability to have one’s needs fulfilled. When you eliminate the need for useless commodities that has been manufactured by capitalist interests, then your needs are more easily met. Anarchists believe in a system based on egalitarian principles and reject the capitalist claim of scarcity.
As we’ve seen from the anthropologists mentioned above, anthropologists have taken as much from anarchists as anarchists have taken from anthropologists. Although anarchist-anthropology is not yet an established theoretical framework, “fragments,” as Graeber calls them, are there. After all, it can be said that 99.5% of human history has been anarchy, or society without inequality and a State (Azat 2000). The origins of authority and inequality are unclear, but an anarchist-archaeology may be able to help answer this question. One hypothesis is that hierarchy develops when we see people proclaiming that there is one supreme God and that they are the only ones who can communicate with God. This gives them transcendent power, which gives an apparent legitimacy to their claim to authority (“Absolute” 1997). John Zerzan reflects this thesis when he writes, “When specialists alone claim access to such perceptual heights as may have once been communal, further backward moves in division of labor are facilitated or enhanced. The way back to bliss through ritual is a virtually universal mythic theme, promising the dissolution of measurable time, among other joys. This theme of ritual points to an absence that it falsely claims to fill, as does symbolic culture in general” (Zerzan). This “regression” is what the “society-centric” paradigm calls “progress.”
There are anarchists in the academy today. The linguist Noam Chomsky, archaeologist Theresa Kintz as well as David Graeber, mentioned above, are two prominent anarchist academics. However, many academics fear openly espousing anarchist rhetoric, for fear of repercussions. Yale did not renew David Graeber’s contract in 2005, possibly for political reasons (“David” 2009). For now anarchist theoretical discourse is not sanctioned by the academy, even though anarchism has a lot to offer it. Theresa Kintz states:

As far as what a revolutionary perspective has to offer archaeology, well, a sense of purpose. It could/should be so much more than elites satisfying the intellectual curiosity of other elites. Radical archaeologists are now pushing the discipline to acknowledge the role our narratives play in society, highlighting the role of the past, the politics of the past, in the present. I’ve always been at odds with archaeology over its lack of self-awareness, its reluctance to make our work relevant in the real world. It’s funny, my fellow archaeologists see me as a radical green anarchist, someone who comes to do archaeology with an overtly political agenda, an outsider who has infiltrated the ivory tower, really. On the other side, because I study and work in the profession, my comrades the radicals will often see me as part of an academic establishment that defends the status quo, sort of an outsider here, too. I try to walk a fine line in order to bring these two camps together as I do see they can help each other, even if I get bashed from both sides (“Artifacts”).

Thus, there is distrust of academia coming from the anarchist community as well as distrust of anarchism coming from the academic community. However Theresa Kintz says, “So yes, I do believe the study of the past, through archaeology, has the potential to enlighten and provoke thought, even action, and I insist this doesn’t require an academic setting. It is the core idea of learning as much as one can about the world you live in that’s important to promote” (“Artifacts”) . There is the possibility of rapprochement between anarchism and academia, but until then anarchism will remain a rouge theory that is marginalized by the academy. 
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Funk the War 3: The Funk Strikes Back!
No Escalation in Afghanistan!
Host:
Rochester SDS
Type:
Causes - Protest
Date:
Friday, December 4, 2009
Time:
3:15pm - 4:30pm
Location:
Washington Square Park
City/Town:
Rochester, NY
Description
We will not be silenced.

On December 4, Rochester Students for a Democratic Society and friends will return to the streets of Rochester in protest of the United States' military escalation in Afghanistan. Obama plans to march another 40,000 troops into the streets of Kabul (without a permit) to escalate an illegal unjust and morally reprehensible war - spreading terrorism throughout Central Asia and diverting much-needed resources away from our own community. When confronted with more war and violence we will dance for peace. Bring ya hula-hoops, drums, banners, and flags.

Meet at 3:00-3:15 at Washington Square Park
Dance party begins at 3:30

This roving dance party will feed into another march starting at the War Memorial about 4:30 (Check out the other march SDS is co-sponsoring and and come to both!: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=185747863699#/event.php?eid=181707195815&ref=ts )

FUNDING FOR EDUCATION, NOT FOR WAR AND OCCUPATION!

PKD's exegesis

Living Without Free Will - this guy totally persuaded me to be a determinist. If you believe in free will you must read this book!

"What national medium could possibly work to inculcate mild Satanic doctrines to such a large audience, located literally from 'Sea to Shining Sea'?

How were these doctrines being taught? Rock music changed its direction in 1964, with the advent of the Beatles, followed later by Heavy Metal bands. Rock music proved to be the perfect medium by which Satan could instill his doctrines because it reached millions of teens and young adults. The Beatles led the charge to glorify drug usage, and soon many other groups joined in the fun. Drug usage exploded during this era. "

"The Beatles apparently took Crowley's teaching very serious — Beatle John Lennon, in an interview, says the "whole idea of the Beatles" was — Crowley's infamous "do what thou wilt":

"The whole Beatle idea was to do what you want, right? To take your own responsibility, do what you want and try not to harm other people, right? DO WHAT THOU WILST, as long as it doesn't hurt somebody. . ." ("The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono", by David Sheff and G. Barry Golson, p. 61)

Paul McCartney and Lennon were Satanists as well

Photo to left: Most people recognize the Satanic hand sign which John Lennon is making at the bottom right; but, few people realize that the "ok" sign which Paul McCartney is making at the bottom left is also very Satanic. The "ok" sign is actually three 6's, each of the three vertical fingers forming an individual 6. 666!"

- That proves it! The Beatles are a tool of Satan!

Haunted Hartwell

IIIIIIIIII'mmmmmmm BAAAAAAAAACK!