by thecollective May 28, 2024

Killing King Abacus introduces the idea of relations without measure: "To Kill King Abacus is to create an insurrectional rupture with the existent organization of language, time and space; to speak our own language, take our own time, carve out a space for ourselves."

The text goes on to say:

"One who ventures to expand life's possibilities outside of the limited options offered by the state and capital find themselves facing the power structures and systems of control through which measured existence is imposed. Work, law, government, school, police, commodity consumption... are a maze of barriers to anyone who wants to reach beyond these limits, to live by their own rhythm and not that of the clock. So those of us who want to project toward quality, towards a measureless fullness of life are faced with the necessity of destroying this maze, of creating our life projectuality in an insurrectional manner. We are therefore in permanent conflict with this society. To destroy these obstacles to our own expansion we need all of the tools we can get; we need both ideas and fire."

A recent text A Little Mathematics of Radical Action seeks to "clarify a few mathematical relations that characterize the effects of individual and collective [anarchist] action", as well as explore "why some of those relations seem to be more important than others." It evaluates that the 'desirability' of actions within a framework of 'how much' the actions accomplish.

Is there some merit in such a framework of measurement in the service of destroying the maze, of creating relations without measure? Or does it reproduce a tyranny of metrics, of evaluating our actions in the terms of efficiency and effectiveness? Do you think it can be useful for anarchists to evaluate actions based on their effectiveness? If not, what are some of the ways you you kill the king abacus in your head in your life?

LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION HERE!

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anon (not verified) Tue, 05/28/2024 - 12:57

" to live by their own rhythm and not that of the clock. "

The overwhelming majority of the U.S. upper middle class want exactly this. So, what's supposed to be so dangerous or subversive about this?

This just sounds like a fancy-schmansy version of the same old, same old utterly self-involved individual drop out culture trip. Capital can easily withstand this sort of thing.

Anarchy that you can get off the rack at fast fashion chains like Forever 21 is readily on tap everywhere in consumer society. It is self-indulgent as hell. It is no threat to anything.

anon (not verified) Tue, 05/28/2024 - 13:47

guess what benefits capitalism as it is? living your life. if everyone killed themselves, it would end capitalism. obviously how threatening something is to capitalism is not a sufficient principle to guide one’s actions. if people want to abolish time and numbers to be merry, good for them. capitalism requires advanced math and specializations to keep things like tiktok running which gives people brain rot and makes them gullible enough to believe 1 x1=2 (terryology).

the problem is knowledge truly is power, and math and language will be weaponized and wielded by the power-hungry. it’s an arms race and the cat’s out of the bag.

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 08:28

dropping out and living your own life on your own terms isn't just an "upper middle class" thing.

i was born so-called "working class" and never climbed any higher up their ladder, but i don't identify with that slave-mentality nor so-called class-war, both trapped within their shit. i live for myself and those i care about.

anon (not verified) Thu, 05/30/2024 - 10:58

"i live for myself" - every life form that has ever existed. this certainly does not and could not exclude living in relationship with others though. stop your lame agenda-driven cherry-picking.

single serving… (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 11:18

I wouldn't say that living an upper-middle class U.S. life is 'living by their own rhythm and not the clock'. Their lives are still constrained by work and leisure schedules, commutes and traffic jams, all the trappings of the capitalist lifestyle, regardless of whether they have slightly more control over how their lives are impacted by them than, say, lower class people who live paycheck to paycheck. The life I want has nothing to do with how much control I have over my work hours or when I can schedule my vacation to Cancun.

And what is supposed to be wrong with the 'individual drop out culture trip'? What obligation do anarchists have to forego living whatever life they can make possible for themselves in this hell world? Do you really think there's *anything* anarchists can do that will truly be a threat to capital?

anon (not verified) Tue, 05/28/2024 - 14:09

So, in other words: acid is groovy -- don't kill the pigs.

This reads like something produced by someone who is an abject product of United States-style solipsism and self-involvement, not people who want to contribute to some kind of society-wide real world resistance to capitalist society. It reeks of a very middle class to upper middle class consumer society self-indulgence.

kkkopkiller42069 (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 11:24

By all means, have at it, kill all the pigs you can! POP POP!

What your comment reeks of is someone who hates fun and envisions a world of endless meetings, labor unions, and fighting for $15 at McDonalds. No thank you!

anon (not verified) Tue, 05/28/2024 - 14:09

i don’t think relations can be tailor made to fit some ideology that transcends culture and biology, defying it in a way that overcomes all its vices, drawbacks, and shortcomings.

people suffer when this is implemented by governance, by capitalism, and by radical ideologies.

things can be measured, and people make qualitative evaluations that may be judgement calls on a whim. shitty criteria or simplistic reductionism is not solely the domain of the quantitative and cannot be bypassed by avoiding numbers. transparency and intelligibility in the reasoning behind choices allows others to understand what led to that course of action.

people can have dumb concrete, discrete, specific, measurable goals, as well as dumb amorphous unquantifiable, illogical, nonsensical, boundless, sublime aspirations.

i’d rather not be dumb, but maybe that’s a subjective preference. i’ve never managed to not be dumb, but i avoid various ways of being dumb.

one can’t sidestep the pitfalls of shitty reasoning and logic by avoiding reasoning and logic. academics can be stupid in very educated ways and each specialize in their own epistemological and cultural biases and blindspots. but just because some dumb nerd abuses numbers, and another dumb nerd abuses philosophy, it doesn’t mean it’s smart to eschew these ways of thinking.

sure, i agree anarchists do well to push against the ways time, money, science, is used by many to destroy the planet and control people, with biopolitics and stuff. and the way some people think their worth and esteem is measured by money and products. but that’s difference that rebelling against the act of counting, and mathematical understanding. one could go full John Zerzan and rebel against language, and full Sascha Engel and rebel against scribbles by turning them into doodles of birds, but those are just silly distractions to pass the time as the persistence of understanding in language and math ways will remain short of brain damage, and erasure of culture.

silly scribble (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 12:14

I agree that 'just because some nerd abuses numbers / philosophy we should avoid them', and that 'one can't avoid the pitfalls of shitty reasoning / logic by avoiding them.' Trying not to get too esoteric about this point, but I do think that what we consider 'good reasoning' and 'logic' came from institutions produced by capital and causes us to experience the world in a different way than we would if, say, we didn't have cities and history books and a scientific model of the universe. I admire Sascha Engel's thought experiments on this point, even if it doesn't fully accomplish the goal of ending language and math, because that's the point--we will never see the end of language or math, or cities or history books or science. We can make our little cracks and steal our little freedoms here and there, and maybe if we are careful and thoughtful and effective we can even make REALLY BIG CRACKS and steal REALLY BIG FREEDOMS and yay! Good for us!

But I think underneath the snideness of those who criticize individualists for being selfish, entitled, and 'not a threat to capital' is an implicit claim that anarchists have a (moral) obligation to maximize the effectiveness of their actions toward some supposedly anarchist end, let's call it attacking Capital, because somehow that is more valuable than drawing doodles of birds. And that's fine, if that's what those critics want they want to do with their lives they should do it. But the idea seems to be something like 'we could [accomplish X goal] if only those selfish individualists would [do Y action] more effectively (and they should be ashamed that they aren't doing it)" which seems to me to carry some Protestant work ethic values.

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/30/2024 - 07:50

i agree with everything you've said here, but i think ending with "some protestant work ethic" is weak for the point you're making. first because there are parts of everything that are also parts of bad things (so not only does it not say as much as you could be saying, but it promotes a kind of guilt by association that people rely on too much these days.

i think a stronger point is to say that those rabid activists are like missionaries, insisting that they know the way to make change (the way to god) and that everyone who doesn't follow their way is a sellout (sinner/devil worshipper/whatever).
also very common these days, and getting more so, what with all the evengelicals. :( :(

anon (not verified) Tue, 05/28/2024 - 14:12

obviously how threatening something is to capitalism is not a sufficient principle to guide one’s actions.

Not in a subculture like the one that produces Killing King Abacus apparently.

anon (not verified) Tue, 05/28/2024 - 15:18

further, things like interrupting time and space are standard insurrecto fare and feed directly into/from projectuality and self-management. they're key pieces of not only how KKA fleshed out an american conception of insurrectionary anarchy (both wolfi's individualist position and sahsa k. and leila's more synthesized positions) but are directly influenced by the Italian space of that time that also argued for the necessity of breaking with daily life (which can be argued as capitalist time and space, routine, normality, the regime work) in order for self-management to be able to happen ('at daggers drawn', the 'canenero' journal, etc). the concept goes hand in hand with those sorts of extra-parliamentary/non-social activist pursuits.

anon (not verified) Tue, 05/28/2024 - 16:01

FURTHER STILL! Relations of measure extend into all aspects of life and to conceive of the overthrow of capital as merely a quandary related to Thee Economy rather than as a problem of the nooks and crannies that capitalist domination embeds itself in is shortsighted. Structures of value clarify social forms like race, gender, Humanness, nature and wildness, etc., and aid in massification and capture into such legible categories, and they would sooner reintroduce capitalist production if not fully attacked with equal ferocity, much to the chagrin of class essentialists everywhere. Relations without measure is, at it's core, a life expressed without those strict social determinants that would dictate not only how we live but how we struggle if that's what one chooses, and experimenting with what that life could look like (halting time and appropriating space) in the here and now is, to me, anarchy 101.

anon (not verified) Tue, 05/28/2024 - 16:27

Relations without measure sounds good upon reading Killing Killed Abacus, but let's ponder the limits of that slogan, which is as far as most people will go. Equality, fairness, and reciprocity in relationships are based in some form of measure, as eyeballed and lovingly lenient and forgiving as it may be. The mutuality in mutual aid is not about a perfect instant tit-for-tat even Stevens equilibrium of giving and receiving between all people, but it does assume that the amount that people are giving and receiving is greater than zero, and that the benefit for all involved is greater than zero. These principles can be expressed in words as well as numbers. the ideals are just as lofty or naive whichever way you choose to express them. One can choose not to evaluate actions and interactions through the lens of economy, and not to live like that, but a lot of anarchists (ancoms, mutualists, anacaps [which are not anarchists but, these three are more alike than apart]) base their theories and ideology around economic thinking.

"Make Total Destroy" is quantitatively absurd and maximalist, and the hyper-insurrecto "ATTACK NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!" is a framing that does manage to escape the logic of the economy, but most people and most of life does not take place in those moments or that mindset of attack as a valued expression regardless of consequence.

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 11:05

"Other scholars find its origins in "the Roman legal concept of obligation in solidum",[13] in which "everyone assumes responsibility for anyone who cannot pay his debt, and he is conversely responsible for everyone else".[14] James Furner argues:[13]

If x = a disadvantage, and y = action to redress that disadvantage, the principle of solidarity is: if any member of a group acquires x, each member has a duty to perform y (if they can assist). All we then need to add, to get to the fundamental principle of developed communism, is to assume that non-satisfaction of a need is a disadvantage. The corresponding principle of solidarity in respect of need says: if any member of society has an unsatisfied need, each member has a duty to produce its object (if they can). But that is precisely what the principle 'from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs!' dictates. In Marx's vision, the basic principle of developed communism is a principle of solidarity in respect of need."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_ea…

anon (not verified) Tue, 05/28/2024 - 19:10

she told me i had a smol pp, so i told her i want relations without measure

anon (not verified) Tue, 05/28/2024 - 22:33

To 15:18:

I just loaded some fresh D cells into my crystal ball, and it's telling me that none of the three individuals named by you have ever been involved in anything -- anything -- that a functional adult in the real world would take seriously as an expression of opposition to the existing state of things in this society. This stuff can only exist in a microscopically small hermetically sealed ideological hothouse. It exists solely for the passive entertainment of its terminally disengaged and easily bruised authors.

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 08:12

"wolfi's individualist position"

Individualism -- my, what a novel and iconoclastic pose for products of U.S. society. "The pretensions of anarchism in its individualist forms have always been laughable." (Debord, 'The Proletariat as Subject and Representation,' Society of the Spectacle) Only in 'Murika can an individual spend a long, passive and wholly disengaged life wearing dirty laundry and receiving SSI benefits and have these stellar attributes qualify them to be a High Pontiff of the anarchist subculture.

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 08:32

Yes, king! Quote a bourgeois communist (???) to own the individualist anarchists! Tell them all that individualist anarchism is a product of the *checks notes* U.S. society, like a boss!

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 08:42

Well TheBored's last movie "In Girum,,,' was a laughably pompuous, self-indulgent and soporific piece of garbage that coulda been edited to at least half its length. Like Sitrner would say... he was just a bigger individualist (or egoist) than those anarcho individualists he despised. In the end, wasn't that just more wars of egos, between a cult leader and a bunch of nameless ones who care less about dominating others?

Also related, TheBored was a known asshole.

cyberdandy Wed, 05/29/2024 - 08:41

This is an interesting topic and I think a good place to start with a philosophical take on it is with Edmund Husserl. Specifically, two of his works: Philosophy of Arithmetic and The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Here is some summary of each:

Philosophy of Arithmetic

The basic issue of the book is a philosophical analysis of the concept of number, which is the most basic concept on which the entire edifice of arithmetic and mathematics can be founded. In order to proceed with this analysis, Husserl, following Brentano and Stumpf, uses the tools of psychology to look for the "origin and content" of the concept of number. He begins with the classical definition, already given by Euclid, Thomas Hobbes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, that "number is a multiplicity of unities" and then asks himself: what is multiplicity and what is unity? Anything that we can think of, anything we can present, can be considered at its most basic level to be "something". Multiplicity is then the "collective connection" of "something and something and something etc." In order to get a number instead of a mere quantity, we can also think of these featureless, abstract "somethings" as "ones" and then get "one and one and one etc." as basic definition of number in abstracto. However, these are just the proper numbers, i.e. number which we can conceive of properly, without the help of instruments or symbols. Psychologically we are limited to just the very first few numbers if we want to conceive of them properly, with higher numbers our short-term memory is not enough to think of them all together, but still as identical to themselves and different from all others. Husserl contends that as a result, we must proceed to the analysis of symbolically conceived numbers, which are in essence the numbers used in mathematics.

The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology

This book offers an explanatory and critical introduction to Edmund Husserl’s last work, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936 and 1954, hereafter ‘Crisis’), a disrupted, partially published and ultimately unfinished project, written when its author was in his late 70s, struggling with declining health and suffering under the adverse political conditions imposed by the German National Socialist Regime that had come to power in 1933. The Crisis is universally recognized as his most lucidly written, accessible and engaging published work, aimed at the general educated reader as an urgent appeal to address the impending crises – scientific, moral and existential – of the age. Husserl is writing with the authority of a life-time of practice as a phenomenologist and with a fluidity previously not often found in his tortured prose. There is the strong sense of a philosopher with a mission, a mission to defend the very relevance of philosophy itself in an era defined both by astonishing scientific and technological progress and by political barbarism. The Crisis is also, undoubtedly, Husserl’s most influential book, continuing to this day to challenge philosophers reflecting on the meaning of the achievements of the modern sciences and their transformative impact on human culture and on the world as a whole. The Crisis of the European Sciences is, by any measure, a work of extraordinary range, depth and intellectual force. It reveals a thinker who, still in possession of his subject, is embarking on a powerful and sustained defence of the very phenomenology he himself had been instrumental in developing and which he was attempting to rescue from the current generation of philosophers who, he claimed, had misunderstood his efforts.

cyberdandy Wed, 05/29/2024 - 09:53

This doesn't seem related to Husserl. I think you might have misunderstood.

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 09:12

To 08:32

A quarter of a century ago I had dinner with the decidedly un-wolflike Wolfi and two of his easily played followers. The discussion became heated. In this discussion his individualism was quite obviously the exact same stuff you get on tap everywhere else in market society USA, only with the words 'anarchist' and 'anarchism' spliced on at various points. This was an individual who in many decades had never ventured outside of the comfort and safety of the US anarchist subculture and in this rarified and aching naive state "Wolfi" -- cue derisive laugh track here -- could pose as a fiery implacable insurrectionary anarchist -- again, without ever once being involved in any effort to assert what he claimed to be about among functional adults in the larger world outside of the accommodating comfort and safety of his subculture.

Self-indulgent posturing and gaseous philosophizing is no more of a threat to the existing state of things than what takes place when denizens of other subcultures wear Mister Spock ears and Starfleet uniform costumes at sci-fi fan conventions. The same fantasy role-playing gamer thing is operating, although I'm pretty sure that Star Trek fans aren't under the illusion that they can actually teleport themselves about at random and travel faster than light.

Once Upon a Time there was a real world communist class struggle anarchism. It was a product of fully adult individuals militantly engaged in real world social struggles, people who figuratively and literally stuck their necks out for what they believed in, and who were understandably and legitimately taken seriously by friend and foe alike. This has nothing in common with contemporary US consumer society fantasy role-playing gamers, whose self-indulgence and gaseous philosophizing is of interest to no one other than themselves.

Functional Adult (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 09:24

I agree. I am also a functional adult who does not even like Star Trek, nor Wolfi.

Now how do I engage in real world communist class struggle legitimately taken seriously by friend and foe alike in 2024?

Functional Adult (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 10:42

I have, but they only got so far, and things were a bit different then. I'm not asking rhetorical questions, and I'm aware we can't exactly plot here, but there's still some leeway as to what can be discussed. How does your best-case-scenario imaginary movie play out?

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 20:19

"A quarter of a century ago I had dinner with the decidedly un-wolflike Wolfi and two of his easily played followers."

Are you still mad that you failed to pass the basic anarchy dinner party test when placed in the straight-jacket and given a wooden spoon and bowl of soup? You were so proud of yourself when you slurped up your stew like a dog but that pride faded quickly when you watched Wolfi and the rest of the table take turns feeding each-other.

Of course that wasn't you because your comment is a complete fabrication full of fiction and impotent seething ressentiment!

Partygoer (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 20:46

I was also present at this dinner party but my fabrication of the events is much more interesting.

triviabot (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 22:52

I was decidely not at this event but can chime in to say "oh my" or "i remember that" as if I was. Shoot me an email.

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 09:45

This is a fancy mathematical way of saying that division of labor can increase effectiveness of actions. This is true, but it also has downsides - like having to trust others to do their job right, and taking on more limited roles with less freedom. What's more, if the activity is illegal then there's huge advantages to involving as few people as possible. And there's gonna be variants in who will/can do what.

I think bigger issues are 1) fluidity without evaporation and 2) turning contradictions into complementarities.

By 1) I mean that sticking to rigid plans can lead to being outclassed by adversaries, but not having a general plan can lead to lots of disparate ineffective actions. The most effective actions have a general plan which is also fluid enough to work around adversaries' responses. For example, the type of road blockades we're seeing in New Caledonia seem to be very fluid but with a general plan. The plan is to block roads and choke off the economy until the state backs down. If people just set up a few sites which they defended to the hilt, they would be overwhelmed by pigs or other goons and the protest would fail; people would be in jail, so no more blockades. Instead when they realise a barricade is not defensible they disperse, leave it for pigs to dismantle (still a big job), and regroup and put a new barricade somewhere else. As long as the blockaders have sources of food and so on, they can keep this up indefinitely, with hardly any arrests and without the road being opened. The other side is spending a fortune tearing down barricades which pop right back up.

By 2) I mean people aren't all alike, don't have the same desires or capabilities or values, don't have the same risk tolerance, and this often gets in the way of acting together. If we're doing it right, we should be able to combine differences productively into "machines" that work, instead of turning them into blockages and antagonisms. In the blockade case again, we might have strict pacifists and black bloc types, but we don't want endless infighting about whether to lock onto things or whether to throw rocks. Different blockades at different points can use different tactics. Put the pacifists at the more visible sites for media-friendly images and coverage if pigs get brutal with them. Or have them temporarily hold points with lock-ons so that others can barricade further down the road. If there's people too fired-up for a fight to abandon barricades when overwhelmed, have them do running attacks on small convoys when these can be isolated, or keep them in reserve to storm copshops and de-arrest people. If there's people who aren't brave enough to occupy the barricades, have them bring food and supplies or do other auxiliary tasks.

Functional Adult (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 09:57

Are you a functional adult? What’s your yearly income? I need to know before I take you seriously. It must be a living wage, but not earn enough that you’re well off.

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 09:53

For 09:24

Here are a few suggestions that should be easy to improve upon -- very easy to improve upon:

A well-organized group of anti-capitalists can have an impact far in excess of its small numbers by focusing on employees of big-city public transit systems. Along with this, we can reach a wide and diverse working-class audience by using low-tech mass communications methods among transit system riders.

A widespread self-organized movement emerging from joint action between transit system employees and riders can affect an entire urban region. Good ideas of this kind can spread from transit system to transit system, from city to city, and into non-transit workplaces.

We need to think big. This can be a step towards the wage-earning class regaining the political autonomy that was ceded to capital 90-plus years ago with the New Deal. And we should be wildly visionary: self-organized and extremely self-aware mass wildcat actions growing out of labor strife in metropolitan transit systems could conceivably develop, in depth and breadth, and in ways that cannot be predicted at present, to create a working-class-propelled political crisis for the ever-more unstable regime we live under.

A group of people with a shared intense commitment to their efforts and who can establish political cohesion that endures under stress can punch well above their weight class. There is a vast and rapidly growing discontent with the state of things in this nightmare society. There is nothing to lose by putting time and effort into something altogether new -- it is time to step up to the plate.

https://lust-for-life.org/Lust-For-Life/_Textual/KevinKeating_LoveAndTr…

A closer look at some loser leftist lies:

https://lust-for-life.org/Lust-For-Life/_Textual/KevinKeating_LoveAndTr…

The General Strike that wasn't:

https://slingshotcollective.org/b3fe0b795ccb2e54b8c0226cdfcddc96/

The Service Sector:

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/06/20/18738735.php

Functional Adult (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 10:46

Thank you for sharing your contributions to real world class struggle. Sadly my location barely has any public transportation, and it's mostly free at the moment.

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 11:26

Then be inventive and find something else akin to this -- better, if possible. If you've got it in you to try, you'll do it. If not, stick to cavorting with scenesters and selling T-shirts and zines at a book fair.

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 11:31

For 10:46:

There's probably a Traders Joes or Whole Foods near you. Go talk to some service sector proles. The service sector is rich in mass subversive potential. Be inventive. Give it a try.

Insurrecto Zero (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 13:20

I like how every discussion of insurrectionary anarchy or individualist anarchy brings out all the bootlicker communists and reactionaries alike to cry and cry about insurrectionary and individualist anarchists.

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 13:46

13:20:
As always, people like you who believe in stuff that isn't worth believing in bruise easy. Individualism is US of A-brand individualism.

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 14:18

What "insurrection" are you puerile fantasists vicariously grooving on? Name a few times when you've attempted to assert what you claim to be about in the unforgiving world outside of your sandbox. What you are about is toy dump truck and plastic bucket and shovel stuff.

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 17:33

I like how every time insurrections happen in the world the bootlicker communist and reactionary shitbags pretend they didn't happen and do everything possible to undermine them like good little bootlicker communists and reactionary scumbags. In the USofA alone there were the WTO riots, Occupy had MANY insurrectionary actions, Ferguson popped off MANY insurrectionary actoins, George Floyd, not to mention all over Europe, Asia, South and Central Americas, etc etc etc. Oh boo-hoo is that too numerous of a "sandbox" examples for you, bootlicker? Keep pretending.

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 17:41

"perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, or in other words, in life itself, and not particularly in the goal which of course must always be two times two makes four, that is a formula, and after all, two times two makes four is no longer life, gentle­ men, but is the beginning of death ." - Notes from Underground

"...we know
that after the order
of this world
there is another.

What is it like?

We do not know.

The number and order of possible suppositions in
this realm
is precisely
infinity!
And what is infinity?
That is precisely what we do not know!
It is a word
that we use
to indicate
the opening
of our consciousness
toward possibility
beyond measure,
tireless and beyond measure." - To Have Done with the Judgement of God

anon (not verified) Wed, 05/29/2024 - 23:59

Regarding 17:33:

You list a number of short-lived sporadic upheavals without saying anything you've done to contribute to any of this. This smells like a case where absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence.

Who remembers the WTO event in Seattle in 1999 now? Nationwide rioting after the cops who beat Rodney King skated seemed to have many positive qualities at the time, but as with events after the murder of George Floyd this stuff burns off quickly without leaving much of a trace, and without leaving anything to build on. There is never any big uptick of days lost to capital through strike actions, or other new forms of sustained public opposition flowing from this. It happens, it ends, and people forget about it.

Your reification of these events as "insurrections" is wishful thinking in the extreme and it is not remotely accurate. Big rowdy demos or riots are not an insurrection, which implies something much more damaging to the social order, events rising to a situation of dual power, like in Egypt until Sisi took power or in the Iranian revolution in the late 1970s, or Shanghai in '67 and all other real revolutionary upheavals.

Your analysis is shallow. It is consistent with a lack of actual convictions which compel those who hold them to apply extremely rigorous criterion to any given situation. You try to compress these events into your ideological Bed of Procrustes and this sloppy thinking is not a mark of intractable revolutionism but a hallmark of intellectual laziness and a lack of engagement. It is what can be expected from people who demand to be titillated or entertained all the time and project this onto the larger world around them.

Mankind does not seek entertainment -- only the American does.

anon (not verified) Thu, 05/30/2024 - 08:11

"as with events after the murder of George Floyd this stuff burns off quickly without leaving much of a trace, and without leaving anything to build on. There is never any big uptick of days lost to capital through strike actions, or other new forms of sustained public opposition flowing from this. It happens, it ends, and people forget about it."

This is not strict agreement or disagreement with your larger point, but rather than suggest that these these events 'naturally' come & go, there are in fact attempts to build out of them & keep their memories/spirits alive. Sometimes the attempts succeed, often they fail—but the outcome is shaped by active efforts, rarely if ever predetermined.

Case in point for 2020, whose memory is being actively erased but has many participants still active, inspired or revitalized by those events:

https://paper.wf/downas/partisan-accounts-of-the-george-floyd-uprising

anon (not verified) Thu, 05/30/2024 - 08:17

Still can't figure out how to thread their replies and clearly has never read Bonanno and CLEARLY has no clue what insurrectionary anarchism is or the manifold purposes of insurrection for the insurrectionary anarchist is. You are so boxed into authoritarian systems of thought... I feel sorry for you that you have nowhere left to turn except back to the status quo to poo-poo on anything that frightens you.

You will never understand joy and this makes you SO MAD.

anon (not verified) Thu, 05/30/2024 - 08:26

"You list a number of short-lived sporadic upheavals"
You mean: insurrections

"without saying anything you've done to contribute to any of this. This smells like a case where absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence."

Nice try, FBI. I have no desire to brag of my personal insurrectionary activities to you. My erections are firm, consistent, and magnificent! I'm not here for clout.

"Who remembers the WTO event in Seattle in 1999 now?"
All of us who participated (oops a flex). Every anarchist that came from a tradition of anarchy. Even the folks from the recent Seattle CHAZ, all the media, etc. etc.

"Nationwide rioting after the cops who beat Rodney King skated seemed to have many positive qualities at the time, but as with events after the murder of George Floyd this stuff burns off quickly without leaving much of a trace,"

You're again characterizing insurrections. Learn the word you're so afraid of.

"and without leaving anything to build on."

What do we look like, academics? Your bootlicking communism is showing.

I could go on but the rest of your comment is equally ignorant and the mark of a organizationalist seething with ressentiment that the anarchists did anarchy. How dull.

anon (not verified) Thu, 05/30/2024 - 11:56

"like in Egypt until Sisi took power or in the Iranian revolution in the late 1970s,"

Oh look at this Islamo-fascist fanboy.

minona (not verified) Thu, 05/30/2024 - 15:09

"Mankind does not seek entertainment -- only the American does."

Not so. Entertainment is a need that people from almost any time and place provide themselves with. People everywhere tell stories, jokes, play pointless games, fuck around. The way this need has been taken and expressed in the US is perhaps pathological, but... it is a need, after all. Maybe the world of functional adults is blocking your ability to see what's interesting and meaningful about fun and games.

anon (not verified) Thu, 05/30/2024 - 07:17

I am a true anarcho-individualist, I DON'T GO TO DINNER PARTIES, I'm too busy getting firewood to cook my beautiful peasant-esque stew and ruminating upon the idea of living in the moment of a meal without ideological sauce!

anon (not verified) Thu, 05/30/2024 - 09:58

To 8:11

So, capitalism is immutable and eternal, and will always be here, and all we can aspire to is short-lived rowdy demos and riots which burn off quickly? The situation in the world at large and in the fast-declining United States in particular demands something much more ambitious and aggressive than this.

"... clearly has never read Bonanno and CLEARLY has no clue what insurrectionary anarchism is or the manifold purposes of insurrection for the insurrectionary anarchist is..."

More than eight billion other people on planet Earth haven't either -- gosh, I wonder why. The mountain will not come to Mohammed here -- and fanboys like you and your hero at a great distance Alfredo Bonnano aren't Mohammed. If your dogma of "insurrectionary anarchism" has any content to it, other than the need for people like you to live vicariously, then the ball is in your court to try to make a persuasive argument on behalf of it here. Nobody is obligated to make your case for you. It's time to put up or shut up.

anon (not verified) Thu, 05/30/2024 - 10:07

"all we can aspire to is short-lived rowdy demos and riots which burn off quickly"

> we

Firstly, stop pretending like you're an anarchist. Secondly, what do you think "we" should aspire to? Something impossibly beyond reality? Something that tastes like boot and looks like just acceptin' the lot we've been dealt? This directly addresses your useless last paragraph. Do explain your proposal, your obvious seething ressentiment, and why you're here saying nothing for all to read.

Lastly, there is a little link that says "reply" at the end of each comment. If you can't figure out how to use it and admittedly haven't read anything you're seething about, why should anyone believe you can figure anything else out?

anon (not verified) Thu, 05/30/2024 - 10:30

"Nice try, FBI. I have no desire to brag of my personal insurrectionary activities to you."

The FBI doesn't care about your SSI benefits.

You have made it unmistakably clear that you aren't about anything that a functional adult in the larger world outside of your playpen would have reason to notice, let alone to take seriously. You live vicariously. That's all you are about.

anon (not verified) Thu, 05/30/2024 - 14:00

How funny is that when some commie shits on the very lumpen (SSI recipients) they'd like to lead to the rev. Perhaps you'd like them proles to instead get to work for your corporate gulag business? Or offer them free showers so you Axe-loving normies can finally treat them as comrades?

GEF (not verified) Thu, 05/30/2024 - 18:33

I was thinking of how to think of this TOTW... So there's the vagueness of using the term "measure", as to indicate anything that's quantitative. Measure also is synonym for "balance" as well as "proportion". So no, that's not exclusively relating to the quantitative.

Beyond the insurrecto rhetoric in the quote, I'd say that *any* life lived by the terms of the quantitative order is meaningless. Hence, the quest to bring quality to living, to think of life in terms of quality (not the materialistic, consumerist notion of it, but the more sensual, intellectual, spiritual) might not be revolutionary, but it is something that breaks away from the social norm and its formatting. It's undermining the Existent, in its patterns of equating an apple with a number... instead of its exquisite taste, its texture...

anon (not verified) Fri, 05/31/2024 - 00:34

To 14:00

No, subculture dud, I don't give a shit about lumpens. I am not a social worker. A mass revolutionary movement has to be primarily based on mainstream wage-earners and enlisted people in the Armed Forces.

anon (not verified) Fri, 05/31/2024 - 08:04

So then you're a bigot who missed out on the last 80 years of history, or so. You're the dumbest here if you truly believe the revolution can come out of the US middle class as well as the US military servicemen, and are making "lifestylists" look like the best hope for a rev (even if they're not...). I suggest you go back to anarchy school and read more from post-war authors of radical theory and move on from early marxists, 19th century anarcoms and other romantics. Like Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason as well as the obvious, Jacques Camatte, but also Fredy Perlman and Bob Black.

Anyways have fun organizing the Upper Proletariat from their F150s and suburban BBQs and would hope that you share your secret to immortality with us, greedy bastard.

anon (not verified) Fri, 05/31/2024 - 10:10

From time-to-time Anews becomes attractive to sad reactionaries and sad commies when they have a sad due to snowflake tendencies and mainstream politricks not going their way. Don't worry, anarch brahs, these trolls will soon get distracted with a new vidya x-pack or meeting and disappear for a while.

anon (not verified) Fri, 05/31/2024 - 11:59

The petulant middle schooler playground tenor of all the responses to my questioning the credibility of stuff like Killing King Abacus and everything that I'm aware of about the life and deeds of Wolfi Landstreicher shows that this brand of implacable insurrectionism can only thrive in safe spaces. This stuff fails the smell test.

anon (not verified) Fri, 05/31/2024 - 12:34

OooOooh nOoo! Can't say we'll be sad to see you go but okay, good bye!

Have fun organizing the *checks notes* "mainstream wage-earners and enlisted people in the Armed Forces" for your so great and super important reactionary revolution!

anon (not verified) Fri, 05/31/2024 - 13:08

Mainstream wage-earners and enlisted people in the Armed Forces are the people who matter most in real world society-wide subversive terms. This is absolutely not what you are about. You are not a subversive. You are not a revolutionary. Your attitude towards this is exactly that of your fellow members of the U.S. middle class. You have made this unmistakably clear. And how many elite universities have you been an indifferent student at to come up with these dazzling ripostes?

anon (not verified) Fri, 05/31/2024 - 13:31

WhaaaAaat?!? Radical anarchists are not so concerned with the mainstream?!? They must have learned this while earning their multiple PhDs from ELITE universities that are tOotally against the mainstream and good Men and woman of the US Armed Forces who are the REAL revolutionary subjects!

*dies*

anon (not verified) Fri, 05/31/2024 - 18:24

Everything you are aware of about their life & deeds? Cause you ate dinner with him? You offer almost no empirical statements, but the few that you do are wrong. Never left the confines of the US? He introduced the US to Bonanno, after his trip to Italy. So try again.

P.s. we didn’t use spoons at the dinner party. We fed each other like baby birds,

anon (not verified) Fri, 05/31/2024 - 23:03

No, asshole, I've known Wolfi, or whatever his handle is this week, since the 1980s. Almost 40 years.

The dinner in question was at my and my girlfriend's place. We'd invited the two authors of KKA. They dragged the not-at-all Wolf-like-Wolfi along, without bother to ask us in advance, or even tell us we'd be feeding an uninvited third guest. The only practical rebellion here is one against common courtesy -- that way they can really stick it someone's bourgeois parents! As far as feeding each other like baby birds, people with their social skills might as well have been eating with their feet.

anon (not verified) Fri, 05/31/2024 - 23:10

"We'd invited the two authors of KKA. They dragged the not-at-all Wolf-like-Wolfi along"

Wait till this troll learns that Wolfi was one of the three KKA authors. What a buffoon.

anon (not verified) Fri, 05/31/2024 - 23:16

Gosh, I didn't know that. How simply fascinating. Stop the presses! - the entire world revolves around the internal minutia of fanzines-to-themselves spawned by U.S. anarchist subculture denizens.

Ho Chi Minutia (not verified) Sun, 06/02/2024 - 08:37

Literally one person in all of US anarchyland uses the word "denizen" (as a pejorative, no less, when in fact it's etymologically related to dionysian cults) and they are sounding super duper contemptuous right about now.

anon (not verified) Sun, 06/02/2024 - 19:04

Are you accusing the random dinner party host of being The Contemptuous? Naw, I promise you know. But I do think he’s the pretend adjunct community college lecturer.

anon (not verified) Sat, 06/01/2024 - 11:40

Among its numerous unappealing qualities, this is a consumer society subculture where people who "aren't really all that" are endlessly free to pretend to be otherwise, and can count on no one calling them on their breathtakingly obvious 100% B.S. It is not a credible expression of anti-capitalist action.

alex (not verified) Sat, 06/01/2024 - 17:57

"relations without measure" are great until you need accountability, that is as these comments demonstrate to assess the quality of a dinner guest and thereby a person--i will be instituting a star system in my comfortable american home (supported by my "mainstream" wage and of course the efforts of our soldiers abroad to preserve our freedoms). from now on anyone who is awkward, communicates poorly, eats soup wrong, doesnt offer to clean the dishes, etc, will be docked and condemned. good guests will earn stars they can trade in for acts of complicity/mutual aid/solidarity whatever from me as long as im not busy. if we zero in on the math of this every responsible household could become a place thats truly hospitable to the cause and a springboard for effective anticapitalist action

anon (not verified) Tue, 06/04/2024 - 15:19

math is not a fanciful invention, it's a property of the universe, a quality of things we stumbled upon. we certain number of digits, of limbs, and which we can subtract from if we get dismembered. that's just one example, the point is that it's an unavoidable reality, whether you acknowledge it or not

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