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   novatorine 🏴🏳️‍⚧️ (anarchopunk_girl@kolektiva.social)'s status on Sunday, 20-Aug-2023 08:41:53 JST novatorine 🏴🏳️‍⚧️

   https://libcom.org/article/rethinking-crimethinc

   This is a very, very silly article (the condescension that drips off every sentence is sheer absurdity, and "class war" rhetoric is tiresome) but he does have some interesting points —

   > Shoplifting, dumpster diving, quitting work are all put forward as revolutionary ways to live outside the system but amount to nothing more than a parasitic way of life which depends on capitalism without providing any real challenge. The arrogance of middle class kids (just like the hippies) supposing to change by world by roughing it as "poor" people for a few years is captured perfectly in the quote on the back cover of their book evasion.
   >
   > "Poverty, unemployment, homelessness - if you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!"
   >
   > Condescending, privileged, middle class crap. The only people who could think that poverty is in any way fun are wealthy kids playing at being poor for a few years

   > Capitalism is a system of coercion and control, we don’t work to support the system, we work because we need food and shelter and healthcare and the only way to get that under capitalism is with money. The only way we can get money is by selling our labour - the alternative is to rot, that’s Capitalism. I don't want to feed my kids out of a dumpster or have to scam free healthcare if I get cancer, it's not appealing or practical. There's nothing revolutionary about using your white, middle-class, western privilege to remove yourself from the system at the expense of those who remain trapped in it.

   > The lack of any critical analysis and focus on spontaneity are serious shortcomings for crimethinc which lead me to believe they do not believe in revolution and are quite possibly happy to be the kids living on the "edge" of Capitalism, a system whose excess supports their drop-out lifestyles anyway. This would explain why crimethinc have no theory for revolution, how to build to overthrow this system and how to make sure that once we do we hold on to our gains, how to organise a post-revolutionary world so that we don't repeat the failures of the CNT and other historical precedents. A spontaneous revolution leaves the working class no means to defend itself from reactionaries and state socialists.

   I'm interested to hear what more experienced anarchists who know more about praxis have to say about this. I think one of the key things he misses is that doing dry theory and bureaucratic "organizing" is not the only way to gain knowledge about how to get things done and defend them "after the revolution" — actually going out and doing things directly, like squatting for instance, or FNB, can teach you that through hands-on learning. Anarchism is about unity of means and ends after all, right?