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# The Riot or the Attack? Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-05-13 05:35. Tags: Criticism
Solidarity and questions for US Anarchists after May Day - by AG Schwarz Since the disruptions in Pittsburgh during the G20, the Portland riots, and the coast to coast May Day smashings of 2010, anarchists in the US have proven they are a force. My beloved Glenn Beck even has to protect his wayward libertarians from us by insisting that we are communists, and that, laugh of laughs, we're working for the trade unions. The rightwing in the United States plays the curious role of recuperating a very popular anti-state sentiment, and as relatively weak as American anarchists are, they are starting to threaten this monopoly. That's the thing about non-vanguardist anarchists: when we speak and act honestly, we tend to have an influence far beyond our numbers. Because we now have proven to ourselves that we can start shit almost whenever and wherever we want, anarchists in the US no longer need to be so desperate for a riot that they are willing to throw everything away just to get their game on. Less combative anarchists have intuited a weakness in this new direction, a potential for isolation and repression, but unfortunately for everyone they couched it in the tired old terms of a fetishization of violence. Articles like “Are we addicted to rioting” were correct in sensing a danger, but because their authors were not conscious of their own position nor empowered by the confidence that comes with rioting, they sounded the call to retreat. |
A much better critique, written after the Strasbourg riots by honest to goodness Black Blockers, is “And After Having Burnt Everything?” The InvCom as well were on to something when they wrote, “the question of pacifism is serious only for those who have the ability to open fire. In this case, pacifism becomes a sign of power, since it's only in an extreme position of strength that we are freed from the need to fire.” Let there be no mistake. We had to come to this point. And if we back off now rather than charge across this line, we will deflate, putter around a laberinth of invective and disconnected bicycle repair workshops for a few more years, and then once we regain lost steam only have to face this challenge again. Rather than spreading recriminations as 11 comrades in Asheville and possibly some in Santa Cruz face heavy charges, let's spread lessons, or we'll only retreat and have to come this way again. The riot What happened in Asheville on May Day was not a riot, and not because of its size or any matter of scale. A riot expands. It is spontaneous, or it takes hold amidst a backdrop of social struggle. Countersummits provide the unique opportunity of a planned riot, because there is a larger crowd of people assembled there among whom the riot can spread, and the mass protest situation already creates such a logistical nightmare for the police that the risk, normally idiotic, of trying to start a riot right where the cops are expecting it is often neutralized. Generally, however, riots occur as a spontaneous response to the violence of the state or the humiliations of capitalism, as in Portland, March 2010, and Oakland, January 2009. Riots can be and often are provoked by a couple of people with more confidence in their ability to fight back, but their necessary characteristic is their expansion. The riot is good because it is a catalyst, a magical spark that allows high social tensions to turn into open social conflict. It is a step towards social war. If, in a certain neighborhood, on a certain day, there is no simmering social tension, there will be no riot. On the other hand, if the people are well trained in obedience, the tensions can be boiling over but the lid will not fly off. The threshold for the transformation to a riot is lowered if people have confidence, if they have practice in fighting back. They can win these things through the attack. The attack An attack should never mistake itself for a riot. Normally it never would because attacks traditionally take place at night or in swift, unobserved moments. A riot is a moving commune. It can dismantle the temples of the commodities with leisure, it can turn the smoke filled streets into zones of play. An attack does not have this luxury, and when it makes the mistake of thinking it does, it transforms quickly into a mass arrest. The principal purpose of this type of action is to demonstrate that it is easy to attack capitalism, despite all the flaunted power of the state. An attack that does not get away is, at this principal level, a failure. A demoralization. I don't presume that whoever carried out the May Day smashings in Asheville were trying to adopt a certain tactic that has been perfected by the comrades in Greece, or that they were trying to do anything other than what they ended up doing. But I will say that certain folks have been doing it much better, and it can be useful to understand how. Certain anarchists in Greece and elsewhere have been perfecting the public attack. This deviates characteristically from traditional attacks in that it happens in the public eye: in the middle of the day, 20-40 trusted comrades gather punctually on a street where there are no surveillance cameras, mask up, run around the corner to their objective, smash it, and disappear, knowing in advance good escape routes and places where they can unmask and blend in. At least one person keeps time, down to the second, and lets everyone know when it is time to move on. Staying at the objective for more than, say, 30 seconds, is suicide. The Greek anarchists are courageous, but they would not attempt a public attack when police were expecting it (e.g. May Day, in a city where something was also attempted the previous year). Additionally, and this point cannot be stressed enough, they were developing this tactic for years before they got to the point where they would attempt to smash 6 or more objectives, or objectives on entirely different city blocks, at the same time. I have no idea who shook things up in Asheville and how much experience they have, but one thing that is true for all of us is that if we act out of impatience, we are inviting imprisonment. We won't destroy capitalism through the amount or value of damage we cause, but by the significance of that damage and how it communicates itself. If there's one thing we can learn from the heavy blows we suffered with the repression and failure of the ELF, let it be that. Many other types of public attacks have been developed that don't focus repetitively on broken windows. There is the supermarket expropriation, where 20 masketeers run into a supermarket, fill up baskets full of food, get out of there in under a minute (some of them make sure the doors remain open and unobstructed), and drop the food off in a park or other public place within a couple blocks where folks are gathered, and disappear. A similar group of people could open up a metro station to temporarily provide everyone who passes through with free public transportation. Another group publicly dismantles a surveillance camera. These and many other forms of public attack communicate themselves much better, and are more likely to win sympathy for illegality and anarchy. This is not at all a denunciation of the broken windows. Without negation, we are nothing. But it is much easier to understand how healthy it is to make total destroy if it is connected to a more embracing practice rather than an almost ritualized, self-caricaturizing repetition. The attack is good because it gives us strength and confidence, it helps us manifest as a material force in the social conflicts, it illuminates the rage and dissension brewing in the ranks of capital,it disrupts the illusion of democratic peace even at times of lower social tension, and it communicates that we have an enemy, and this enemy is easy to attack. Next time smash the template A peculiar problem of US society is how televised it is, and I think this has a negative impact on the anarchists as well. The errant irony and generic behavior are pervasive. Just like a high school movie, the anarchist space also has its cool kids. They are certainly the vanguard in the changing sense of theory and strategy, but it seems that US anarchists in general participate in a general substitution of fads for tactics. It's no surprise. The spectacle has trained us to live in templates, and this extends to our struggles. Smashing windows can become and is becoming the signifier of belonging to yet another clique, little different from organizing Food Not Bombs or riding bicycles or holding mycology workshops. Make no mistake, the temples of the commodities must be smashed, but the templates for how we go about that must be smashed as well. Communication and society Does a disdain for populist mass movements mean that we want to be alone in our struggle? That would certainly be a caricature of the insurrectionary. If the strongest motion of capitalism is the movement towards alienation, than the strongest attack would be the one that communicates, the one that connects us, the one that mixes us, the one that overcomes isolation. Burn everything but our bridges! Where was the communication on May Day? Shattering glass has a voice, but only sometimes is it the one that speaks most eloquently. Where are the other voices to help add meaning to its words? From a distance it seems that the provocations shouted by May Day's falling shards caused many people to take the side of property. There is something valuable in making people's alliances clear, but there is nothing valuable in refusing to challenge the alliances of capital, to instead defiantly occupy a lonely moral high ground as the only enemy of the system. We are not Christians who take joy from the mouths of Roman lions. People who rallied around broken windows and damaged cars, in their own minds, were rallying around the false constructs they've been given of community, respect, safety, and so forth. Additional communication is needed to show what these things actually mean in the world we inhabit, to clarify what side they've actually chosen. Social war means society against the state. Homo sacer is the most honest and honorable member of capitalist society, but also the weakest. For now, we will be the unpopular ones. To have the hope of seeing something different, there will need to be ten flyers for every flying brick, and many more of each. Solidarity In “Against the Corpse Machine,” Ashen Ruins wrote how in the 1880s, US anarchists could stand fully in support of the Haymarket martyrs, but forget to show similar solidarity for all the sharecroppers and lynching victims in the South. It worries me immensely that within about a week, a half dozen comrades get killed or disappeared in Oaxaca, including anarchists, and a dozen comrades in the States get arrested on felony charges, and all the attention and solidarity goes to the latter. This does not at all mean that solidarity with the arrested or the May Day smashings themselves come at the expense of solidarity with Oaxaca. Only a liberal would counterpoise international solidarity with attacking the bars of our own prisons. But if this new direction in the anarchist struggle here could ignore the Oaxaca massacre even at a moment of growing power, it is empty and doomed to pathos and narcissism. How we respond in similar situations in the future will answer the question: are we strengthening ourselves as part of a global struggle that truly believes in total destroy, or are we just pursuing the new fad? Those arrested on May Day deserve our fullest support, regardless of things like guilt or innocence. The smashings should also be celebrated, because they mark an important expansion of the struggle in the US, showing that anyone in this country is powerful enough to attack this system. Only by taking this realization and moving forward can we come to occupy a terrain where we are not desperate or impatient to attack because we know we can do it at any time, and therefore choose the best moments. Your cooperative will sell your soul, your nemesis will save it Anarchist bookstores, cafés, and social centers, squatted or rented, are a commonplace in our struggles worldwide, so it seems peculiar that in the States so many would be subjected to criticisms of being businesses, of selling out, of not deserving our solidarity. It seems even more peculiar that in the wake of riots or instances of repression, so many members of these spaces should in fact join the business owners in denouncing illegality and distancing themselves from the disturbances, from the bad protestors, from the masked ones. The anarchist spaces, even if they are rented, even if they have to sell things to pay their rent, are our spaces, and they face the same compromises we do when we decide whether to get a job, whether to make use of state welfare, state infrastructure. And these spaces are meaningless without a connection to the anarchist struggle. Without the struggle, without the masked ones, without the smashings, they become just another business, and a poorly managed one at that. Running a cooperative threatens nothing. It does not provide an image of the future unless it exists to support a struggle capable of destroying the power structures that stand in the way of that future. Our spaces sustain us in the struggle and prevent our isolation, and our attacks give those spaces their true meaning, but only if they refuse to be separated. After a bout of smashing, the local media will demonize the visible anarchists, the public anarchist projects, precisely to get them to denounce the invisible and illegal manifestations of the anarchist struggle, to divide us and weaken us all. The plan is for the public ones to scramble to portray themselves as upstanding citizens, which is to say, to defeat themselves; and for the invisible ones to lose and in fact deny themselves access to those few spaces where they can show they are only a threat to those who are the enemies of all of us. In short, the purpose is to isolate those who attack. More often than not, the public ones and the invisible ones cooperate quite well in fulfilling this purpose. Enough Words Let's not come this way again. There's so much to be done well, why do anything poorly? All power to the communes! Freedom for the Asheville 11! Freedom for everyone! Add new comment Printer-friendly version ### Alright schwartz. Not bad. Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-05-13 10:25. Alright schwartz. Not bad. » reply ### Nobody Cares, just throw Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-05-13 11:10. Nobody Cares, just throw another chair in the street so Glenn Beck can shit in his mouth about it » reply ### I hope they use RICO and Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-05-13 11:50. I hope they use RICO and ass-wipe articles like this shut down this scene. » reply ### This article was fucking Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-05-13 14:04. This article was fucking sick. I like self-critique, I think it's a crucial aspect to sharpening our teeth. What I don't want to read are a bunch of toothless articles about how riots are 'bad' and sitting with your thumb up your ass is 'good'. What I do want to read is shit that starts with the premise of destroying capitalist society being beneficial to those of us who aren't of the owning/employing class. And then helps to answer the question of 'how can we do it better?' This article helped flesh out some things that I had been starting to feel (you can't just smash windows to the end of capitalism) and started the gears of what's even better than smashing windows. The first answers I am coming to involve how do we attack in ways that hurt the owning class and simultaneously strengthen ourselves. The first ideas I come up with seem to involve finding ways to expropriate in ways that fit into both the riot category (participatory expansive) ie looting, and also the attack category (swift, shadowy, potentially reproducible) ie emptying the boss's safe to provide legal defense dollars or stealing his copy machine to propagate our positions. This, if pulled off successfully, could help solve the one step forward, two steps back approach of riot, court, repeat. » reply ### potentially reproducible = Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-05-14 03:20. potentially reproducible = open actions. clandestine shit like you mentioned will not be reproduced. things will be reproduced when, in doing them, you change the idea of what it is legitimate for the govt. to stop people from doing. to do that, actions must be open and we must act as if we are the legitimate ones, because we are. » reply ### shut the fuck up. Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-05-14 05:19. shut the fuck up. » reply ### That people can wreck shit Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-05-14 11:17. That people can wreck shit and get away with doing so is open. Nothing is completely open and can't be. But what's key is actions / ways of acting that are opening and can easily be done by anyone. Cuz like we're at war and need security culture and shit, and it's a reality that people are on different sides of this war. » reply ### How's that "get away with Submitted by anon on Sat, 2010-05-15 11:31. How's that "get away with doing so" workin' for ya? » reply ### Bravo! This is the sort of Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-05-14 02:03. Bravo! This is the sort of analysis we fucking need! Break out of yr anarchist boxes! Exclamation points! » reply ### if there's one thing that Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-05-14 05:15. if there's one thing that @news has taught me, it's that it's not everyday somebody writes a non-asinine communique. Bravo. » reply ### great article. i hope lots Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-05-14 08:14. great article. i hope lots of anarchists read it. » reply ### THIS is what insurrectionary Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-05-14 09:10. THIS is what insurrectionary anarchy is supposed to be! Excellent article. Kinda reminds me of early insurrectionary writing from Vancouver in the early 2000s; simple, to the point, clear minded and critical. We need more of this shit! » reply ### "the invisible ones … can Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-05-14 11:30. "the invisible ones … can show they are only a threat to those who are the enemies of all of us" Those who are enemies of us all: Random people; everyone "The smashings should also be celebrated, because they [show] that anyone in this country is powerful enough to attack this system." The system: Random people and their cars; see also: communities "People who rallied around broken windows and damaged cars, in their own minds, were rallying around the false constructs they've been given of community, respect, safety, and so forth." What ever happened to self determination? Apparently, we peons are too stupid to define community, respect, and safety for ourselves. Good thing we have the insurrectionary anarchists to come tell us how we are wrong, and define "community" and "respect" for us. "Please mr. anarchist, tell me how to run my life! If you don't like cars, don't stop driving, just come smash mine!" Hmm… I don't remember saying that. "SHUT UP YOU! Fuck your bourgeois concept of 'self-determination.' You are brainwashed; only WE, the Insurrectionary Anarchists, know what is best for you!" I would be much more concerned with this movement if it weren't so utterly self-defeating and irrelevant. It will be my pleasure to watch these "total destroy" morons burn themselves out. » reply ### fuck off, an-cap Submitted by anonn on Fri, 2010-05-14 19:03. fuck off, an-cap » reply ### I agree with you. I have my Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-05-14 21:36. I agree with you. I have my problems with "the system" and am - ahem - uncooperative with it, but my right to flail does, indeed, stop short of your nose. I think you've correctly sussed out the elitism that lies at the heart of so much of this claptrap, and would add that it's probably a "movement" populated by young people from families with some money - actually families with a fair amount of money. Generally - and with full admission of the limits of generalization - people from backgrounds where money = work (by the way, money is work for all but a few of us, and when you smash a worker's car, you're smashing a worker's work) have a different, less smashy-smashy, relationship with things. Also, the sloppy scholarship is just driving me nuts. I've actually read Marx/Engels/Bakunin, and the folks on these pages seem to have no grasp of the difference between a capitalist and a petit bourgeois (perhaps because they are from capitalist families - see above). This is a critical distinction, to my mind at least, should one decide that smashing something is in order. We instinctively know there's a difference between, say, Bank of America and a mom'n'pop yarn store; real live things written in books reify that difference as doctrine: those who employ capital, hypothecate it, and use it to construct systems of extraction and oppression (capitalists) are different from those who make stuff and sell stuff in order to acquire the means of exchange to go on living (petit bourgeois). This sort of distinction always attracts the most ire on these pages, because these young people want to smash something, can't do a damn thing to Bank of America, and want to smash something, dammit. Theology uses the lesson of the clang bird, which believes its tail is a worm, bites it and pulls and pulls until it swallows itself, disappearing with a clang. These kids attack little bidnesses, pissing potential allies off, and never get the attack-to-uprising reaction Bakunin called for - what a surprise, and what a definition of self-defeating tactics. Anyway, yes, you're right - believe me, I could go on. » reply ### >the difference between a Submitted by anon on Sat, 2010-05-15 09:32. >the difference between a capitalist and a petit bourgeois (perhaps because they are from capitalist families - see above). This is a critical distinction, to my mind at least, should one decide that smashing something is in order. We instinctively know there's a difference between, say, Bank of America and a mom'n'pop yarn store; real live things written in books reify that difference as doctrine: those who employ capital, hypothecate it, and use it to construct systems of extraction and oppression (capitalists) are different from those who make stuff and sell stuff in order to acquire the means of exchange to go on living (petit bourgeois).< LOL what is this, 1873? i wonder if capitalism has like changed at all in the past 200 years and if the way terms were deployed back then when all those dead bearded white dudes were writing can be applied so easily today. and maybe with it the understanding of capitalism has changed also and the communist strategies that didn't work back then are discarded and new ones are developed from a different understanding than you'd get just from reading Marx/Engels/Bakunin; not that those are bad folks to read, but I mean, what do those dudes have to say about the internet or lesbian separatism or race riots or advertising and pornography? maybe ideas should be developed beyond a reading of the communist manifesto and a bunch of poorly laid out zines photocopied 50 times. » reply ### I agree, categories have Submitted by anon on Sat, 2010-05-15 11:24. I agree, categories have become muddied, as if they ever were crystal clear. Riddle me this - what's a person who's working nights to make ends meet while they get a small business off the ground called? A worker? Petit bourgeois? Capitalist? Which of their personal belongings do we smash, or just the business property? What about personal property used in the business - computers, for instance? Or personal property used to work for wages - a car used to deliver pizzas at night, for example? My point is this, I guess: If there is a "bright line" in all this - and I believe there is one, it involves hypothecation of capital (lending, derivative investment of various kinds), passive income (dividends to shareholders, tax shelters), layers of management or paper between owner and worker (multinationals, out-sourced labor half a world away), and other things I haven't thought of. To the extent that the old categories don't apply, we see the kind of freakout that followed the Asheville "action." The people who got hurt were tiny little businesses and folks who worked for hourly wages, and making the case that the smashy-smashy targeted capitalism in any real way is simply dishonest. No, it is not 1873, but the tactics employed by the "textbook anarchists" seem to be trapped in that kind of time warp and confused about categories at the very same time. And that, as I said, amounts to sloppy scholarship. captcha: gas famously » reply ### The article isn't defining Submitted by anon on Sat, 2010-05-15 03:31. The article isn't defining community and respect, its just critiquing the common liberal definition. Such as your definition "Random people and their cars". Thats a pathetic use of the word community and its ok to challenge that. » reply ### I didn't define community. Submitted by anon on Sat, 2010-05-15 07:44. I didn't define community. I just articulated what the author was referring to as "the system." to wit: "The smashings should also be celebrated, because they [show] that anyone in this country is powerful enough to attack this system." So since random peoples' cars were smashed, the author is clearly defining them as "the system" or at least a powerful enough part to warrant smashing before many other things. "We weren't attacking a community, we were smashing THE SYSTEM!" again, random peoples' stuff =/= the system. I think that's one of the most irritating parts of this discussion, that the Asheville attackers are being defined as 'too hardcore' or 'too revolutionary' for the rest of us "liberals." The Asheville attackers weren't SHIT. Sinking whaling ships is hardcore. ____ing the ____agon is revolutionary. Running around smashing the first thing you see is just being a lazy ass hipster hoodlum. So quit framing the discussion as 'you're not committed/hardcore enough,' because the Asheville attackers were neither. » reply ### Um, yes, car culture, Submitted by anon on Sat, 2010-05-15 13:03. Um, yes, car culture, consumerism, commodity showcases and the banality of everyday life ARE the system. You seem to think the main point of vandalistic attacks is to punish random people. It's not. Of course the Pentagon is a tastier target. When was the last time you attacked the Pentagon, big boy? How about you first? But let me guess: you'd rather attack nothing because anything less than the Pentagon is just "too easy" for you. » reply ### "car culture [read: having a Submitted by anon on Sat, 2010-05-15 14:23. "car culture [read: having a car], consumerism, commodity showcases" And you've so thoroughly purged your life of all such things as to be beyond improvement? If not, why don't you work on improving yourself, smashing your own stuff, before you start attacking other people? 'Do as I say, not as I do,' is it? » reply ### Well, actually, I don't have Submitted by anon on Sun, 2010-05-16 03:15. Well, actually, I don't have a car or own my own small business. Believe it or not it is possible to live without these things. And if I did have them and some protesters smashed them on May Day I wouldn't go whining about how I'm not the Pentagon and denouncing an entire section of the anarchist movement. I'd fucking have the window repaired and shut my fucking petty bourgeois mouth. » reply ### "We'll smash your stuff, and Submitted by anon on Sun, 2010-05-16 07:14. "We'll smash your stuff, and you better shut your fucking mouth about it." There's a winner. » reply ### Yes, because if you can't Submitted by anon on Sat, 2010-05-15 14:25. Yes, because if you can't get the pentagon, why not smash your neighbor's car. Excellent point! » reply ### Actually that is exactly Submitted by anon on Sat, 2010-05-15 14:36. Actually that is exactly what those vandals did and it is exactly why so many people are so outraged: They punished random people. They punished the owners of a small, local, independent copy shop. They punished a school teacher, who has to work nights as a waitress. They punished a family with at least two young children. How very bad ass...way to go bullies! Property destruction where the main point is NOT to punish random people, actually has to be targeted...and not at random people! I'm sorry to hear that life is so banal for all of you. » reply ### Perhaps you should reread Submitted by anon on Sun, 2010-05-16 07:51. Perhaps you should reread the definition and historical function of punishment. If indeed the vandalism in Asheville was as "senseless" and random as the media is portraying it, then all the objects of the vandalism that you mentioned cannot logically be the subjects of punishment. Violence without a specific target can do many things but it cannot administer punishment. Punishment requires first Law, and second, violation or transgression of Law. Law certainly could be a common ethics, or moral code. The Asheville event quite contrary to punishment, for transgression of a common code, reveals in its so called senselessness, how there is no common code that holds society together besides perhaps the free flows of capital. If its sad that the events effected others--that is to say, were externally imposing outside of the anarchist milieu--this should only be held as testament to the fact that capitalism is everything. Whereas "targeted" property damage (i.e., banks, this or that bad corporation) communicates one thing, so-called random property damage communicates another. Targeted damage is cool but in its precision creates a zone of meaning that only other politicos can relate to, and everyone else takes as simply what anarchists do. In the early '00s it was "anarchists smash niketown, and starbucks, and banks" The discourse of punishment and morality comes with far more ease in this case. On the other hand, if "anarchists smash everything they can," although the message is a tad more complex, the discourse of morality breaks down and the only message to take is sweeping negative one about this society in which we live. This may communicate to others with similar practices or it may not. Either way, if the proletariat is not exploited by any particular institution, but exploited generally, then we can only imagine, and clearly see, that when it rebels, it rebels generally. captcha: torment not » reply ### >On the other hand, if Submitted by anon on Sun, 2010-05-16 13:15. >On the other hand, if "anarchists smash everything they can," although the message is a tad more complex, the discourse of morality breaks down and the only message to take is sweeping negative one about this society in which we live.< Is that the only message to take away? Because I think the message ~100% of people are taking away is "anarchists are crazy dumbasses." » reply ### one of the few u.s. related Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-05-14 14:46. one of the few u.s. related articles i've seen in awhile that is worth reading. mad props. » reply ### "The anarchist spaces, even Submitted by anonn on Fri, 2010-05-14 19:10. "The anarchist spaces, even if they are rented, even if they have to sell things to pay their rent, are our spaces, and they face the same compromises we do when we decide whether to get a job, whether to make use of state welfare, state infrastructure." this is a debatable comparison to me, at best. we make compromises like getting jobs and welfare because we need to eat, to have a roof over our head, to lead a relatively safe and decent life, etc... these are pretty deeply rooted needs. this analogy breaks down when applied to u.s. infoshops, which emerged mostly in imitation of the social centers movement in europe which in spite of what you say here, are mostly squatted and therefore come out of a very different tradition and struggle of successful contestation of property rights. in the states we have spaces like the wooden shoe, which is literally just a collectively run bookstore which happens to sell anarchist-to-progressive literature to a certain niche market. in other words, it is a capitalist apparatus fufilling a function within capitalism. in this sense, the analogy fits. sub rosa and firestorm, which are bookstore/cafes with some anarchist content made exclamations of sympathy to the other businesses affected by the actual outbursts of anarchy. on the other hand firehouse in modesto does not primarily function by keeping itself open in a downtown shopping district as a retail space. so i don't think it is a question of to rent or not to rent but whether these projects actually 'feed' the anarchist movement and provide for real needs, or whether it is fetishized busywork. aside from that, nice article. » reply ### excellent points made here. Submitted by anon on Sat, 2010-05-15 07:37. excellent points made here. » reply ### not actually true that most Submitted by anon on Sat, 2010-05-15 10:22. not actually true that most social centers in Europe are squatted. And it's clear that whether or not they are squatted is not the critical criterion in determining whether or not they feed the anarchist struggle. But you yourself admitted that the question is not to rent or not to rent. I just think that the experience in Germany and Spain and the Netherlands does not allow this simple reduction of these spaces as being capialist enterprises period. They're part of the struggle if they align themselves with the struggle. This recognition seems to be lacking when you equate Firestorm with Subrosa, seeing as how one denounced the smashings and the other, as far as I know, didn't. » reply ### yes, it's true and this is a Submitted by anonn on Sat, 2010-05-15 15:18. yes, it's true and this is a fair response, i went more for the broad brush than the fine point this time. although i don't know about the non-squattedness of most euro anarcho spaces. i didn't really do any research on that, it was more a perspective based on reading about european anarchism/left for many years... but can you point to something which shows i'm wrong?thanks. » reply ### http://zinelibrary.info/riot- Submitted by anonn on Sun, 2010-05-16 16:16. http://zinelibrary.info/riot-or-attack-questions-u-s-anarchists-after-may-day » reply ## Comment viewing options Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.