Trip to a Digital Info-Shop

Finding good anarchist propaganda is not always easy. It helps that fellow travelers tend to have a healthy disregard for copyright law. (Copyright? More like copywrong.) This usually goes both ways: people also release their own work under various copyleft licenses.

I found a corner of the Internet called Zabalaza Books. It is the website of a South African anarchist bookstore. I use store in a loose sense, because their website seems to have more books and pamphlets available for download than one could read.

This week I downloaded nine pamphlets from them. Here's a picture:



Anarchism: What it Really Stands For, by: Emma Goldman

Anarchist Economics, an alternative for a world in crisis, by: Abraham Guillen
I didn't get this one from Zabalaza, and mentioned it in an earlier post.

Collectives in Spain by: Gaston Leval

Community Control of the Poor Community: An Organising Manual for Community Activists, by: Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin

Digger Tracts, 1649-50, edited by: Andrew Hopton
I also didn't get this from Zabalaza. About The Diggers.

The Freedom to Succeed: The Anarchist Collectives in the Countryside during the Spanish Civil War, by: Deirdre Hogan

How to Fire your Boss: A Workers' Guide to Direct Action, no author indicated
This short pamphlet explains the shortcomings of strikes, and outlines other industrial actions that can be taken. My favorite is the "good work strike," in which workers give customers better treatment, without charge. The pamphlet says "Workers at Mercy Hospital in France, who were afraid that patients would go untreated if they went on strike, instead refused to file the billing slips for drugs, lab tests, treatment, and therapy. As a result, the patients got better care (since time was being spent caring for them instead of doing paperwork), for free. The hospital's income was cut in half, and panic-stricken administrators gave in to all the workers' demands after three days."

Principles of Libertarian Economy, by: Abraham Guillen
This is excerpted from a different section of the same book, Economia Libertaria, as Anarchist Economics.

So, You're Out of a Job!, by: The IWW
This 1933 pamphlet encourages workers to join the IWW to organize a general strike, the goal of which is to have a 4 hour day and a 4 day work week, at the same pay as before. Interesting at least as an historical document, if not as an organizing platform. The argument is, in part, that mechanization of labor makes people obsolete, but it doesn't need to. If a machine makes a worker 12 times more efficient, the employer lays off 11 workers. The IWW thinks all workers should stay on, and work 12 times less, for the same pay, since they are producing just as much as before. I think instituting this regime may involve overthrowing capitalism.

The Spanish Revolution: Anarchism in Action, by: The Direct Action Movement (now Solidarity Federation)

Workers' Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society, by: Cornelius Castoriadis
This pamphlet, originally published in 1957, lays out the groundwork for a self-managed society. Everyone would determine the conditions and means of their own job, plants would be run cooperatively, and industry delegates would coordinate the economy as a whole.
My favorite idea is the Plan Factory. In the Soviet Union's bureaucratic style of communism, planning was entirely not participatory. Stalin, using some form of fortune telling, determined the economy's goals. Under the system of workers' councils, the job of the Plan Factory would be to collect as much data about the economy as possible, and use computers to figure out a number of possible ways to meet people's priorities. Priorities would be voted on, as would the plan that was followed. The difference between the Soviet model and this one is that the Plan Factory has no authority over anyone, they serve the people (although the means and operation of the factory itself would be determined by its workers.) Castoriadis emphasizes throughout the pamphlet that an economy can be participatory only if people make decisions "in full knowledge of the relevant facts." So each plan would have to indicate what its implications are for the consumption levels and production targets of all workers.
A simplified exampled of a plan might say that in order to produce X cars, the steel plants would have to run Y shifts. Another plan might have few cars, and less work for steelworkers. Another plan might have fewer cars, but invest more in building new steel plants, so in the future they could produce more cars without undue burden on steel workers. And, in full knowledge of the relevant facts, the people choose which plan to follow.
There is also a complicated federal system of governance. Each factory elects a Factory Council and a General Assembly, as well as sends delegates to the Delegates Assembly and the Delegates Council. Importantly, delegates can be recalled at any time, and they remain at their jobs while serving. The Assembly makes the big decisions, while the Council makes the everyday decisions. Any decision of the Council can be overridden by the Assembly. Every individual department conducts their own affairs, however. For more details, read the book. It is very good.
Amusingly, it contains three sets of end notes. One written by the author in 1957, one written by Solidarity (London) in the 1970's when they translated it into English, and one written in 2006 by Lust for Life when it was posted to the Internet.
There exist many ideological conflicts. Naturally, between the capitalists and the anti-capitalists, but also between authoritarian anti-capitalists (Stalinists and the like) and libertarian anti-capitalists (anarchists). This author often contrasts his philosophy of "rational," left, anti-capitalism, with "Utopian," left, anti-capitalism. Consider the following passage, "Many absurdities have been said about money and its immediate abolition in a socialist society, and there is a great deal of loose thinking about the subject... People will probably receive a token in return for what they put into society. These 'tokens' might take the form of units, allowing people to organise what they take out of society... As we are seeking here to get to grips with realities and not fighting against words, we see no objection to calling these tokens 'wages' and these units 'money.'" Over three end notes in this passage, it is added "All the preceding talk of 'wages,' 'prices,' and 'the market' will, for instance, undoubtedly have startled a certain group of readers. We would ask them momentarily to curb their emotional responses and to try to think rationally with us on the matter... One could also invent new words, if it would make people happy, but this would not change the underlying reality."

Those are the books I downloaded. I encourage you to download books that seem interesting to you.

Timeline of US-involved Armed Conflicts

We've been at war so long, it sometimes feels like it's always been this way. To help put this in perspective, I made this timeline of the years the US has been involved in an armed conflict. You might have to click it to make it large enough to read.



Most of the information comes from this article. I left a few off, somewhat arbitrarily. I didn't include seven minor conflicts with China (years 1918, 1921, 1926-1927, 1930, 1937, 1945-1947, and 1956) because they didn't have a name, and I left off American Expeditionary Force Siberia because it seemed a lot like the Northern Russian Expedition, which occurred in the same years. (Also left out: the Polar Bear Expedition.) I included two that are kind of questionable. The Mexican Revolution, in which 35 US troops were killed and 70 injured, as well as the El Salvador Civil War, in which 20 were killed and 35 wounded. While we were certainly entangled in both these events, the US efforts were primarily behind-the-scenes. The article I used listed conflicts were US soldiers were killed or wounded, and there are certainly interventions in which there were no US casualties, so that is another shortcoming of this timeline.

UPDATE I
I have since noticed an error: I have the Quasi-War starting in 1778, when in fact it started in 1798. My sincerest apologies to any time travelers who went to 1778 in an attempt to stop the Quasi-War. Hopefully you enjoyed the June 24th solar eclipse or perhaps the Battle of Monmouth during your stay in 1778.

UPDATE II
The timeline above is close to, but does not exactly match, what I pictured. This one is closer. Does anyone know enough about graphs to figure out how to do something kind of like a combination of the two?

I fixed a few things, and included a few more instances, based largely on this article. It really is arbitrary what you choose to include. I tried not to show every anti-pirate action, every foreign deployment, and every clash with a Native American tribe, but whether something is significant or not is just a judgment call.

What's Your Religion? I.W.W.!

I found this great documentary from 1979 about the Industrial Workers of the World called "The Wobblies." Watch it here:



I seem to be posting a lot of videos lately. All good, though.

Three Videos on the Zapatistas

The Ann Arbor Free School recently organized a discussion group about the Zapatistas, the largely indigenous movement in Chiapas, Mexico. I mentioned that I had seen some interesting videos, and I'll post them here to share them.

They are in increasing order of length. The first is a message in English from Zapatista spokesguerilla Subcommandante Marcos, the second (in two parts) is a 60 Minutes piece where Ed Bradley goes to Chiapas shortly after the uprising, and the third is a full-length documentary titled "A Place Called Chiapas." Watching them should give you an overview, to jump start learning more.









Update: I found another video, as well as a site that has Zapatista communiques, translated into English. (Including all six "Declarations from the Lacandon Jungle.) Link!

Dubious Honor

It seems I have been linked to by the blog, "Science and Math Defeated," one of the crazier parts of the Internet.

He claims I sent him the following video:

What's up with that?

Best Day Ever

I just had one of the best Saturdays ever.

It started out going to the butcher to get a deer. Now, I'm a vegetarian, so I wouldn't kill a deer to eat it, but my roommate hit it with her car. Another compatriot with experience in such matters claimed he could field dress the deceased. This involved four of us on the side of I-94 at ten o'clock at night, wearing aprons, holding knives and flashlights. No one stopped to help us. We got the poor fellow back to the house and hung it up in the garage to drain the blood. The reason I was interested is that I want to tan the hide. I don't buy leather, but it is useful, so I thought an accidentally killed animal shouldn't go to waste. We thought we would skin and butcher the deer ourselves, but after watching a few videos on the Internet, we became convinced it was too difficult, and required a few specialized tools. We therefore resolved to take it to a animal processor. Later, a friend of ours from the Soo claimed she's been skinning and butchering deer since she was 10, and that it isn't too hard. But the die had been cast.

And Saturday is when we got the meat and hide back from the processor. I was tempted to eat some, but I had a dream that I ordered some chicken wings at a bar and felt really guilty. Further, a vegetarian friend also had a dream that he and I steamed baby turtles alive. Clearly a sign that I shouldn't eat roadkill deer.

1.71 lbs of venison round steak. Plenty more where that came from.

After we got the deer back, Smith and I worked on our windmill project. We are currently building a scale model of a wind turbine, in order to build a full scale wind turbine. On Saturday, we partially skinned the skeleton of the blade. Our idea was to build the blades like old airplane wings, with a wooden skeleton and canvas skin. See pictures.

A mostly complete skeleton of balsa.

After we glued the muslin on the wings (muslin serving as canvas in the model), we painted the muslin with watered-down glue. This caused the fabric to shrink and make the skin very tight. While we were waiting for the glue to dry, we made a strawberry cobbler with dumpster-dived strawberries. It turned out pretty well, as you can see in the pictures.

Our research shows it is best with chocolate chip ice cream.

After the cobbler, the muslin needed another coat. While this was drying, I was noodling on the piano, and discovered a housemate's set of Lord of the Rings soundtrack scores. We resolved to record the Elvish hymn "Fourth Eorlingas," in eight-part harmony. Using open-source audio program Audacity, and the microphone that comes with the Xbox game "Rock Band," (it turns out Rock Band uses a regular USB microphone.) we recording all eight vocal lines from "Fourth Eorlingas." Listen to it here. (Does anybody know a better .mp3 hosting service?)

To end the evening, those interested began cooking venison kebabs over the fire. Smith and I made cheese toast over the fire.

Poor kebab design: items with different cook times on the same stick.

Cheese bread, pre-fire. Some goat cheddar in there.

Cheese toast, post-fire.

This is what animals are made of. Here we see some bone marrow. Thanks, hematopoietic stem cells.

Overall, I'd say it was a day well spent.

Toast Blogging

I recently wanted to make a time lapse video of toast being made. For that past couple days, I'd start some toast, go find my camera, and by the time I got back it was done. But today was different. Today I caught it in its natural habitat.



Look at that toast go!

Ten Links I've Emailed

As an exercise, I went through my email outbox, and found the last ten emails where I've sent people links. I decided to post them here so readers can decide what kind of person is described by these ten links.

A comedy philosophy piece.

The website of a windmill company.

An article about "Steal Something Day." (An extension of "Buy Nothing Day".)

An article from GQ about Donald Rumsfeld.

"Wind farm kills Taiwanese goats."

Stephen Fry explains free software.

Richard Stallman sings the Free Software Song.

The Bulgarian folksong that inspired the Free Software Song.

A documentary about making cane fifes in Mississippi.

Jon Stewart mentions the Labadie Collection on The Daily Show.

While it would be perhaps amusing to present this without commentary, here are a few points that, I think, enhance understanding.

About the Free Software Song: I'm told it is in 7/8 time, but I can't count it for the life of me. However, the Wikipedia article on Bulgarian folk music says:

"One of the most distinctive features of Balkan folk dance music is the complexity of its rhythms in comparison to Western music...For example, the dance lesnoto ("the light/easy one") has a meter of 7 beats with emphasis on the first, fourth, and sixth beats. This can be divided into three groups, a "slow" unit of 3 beats and two "quick" units of 2 beats, often written 3-2-2...It should be emphasized that this terminology is a crude simplification and is not used by Balkan musicians; it does not capture the full subtlety of Balkan rhythms."

The Labadie Collection is, as Jon Stewart explains, a library collection at the University of Michigan that has documents from the history of anarchist and radical thought. I was there recently researching the history of the IWW in Ann Arbor, and I sent the Jon Stewart link to a friend of mine that works there.

This exercise was rather amusing, so I'll probably do it periodically.

Learn About Anarchism in Spain

Lately, I've been fascinated by the Spanish anarchist movement in the 1930's. They achieved autonomy over large parts of the country for, in some areas, up to three years. The were undermined by the Communists, attacked by the Fascists, and eventually lost the Civil War. In those three years, however, some remarkable things happened. The following are some things I've been reading and watching to learn about this time.

George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia was written following his time fighting against the Fascists in Spain. It is a first person account, and you can read it here. It came out 11 years before 1984, and was not well received when it was new.

Living Utopia (Spanish title: Vivir la utopia) is a 1997 documentary I've just started watching. It is interviews with the people involved in the anarchist movement during the Civil War. Here is the first part on youtube (Spanish with English subtitles):



Anarchist Economics is a zine I got at an anarchist book fair. It is an excerpt from Abraham Guillen's much large book, Economia Libertaria. You can read about how people in the autonomous regions organized their collective economy. Guillen contrasts this with both the capitalist, and authoritarian-communist modes of economy. I like this because it isn't just theory; people actually lived like this.

Anarchist Economics

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Magazines & Newspape anarchy zine

Lastly, here is a youtube video of Noam Chomsky talking about anarchy. This may be a good introduction for those of you who are less familiar with anarchism. This video has been highly influential in my thinking.


Read and watch the preceding, and I hope it inspires your thinking.

A Romp Through Victoria's Secret

The following is a correspondence I had regarding something I found in the Victoria's Secret catalog. The item in question does not appear to be on their website, so you may need to track down the catalog to see it for yourself. The "Josh" in this exchange also writes a blog, called Egalicontrarian.

From: Jason
To: Josh

12 April 2009, 1:20 pm

I was flipping through the Victoria's Secret catalog, and they had a collection of shirts that re-appropriated counterculture slogans. For instance, one said "Make Pink, Not War," because, you see, Victoria's Secret has a monopoly on the color pink.

So that's pretty obnoxious, but the next one was even worse. It said "Boys, Not Bombs." Like "Food, Not Bombs." Get it? Let's undermine a worthwhile group, debase women, and teach girls destructive values, all at the same time. "My need for boys is like a homeless person's need for food! Because I starve myself to get attention from older boys because I am actually quite dissatisfied with my life. So I should participate in consumer culture and trade currency for a t-shirt (made by girls my age in a sweatshop) that reflects this reality. Surely, this will help my self-esteem." Way to go Victoria's Secret, you may have summarized all that is wrong with society in a single t-shirt.

From: Josh
To: Jason
12 April 2009, 2:05 pm

I have to disagree on this one.

1) Only a monster would suggest that pleasing boys with sexualized clothing is worse than destroying the countryside of Vietnam. I think boys, food, and other things like love, are all preferable to bombs and war. In fact, degrading women with clothing may be itself preferable to destroying women with napalm.

2) Although Victoria's Secret can be plausibly criticized for debasing women in a broad sense, these slogans themselves do not. If anything, "Boys, not bombs" is just recommending one evolutionary instinct (sex) over another (aggression).

3) These ads do not suggest that a need for boys is analogous to a homeless person's need for food. The only analogy is this: Victoria's Secret's ads are just about as stupid as the ads they are parodying, and probably about as consequential. Also, the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Consider this: many activists acquire mates after meeting them at activist events. Maybe even while wearing clothing purchased at Victoria's Secret. The only thing more attractive than an activist chick is an over-sexualized activist chick.

4) Lastly, the Victoria's Secret ad leaves open the question of starving oneself. Many boys prefer more voluptuous women, women like noted most beautiful woman in the world, Monica Bellucci.[1] So, "Boys, not bombs," contains within it the possibility of seeking to please a boy who is more evolutionarily rational [2] in his appreciation of the female physique [3]. This may lead to the paradoxical situation whereby a Victoria's Secret ad both impresses upon a woman successfully and yet guides her away from Victoria's Secret. Then again, I am not knowledgeable enough to know the size variance in the clothing offered by this business. We should ask Ashwini, so I've CC'd her.

From: Jason
To: Josh
12 April 2009, 9:04 pm

The one thing I want to add is that while "Make Love, Not War" is merely a slogan that borders on meaninglessness, "Food, Not Bombs" is a sprawling anti-capitalist organization with over 1000 chapters on every inhabited continent, that takes food that would be otherwise thrown out, and feeds homeless people and activists, while distributing radical literature. I heard a talk by the founder at a conference last weekend and it is very awesome. Check it out: http://www.foodnotbombs.net/

While I would choose boys over bombs, I don't think that is actually the sentiment of the shirt, as Victoria's Secret does not appear to have any interest in dismantling the war infrastructure, and would certainly support a war to, say, keep the prices of their inputs low.

Further, I am reminded of an early talking Barbie doll that said things like "Math is hard" and "Let's go shopping." While, certainly, math is hard, I question the wisdom of giving a young girl a toy that reinforces that stereotype to her every day she plays with it.* Similarly, I have no problem with girls being interested in boys as partners, but these shirts seem to be reinforcing the stereotype that girls ought to be seeking boys, by any means necessary, and to the detriment of other things, like careers. (Sidebar: Martha Cook dormitory [an all-girls dorm at the University of Michigan] and the Law School used to have functions together, so freshman girls could meet soon-to-be lawyers. (Almost all of whom were male at the time.) This is because girls, even while at college, should be focused on finding a man to please. This is referred to as getting one's "MRS" degree. Get it? "Mrs."? Also, law students are often quite a bit older than girls in Martha Cook, making it kinda creepy.)

Lastly, the shirts reinforce heteronormative values, by not having shirts for non-straight girls, who will feel excluded from yet another venue. (Sidebar: Perhaps you think non-straight girls should be excluded from consumer culture because it is so destructive. I agree, but I think this is just another way they are marginalized. Just like how one can be against gay marriage for the same reasons as they are against straight marriage, yet think gays should have the option.) (Further sidebar: I was going to say reinforcing heteronormativity was a minor objection, but then I realized I think that because I'm straight and society accommodates my proclivities. Therefore, I say it is a non-trivial matter.)

*The full story is that only 1.5% of Teen Talk Barbies had that particular phrase, but the rest are scarcely better. "Wanna have a pizza party", "Will we ever have enough clothes", etc. Allegedly there was a group called the Barbie Liberation Organization that would buy the Barbies and swap out their speaking chip with that of the concurrently released talking G.I. Joe, then return it to the store. While I don't support G.I. Joe's foreign policy, I appreciate the culture jamming of swapping the chips.

From: Ashwini
To: Jason, Josh
16 April 2009, 1:39 pm

I appreciate being consulted. [Josh] are you saying I am one of those "over-sexualized activist chicks?" In which case I am somewhere between flattered and insulted.

Yes, in the grand scheme of things war, bombs and other things are way worse than things that negatively impact young women in the U.S.'s self-concept and body image. It is annoying though and Jason is right that it appropriates activist jargon. I also get annoyed when I see Jenna Bush wearing a kaffiyeh and when Che's face is plastered all over Abercrombie t-shirts. Is it worse than napalm? No. But is it worth criticizing? Absolutely. "Boys not Bombs" is problematic in the same sense that a t-shirt that says "Who needs math you have these" on it is problematic. It encourages girls to advertise themselves as objects and to send the message that their priorities lie in dating and romance alone. And of course, the perception changes if it's a 16-year old girl wearing it versus a 35-year-old woman.

And [Josh] I think your point number 4 is both hilarious and retarded so I'm not even going to get into it.

What can we conclude from these exchanges? I'm tempted to make an off-hand remark about having too much time on our hands. However, such analyses are, I think, valuable. This is because Victoria's Secret gets to spend millions of dollars on catalogs and advertisements (some featuring Bob Dylan) to reinforce the world view that maximizes their profits. As every business does this, other modes of thinking are made more and more difficult. I should think the occasional unpacking of this serves some purpose.