ALLiance a journal

US Attorney files dismissal of Swartz's case, refuses to comment on his death

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 13:48:09 -0600

US Attorney files dismissal of Swartz's case, refuses to comment on his death: c4ss: In probably...

Photo

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 17:20:11 -0500

Joseph Déjacque, "The Universal Circulus"

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 06:31:30 -0500

Joseph Déjacque, "The Universal Circulus": c4ss: The universal circulus is the destruction of every...

Socialism on One Planet

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 22:01:23 -0500

Socialism on One Planet: c4ss: … A society of conscious and voluntary co-operation can’t be...

The Star Fraction - Introduction to the American Edition

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 18:25:04 -0500

The Star Fraction - Introduction to the American Edition: c4ss: … History is the trade secret of...

Dark Satanic Cubicles - It's time to smash the job culture!

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 21:26:37 -0500

Dark Satanic Cubicles - It's time to smash the job culture!: c4ss: … In our current economic setup,...

Supporting Online Anonymity, C4SS Quarterly Tor Node Fundraiser

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 20:41:12 -0500

Supporting Online Anonymity, C4SS Quarterly Tor Node Fundraiser: c4ss: …If you believe, as we do,...

Anarchy in Milton Keynes

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 19:00:17 -0500

Anarchy in Milton Keynes: c4ss: … If my purpose was just to write about her book, that is where I...

Students for a Stateless Society (re)Introduced

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 19:12:00 -0500

Students for a Stateless Society (re)Introduced: c4ss: … The Students for a Stateless Society...

c4ss: Anarchist Economics The Center for a Stateless Society,...

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 14:52:57 -0500

c4ss:

Anarchist Economics

The Center for a Stateless Society, Kevin Carson and Shawn Wilbur all get honorable mentions in this overview of Anarchist Economic theory and practice.

If they had given me another five minutes...: Two things Nick: Power tends to act ridiculously short-sightedly and...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 23:21:02 -0500

If they had given me another five minutes...: Two things Nick: Power tends to act ridiculously...

vegan-feminist-pirate: Voltairine de Cleyre “But there is no...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 23:16:37 -0500

vegan-feminist-pirate:

Voltairine de Cleyre
“But there is no refuge upon earth for the enslaved sex. Right where we are, there we must dig our trenches, and win or die.”

c4ss: The Situationist International (1957-1972) was a...

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:00:28 -0500

c4ss:

The Situationist International (1957-1972) was a relatively small yet influential Paris-based group that had its origins in the avant garde artistic tradition. The situationists are best known for their radical political theory and their influence on the May 1968 student and worker revolts in France. The Situationist International (SI) published a journal called Internationale Situationniste (IS). Selections from the journal’s twelve issues have been translated and published by Ken Knabb as the Situationist International Anthology. The two other texts that are essential to an understanding of the SI’s theory are The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord (the SI’s leading theorist throughout its existence) and The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem. Debord said of The Society of the Spectacle: “there have doubtless not been three books of social criticism of such importance in the last hundred years.” Debord was perhaps thinking of Marx’s Capital, the first volume of which was published in 1867, exactly 100 years prior to the publication of The Society of the Spectacle. While Debord was certainly not known for his modesty, many who are familiar with his book, including myself, are tempted to agree with him. The British anti-state communist journal Aufheben, for example, feels that while it may not be this century’s Capital, it is one of the few books that could make such a claim. Another situationist claim, made in 1964 in IS #9, is in many ways far grander: “Ours is the best effort toward getting out of the twentieth century.” This essay will inevitably present some of the grounds on which to judge the validity of this latter claim. … (PDF!)

C4SSdotORG: The Longest Con

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:00:22 -0500

C4SSdotORG: The Longest Con: c4ss: The simplest way to put it is that they’re all a bunch of...

c4ss: The everyday practical activity of tribesmen reproduces,...

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:00:17 -0500

c4ss:

The everyday practical activity of tribesmen reproduces, or perpetuates, a tribe. This reproduction is not merely physical, but social as well. Through their daily activities the tribesmen do not merely reproduce a group of human beings; they reproduce a tribe, namely a particular social form within which this group of human beings performs specific activities in a specific manner. The specific activities of the tribesmen are not the outcome of “natural” characteristics of the men who perform them, the way the production of honey is an outcome of the “nature” of a bee. The daily life enacted and perpetuated by the tribesman is a specific social response to particular material and historical conditions.

The everyday activity of slaves reproduces slavery. Through their daily activities, slaves do not merely reproduce themselves and their masters physically; they also reproduce the instruments with which the master represses them, and their own habits of submission to the master’s authority. To men who live in a slave society, the master-slave relation seems like a natural and eternal relation. However, men are not born masters or slaves. Slavery is a specific social form, and men submit to it only in very particular material and historical conditions.

The practical everyday activity of wage-workers reproduces wage labor and capital. … (PDF!)

c4ss: The effect of capitalism on human relations is as simple...

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:00:12 -0500

c4ss:

The effect of capitalism on human relations is as simple or as complicated as you want. On the one hand, it is here, it is unavoidable and includes everything—on the other, it is impossible to understand because of its capacity to institute the limits of understanding.

Capitalism is the dominant social relation, it produces a society that is organised for the production of capital—it is an organising of the world that is for the transformation of organising into capital.

Capitalism is a system of production derived from a classbased social relation which then re-establishes the social relation in capitalist terms. It produces the society we inhabit. And capitalist society manifests within its institutions and social relations the imperatives and dynamics of capitalist production. At the level of human interaction the world seeks to realise, fall into line with, and most closely resemble, the motor force, value, which drives it.

The establishment of capitalist production as the dominant social relation reversed the relation of production to the world. …

c4ss: Capitalism has facilitated democracy, fascism, state...

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 01:15:36 -0500

c4ss:

Capitalism has facilitated democracy, fascism, state socialism, theocracy, militarism, human rights, religious revivals, it processes and transforms all social organisation into its social organisation. Every political aspiration is compatible with its productive relation. You propose the counter culture? Capital will commodify it, instigate it, reproduce it, and sell it. There is no outside of the loop.

c4ss: … Anyone who touches productivity has had it. Capitalism...

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 01:15:18 -0500

c4ss:

… Anyone who touches productivity has had it.

Capitalism and those fighting it sit alongside each other on the producer’s corpse, but production must go on.

The critique of political economy is a rationalisation of the mode of production with the least effort (by those who enjoy the benefits of it all). Everyone else, those who suffer exploitation, must take care to see nothing is lacking. Otherwise, how would we live? …

c4ss: The struggle of the left does not grow out of the...

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 01:15:09 -0500

c4ss:

The struggle of the left does not grow out of the desires, needs and dreams of the living individuals exploited, oppressed, dominated and dispossessed by this society. It is not the activity of people striving to reappropriate their own lives and seeking the tools necessary for doing so. Rather it is a program formulated in the minds of leftist leaders or in organizational meetings that exists above and before people’s individual struggles and to which these latter are to subordinate themselves.

c4ss: … (PDF) What then is nihilism? Nihilism was a youth...

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 01:15:02 -0500

c4ss:

… (PDF) What then is nihilism? Nihilism was a youth movement, a philosophical tendency, and a revolutionary impulse. Nihilism was the valorization of the natural sciences. Nihilism was a specific fashion style. Nihilism was a new approach to aesthetics, criticism and ethics. Nihilism was the contradiction between a studied materialism and the desire to annihilate the social order. Nihilism was also a particularly Russian response to the conditions of Tsarist reform and repression. Nihilism has become much more than it originally would have been capable of because of the viral nature of its value-system, practice, and conclusions. Nihilism’s effect is traceable through the history of Anarchism, through the formation and modern practice of terrorism, and through philosophical trends from deconstruction to existentialism. …