Technocracy
or
Industrial Unionism
The
spread of the term “Technocracy” throughout the country has even
surpassed its success in America. It has perpetually dominated the
headlines of the bourgeois press, which treats it like a puzzle to be
solved when presenting it to its readers.
Those who stand to lose from it quickly saw that this
theory does not strengthen the framework of the current social
system—quite the opposite. With its long numerical figures, it proves
that social changes must come, so that those millions who have been
made unnecessary through production can have access to work again.
The workers, who for the fourth year walk the pavement
from factory gate to factory gate, look for ... (From: Marxists.org.)
This article is inspired by the Geek Mafia series, thanks for giving us hope. It is dedicated to the anarchist hackers who have faced or will face the cold steel bars.
A few years ago a simple book came out by the name of “Recipes for Disaster” came out. It had everything in it from how to paint billboards to sexual consent and more. By the end you felt you had a new tool belt to combat the forces of capitalism and the state.
But not once in the hundreds of pages did it seriously consider technology and its impacts on the anarchist movement. And how could they? No good anarchist tactics text has. It seems that anarchists as a whole have a great grasp of how to riot but when it comes to technology and electronics we... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The developments in technology over the past sixty years—the nuclear industry, cybernetics and related information techniques, biotechnology and genetic engineering—have produced fundamental changes in the social terrain. The methods of exploitation and domination have changed, and for this reason old ideas about the nature of class and class struggle are not adequate for understanding the present situation. The workerism of the marxists and syndicalists can no longer even be imagined to offer anything useful in developing a revolutionary practice. But simply rejecting the concept of class is not a useful response to this situation either, because in so doing one loses an essential tool for understanding the present reality and ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Technology has an obvious effect on individual freedom, in some ways increasing it, in others restricting it. However, since capitalism is a social system based on inequalities of power, it is a truism that technology will reflect those inequalities, as it does not develop in a social vacuum.
No technology evolves and spreads unless there are people who benefit from it and have sufficient means to disseminate it. In a capitalist society, technologies useful to the rich and powerful are generally the ones that spread. This can be seen from capitalist industry, where technology has been implemented specifically to deskill the worker, so replacing the skilled, valued craftperson with the easily trained (and eliminated!) “mass work... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
When reading the following pages it would be well to put everything that we already know about technology aside. Indeed, what knowledge or hypothesis passed off as certainty makes up the scientific aspect of technology? Not much.
If we take a look inside the drawer of established scientific research from which something concrete did emerge, we see a series of utilities. That is, things done for a purpose, even negative, as in the case of military techniques. This purpose is nearly always twofold: to replace something preexistent, thus achieving a surplus of use and returns, and to open up new horizons of usability. Specialized workers euphemistically referred to as scientists, usually nitwitted and in the payroll of various patrons, ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
If patriotism is, as Samuel Johnson said, the last refuge of a scoundrel, scientism is by now the first. It’s the only ideology which, restated in cyberbabble, projects the look-and-feel of futurity even as it conserves attitudes and values essential to keeping things just as they are. Keep on zapping!
The abstract affirmation of “change” is conservative, not progressive. It privileges all change, apparent or real, stylistic or substantive, reactionary or revolutionary. The more things change — the more things that change — the more they stay the same. Faster, faster, Speed Racer! — (but keep going in circles).
For much the same reason the privileging of progress is also conservative. Progre... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
“Our lives are at stake and we will not renounce any weapon that we can use as our own.” — Anonymous
In regards to the brief history of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), an organization which has brought much inspiration to the North American context and drawn significant media attention, I would like to present a few points in order to critique, clarify and highlight the ways the ELF can be understood as a methodology instead of as an ideology. At the end of this piece, a proposal is drawn out for anarchists to develop their own actions separately in cells, groups or any informal structure they see fit whether or not these are aligned with the “ELF guidelines”.
Obviously this is something th... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
I’ve a big agenda of books I would like to read or write and for ordinary reasons, like a low income, I stay at home but get lured abroad when somebody else pays the fares. This explains why anarchists from several countries, like France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy, have asked me for my opinion on the views of Hakim Bey. [1]
It is always an embarrassment since for a long time I had no idea about who this person and his opinions were or are. Plenty of us, including myself, are hesitant about revealing the vast scope of our own ignorance. Two sources have explained to me what these questioners were talking about. One, of course, is Freedom’s invaluable feature ‘Food for Thought ... and Action!’ and the o... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Source: “The Ten Commandments” Commonweal, Vol 2, No. 46, 27 November 1886, p.276; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. Among the articles in the ‘Mall Pall Gazette’ occur some that express sad trouble about the ten commandments. These are always of a peculiar character, so that it is safe to assume that they are written by one person; and that person’s function seems to be to repress the excesses of those contributors to the journal who are Socialistic in tendency. It is not the business of the Commonweal to criticize literature, so we may leave the style of the above-said contributor alone; but his anxiety as to the fate of the ten commandments in a future state of society, which is shared, doubtless, by many well-t... (From: Marxists.org.)
Antonio Téllez Solà
Born January 18 1921 — Tarragona, Spain, died March 27 2005 — Perpignan, France.
The Herodotus of the anti-Franco maquis
Antonio Téllez Solà, who has died at his home in Perpignan aged 84, was one of the last survivors of the anarchist resistance which fought to overthrow the Franco dictatorship. He was also one of the first historians of the post civil war urban and rural guerrilla resistance to the fascist regime. In his actions and his writings, Tellez personified refusal to surrender to tyranny.
The son of a railway worker, he was born in Tarragona and was radicalized by the October 1934 insurrection in Asturias, which failed when the unions outside the min... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
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