Research

Quotes come from this article:

A cursory reading of the literature on social movements and organizations in the 1960s and 1970s reveals this fact. The leadership of the American Indian Movement was rife with informants; it is suspected that informants were also largely responsible for the downfall of the Black Panther Party, and the same can be surmised about the antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Not surprisingly, these movements that were toppled by informants and provocateurs were also sites where women and queer activists often experienced intense gender violence, as the autobiographies of activists such as Assata Shakur, Elaine Brown, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz demonstrate.

Perhaps it's for this reason that so many of the people who continually topple our movements enable gendered violence, and we continue to ignore them to our detriment.

Maybe it isn’t that informants are difficult to spot but rather that we have collectively ignored the signs that give them away.

Twelve years later, and I feel like 'maybe' isn't strong enough. Definitely. We can spot the informants, or even people we perceive may become informants, because of what they do. Look at some of the folks on BreadTube, like Beau. He was convicted of alien smuggling, which involved a bunch of young women from Eastern Europe. For his own benefit, he knowingly exploited vulnerable women. Never once has he made amends (if that's even possible), never once has he even admitted it without couching it in leftist language and trying to get people to feel sorry for him.

We know what these people look like, and we keep giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Time and again heterosexual men in radical movements have been allowed to assert their privilege and subordinate others. Despite all that we say to the contrary, the fact is that radical social movements and organizations in the United States have refused to seriously address gender violence as a threat to the survival of our struggles.

Europe also refuses to acknowledge gendered violence, and our orgs are rife with abusers who have never been made to be accountable. In fact, this is why I am deeply suspicious of "accountability processes." They always seem to re-traumatise the victims and enable the abusers.

We’ve treated misogyny, homophobia, and heterosexism as lesser evils—secondary issues—that will eventually take care of themselves or fade into the background once the “real” issues—racism, the police, class inequality, U.S. wars of aggression—are resolved. There are serious consequences for choosing ignorance. Misogyny and homophobia are central to the reproduction of violence in radical activist communities. Scratch a misogynist and you’ll find a homophobe. Scratch a little deeper and you might find the makings of a future informant (or someone who just destabilizes movements like informants do).

Yep, though I feel like racism fits both things viewed as 'secondary' and as a 'real' issue, depending on the group you're in and the context of the discussion.

Several times he stated that his heart had been broken. He especially lamented all of the “young ladies” who left Common Ground as a result of Darby’s domineering, aggressive style of organizing. And when those “young ladies” complained? Well, their concerns likely fell on sympathetic but ultimately unresponsive ears—everything may have been true, and after the fact everyone admits how disruptive Darby was, quick to suggest violent, ill-conceived direct-action schemes that endangered everyone he worked with. There were even claims of Darby sexually assaulting female organizers at Common Ground and in general being dismissive of women working in the organization. Darby created conflict in all of the organizations he worked with, yet people were hesitant to hold him accountable because of his history and reputation as an organizer and his “dedication” to “the work.” People continued to defend him until he outed himself as an FBI informant. Even Rahim, for all of his guilt and angst, chose to leave Darby in charge of Common Ground although every time there was conflict in the organization it seemed to involve Darby.

Wow, it's like this shit is on repeat all the fucking time. Even without people being FBI informants, we still continually see orgs enabling people who act this way. So fucking tired.

Maybe if organizers made collective accountability around gender violence a central part of our practices we could neutralize people who are working on behalf of the state to undermine our struggles.

Maybe, but we also need to know that accountability and victims' needs have to work together. An accountability process, as so often happens, that involves anything that directly hurts a victim is less than worthless.

Informants are hard to spot, but my guess is that where there is smoke there is fire, and someone who creates chaos wherever he goes is either an informant or an irresponsible, unaccountable time bomb who can be unintentionally as effective at undermining social-justice organizing as an informant. Ultimately they both do the work of the state and need to be held accountable.

YEP. This can also be extended to incorporate a lot more people who continually sew discord, especially those who try to take over groups amidst the chaos.

Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and Elaine Brown, each at different points in their experiences organizing with the Black Panther Party (BPP), cited sexism and the exploitation of women (and their organizing labor) in the BPP as one of their primary reasons for either leaving the group (in the cases of Brown and Shakur) or refusing to ever formally join (in Davis’s case). Although women were often expected to make significant personal sacrifices to support the movement, when women found themselves victimized by male comrades there was no support for them or channels to seek redress. Whether it was BPP organizers ignoring the fact that Eldridge Cleaver beat his wife, noted activist Kathleen Cleaver, men coercing women into sex, or just men treating women organizers as subordinated sexual playthings, the BPP and similar organizations tended not to take seriously the corrosive effects of gender violence on liberation struggle.

Examples of gendered violence in the BPP.

Her experience as the only woman to ever lead the BPP did not exempt her from the brutal misogyny of the organization. She recounts being assaulted by various male comrades (including Huey Newton) as well as being beaten and terrorized by Eldridge Cleaver, who threatened to “bury her in Algeria” during a delegation to China.

Refers to Elaine Brown's experiences.

These narratives demystify the legacy of gender violence of the very organizations that many of us look up to. They demonstrate how misogyny was normalized in these spaces, dismissed as “personal” or not as important as the more serious struggles against racism or class inequality. Gender violence has historically been deeply entrenched in the political practices of the Left and constituted one of the greatest (if largely unacknowledged) threats to the survival of these organizations.

It is 2022, and this is still true.

Race further complicates the ways in which gender violence unfolds in our communities... She points out how Common Ground failed to address white men’s assaults on their co-organizers and instead shifted the blame to the surrounding Black community, warning white women activists that they needed to be careful because New Orleans was a dangerous place. Ultimately it proved easier to criminalize Black men from the neighborhood than to acknowledge that white women and transgender organizers were most likely to be assaulted by white men they worked with. In one case, a white male volunteer was turned over to the police only after he sexually assaulted at least three women in one week. The privilege that white men enjoyed in Common Ground, an organization ostensibly committed to racial justice, meant that they could be violent toward women and queer activists, enact destructive behaviors that undermined the organization’s work, and know that the movement would not hold them accountable in the same way that it did Black men in the community where they worked.

And still, these tactics are also at play.

The women he dated were amazing, beautiful, kick-ass, radical women that he used as shields to get himself into places he knew would never be open to such a misogynist. I mean, if that cool woman who worked in Chiapas, spoke Spanish, and worked with undocumented immigrants was dating him, he must be down, right? Wrong.

It's amazing how often a lot of men (particularly cis men) use their partners to traverse the world, throwing us away when no longer useful. And sewing discord between us all.

But his misogyny didn’t end there; it was also reflected in his style of organizing. In meetings he always spoke the loudest and longest, using academic jargon that made any discussion excruciatingly more complex than necessary. The academic-speak intimidated people less educated than him because he seemed to know more about radical politics than anyone else. He would talk down to other men in the group, especially those he perceived to be less intelligent than him, which was basically everybody. Then he’d switch gears, apologize for dominating the space, and acknowledge his need to check his male privilege. Ironically, when people did attempt to call him out on his shit, he would feign ignorance—what could they mean, saying that his behavior was masculinist and sexist?

Why is this shit still happening?!

Reviewing old e-mails, I am shocked at the number of e-mails from men I organized with that were abusive in tone and content, how easily they would talk down to others for minor mistakes. I am more surprised at my meek, diplomatic responses—like an abuse survivor—as I attempted to placate compañeros who saw nothing wrong with yelling at their partners, friends, and other organizers.

So many examples follow from here, but all these things. Still happening, keep happening, keep getting enabled. No wonder we're all so fucking tired.

Most of those guys probably weren’t informants. Which is a pity because it means they are not getting paid a dime for all the destructive work they do.

Lmao, but true.

What’s more paralyzing to our work than when women and/or queer folks leave our movements because they have been repeatedly lied to, humiliated, physically/verbally/emotionally/sexually abused? Or when you have to postpone conversations about the work so that you can devote group meetings to addressing an individual member’s most recent offense? Or when that person spreads misinformation, creating confusion and friction among radical groups? Nothing slows down movement building like a misogynist.

Everyone I know, including myself, has left groups due to their enabling abuse, due to them putting forth more support for rapists and abusers than they do their victims... I've left the IWW for this shit multiple times, I've refused to participate in other similar labour orgs because they immediately started dumping work on me and leaving my needs unmet. And I've talked to dozens of women and queer folk who've felt the same.

They've also supported serial harassers, abusers, and rapists far more than they ever did us. And a lot of these misogynists are also anti-migrant, choosing to fuck us up for simply being from somewhere else.

What the FBI gets is that when there are people in activist spaces who are committed to taking power and who understand power as domination, our movements will never realize their potential to remake this world. If our energies are absorbed recuperating from the messes that informants (and people who just act like them) create, we will never be able to focus on the real work of getting free and building the kinds of life-affirming, people-centered communities that we want to live in. To paraphrase bell hooks, where there is a will to dominate there can be no justice, because we will inevitably continue reproducing the same kinds of injustice we claim to be struggling against. It is time for our movements to undergo a radical change from the inside out.

YEP. And have we learned this? Not yet.

We don’t have to start witch hunts to reveal misogynists and informants. They out themselves every time they refuse to apologize, take ownership of their actions, start conflicts and refuse to work them out through consensus, mistreat their compañer@s... Our strategies don’t have to be punitive; people are entitled to their mistakes. But we should expect that people will own those actions and not allow them to become a pattern.

Things I wish people would recognise.

Quotes from this post:

tl;dr: Prioritize long-term impact on the community’s safety over Twitter engagement

Pretty sure this'll get covered, but this is so much broader than just Twitter engagement. It's this desire to build celebrity around work that should just get done. The push for always needing credit and putting yourself in the way rather than just doing the work.

Make sure all information you publish is 100% verified.

Apply this across the board.

Work with Local Anti-Fascists

This is something that can be easily applied across a range of work. We need to be building more connections between local spaces, making it harder to disrupt everything we do. Our local spaces should be hubs that have multiple branches (internally and externally).

They are working with other community groups to ensure that the exposé does not cause collateral damage.

This is with regard to waiting on publishing something (especially because you're not in the local area), but it's something that should apply to abuse victims. Let them come forward when they need or want to.

There is a distinct lack of care in a lot of spaces, and that needs to be front and center always.

Publish Anonymously

I think this is true of other areas, but for a range of reasons beyond just safety.

Don’t Chase Clout or Career

Apply this across a board, too. We may live in a capitalist hellscape that requires we have cash, but don't do your work into careerist or clout-chasing trash.

Consider The Implications of Your Language & Actions

Glad to see this explicitly listed because far too many people lean on other hierarchies to dunk on folks. It's fucking oboxious.

Quotes come from this excerpt of a book:

Thinking back to all of the writers who started publishing around the same time as I did, there are so many whose voices I had thought would be the dominant ones for decades to come—yet they fell silent or, if not silent, never matched or in any way came close to the achievement for which they were earlier acclaimed. There are just as many others whose voices seemed negligible to me, whose work I’d still call unsurprising, yet it continues, like the writers themselves, to thrive and be published widely. And there is a third group, of modest accomplishment at the start, who have managed to differently surprise me by becoming better. I now see how much more powerful stamina can be than talent; or to say it another way, how powerless talent is, on its own, without stamina—rather like what is said about the body once the soul has left it, though I don’t believe in the soul. I do believe in stamina.

First, I wonder how many of those people who he thought were going to be big voices were people who had no support or the structures silenced them. How often do people fall silent because they have nowhere to go, no one to work with, and no safety net? It's more common than people would like to believe.

The same applies to the second and third group. How many of them were people who either had access (e.g., via nepotism) and didn't have to worry about anything? Who had extra support? How many of them had stable lives with few worries?

Having stamina is one thing, but talking about what allows us to have it is an entire other.

Take praise when and if you can get it, but don’t forget that it was never the point—or, if it was, then you’ve confused devotion with celebrity, which is a sometime by-product of the devotion that the committed making of art equals, but celebrity has nothing to do, in the end, with the making of art, let alone its value.

Something I wish more people would recognise. Trying to pull this status is a problem. We all have things to share, knowledge to spread, stories to tell. Why do so many focus on clout? On celebrity status? It's unnecessary.

There’s also a kind of stamina that doesn’t, initially, involve perspective at all, a stamina fueled by urgency, which is to stamina as adrenaline is to the body, enabling us, for a moment, to perform at levels we didn’t know we were capable of, or that we take at the time for granted.

True. There are a lot of times where I need to write, even if I don't end up publishing it.

Meanwhile, youth fades, as do the energies that came with it. So the challenge is how to maintain stamina, past youth, and without having to be routinely visited by crisis.

What about those of us who struggled through youth without the supports that others had? Some of us have and maintain the 'stamina' or 'energy', but we have no time. We have no focus because we're forced to put it elsewhere.

And why do we continue this thing of looking fondly back at youth? As if we have nothing to look forward to?

How to avoid repeating ourselves, how to keep seeing things anew, how to separate habit from habit’s predictability—and how to find the stamina to do so?

Why do we have to see everything anew? This presumes a requirement to be unique and different and... do something else. Sometimes it's okay to do the same thing twice. Or thrice. Maybe it'll be, as time goes on, inherently different.

Some of us have stories that we've been repeating forever simply because people won't listen.

Quotes from this book:

Prologue

Juan Vilar—perhaps the most prominent and one of the internationally best-known anarchists in Puerto Rico—also faced numerous trials and retrials during this year. Yet, rather than try him for being an anarchist involved in the murders, Puerto Rican and U.S. authorities charged him with violating public morality. If these authorities could not jail him as an anarchist linked to the March violence, they would do so for publishing what they considered pornography—a story about a priest raping a child.

Seems a common thing that authorities will do.

Introduction

In Puerto Rico, anarchists expressed their concerns and visions through their own brand of cultural politics. Some anarchists published collections of their poetry, complete with calls for revolutionary uprisings. Others published plays and short stories that highlighted class antagonisms, promoted worker revolts, and celebrated revolutionary violence to destroy the last vestiges of bourgeois society while planting the seeds for a new egalitarian future. Women—especially teenage girls—figured prominently in anarchist and leftist culture. Anarchist cultural politics included more than fiction. Anarchists also worked in educational realms to create schools and learning opportunities for both adults and children. Related to this was their consistent anticlericalism against one of the perceived central pillars of cultural authoritarianism in Puerto Rico dating to the days of Spanish rule: the Roman Catholic Church. Anarchists in Puerto Rico joined these educational experiments, anticlericalism, and literary works with critiques of the island’s political economy that was increasingly subservient to U.S. interests. As a result, anarchists forged a cultural politics directed against Puerto Rican and U.S. colonial rulers to promote an antiauthoritarian spirit and countercultural struggle over how the island was being run and the future directions that it should pursue.

While cultural politics reflected one way that anarchists engaged in debates over Puerto Rico–specific issues, many of these cultural debates were actually linked transnationally. For instance, when leftists in Puerto Rico staged plays, they were mostly written by leftists in Cuba, Spain, and the United States. When they engaged in anticlerical actions, they did so as part of a broader international movement of freethinkers that included globally famous activists such as the Spanish-born, Puerto Rican–raised Belén de Sárraga—a freethinking radical who spoke throughout the island in 1912. Thus, this book explores how cultural politics both reflected the island-specific reality that anarchists encountered, as well as the role that cultural politics played in larger transnational radical movements.

Coming back to this.

Just as migrant anarchists from the island helped to internationalize the movement wherever they went and to discuss interna- tional topics upon return to Puerto Rico, the international press functioned the same way. Puerto Rican columns helped readers in New York and Cuba understand their situations in larger transnational dimensions. At the same time, readers of these newspapers in Puerto Rico read critiques of their own situation while coming to understand that they faced cultural, economic, and political struggles similar to those of their comrades abroad. As a result, for much of the early twentieth century, the Cuban and the New York anarchist press functioned as the Puerto Rican anarchist press. Thus, we cannot un- derstand “Puerto Rican” anarchism by focusing only on the island. Rather, anarchists across the Caribbean and along the East Coast of the United States functioned in overlapping networks. As a result, anarchists in Puerto Rico did not operate in global isolation.

Coming back to this, too.

Throughout Latin America, anarchists emerged in countries that had been politically independent since the 1810s and 1820s. By 1898, Cuba and Puerto Rico were the only Spanish colonies left in the hemisphere. Cuba would become independent in 1902 but still suffer under various aspects of U.S. rule and coercion. In 1903, Panama became the newest independent country after seceding from Colombia, but the ten-mile-wide swath cut through the middle of the country for construction of the Panama Canal would be controlled by the United States, and the Republic of Panama became essentially a U.S. protectorate.

Interesting discussion on how anarchism spread through US colonies.

Rather, Boricua anarchists, unlike anarchists anywhere else in Latin America (with the exception of the Canal Zone), operated in a colonial setting where legal, political, and educational systems were run or overseen by the U.S. government. Meanwhile, the island was increasingly taken over by U.S.-based big business, while the island’s labor movement became a colonial offshoot of the U.S.-based AFL.

More discussion.

Second, throughout the hemisphere, anarchists constantly adopted global anarchist ideas and adapted them to fit national and subnational realities. For instance, anarchists in Cuba adapted anarchism to fit the reality of a large Afro-Cuban population. Peruvian anarchists did the same to fit the subnational reality of that country’s large indigenous population, while anarchists in Brazil were challenged to adapt ideals to fit Afro-Brazilian populations as well as migrant workers from throughout Europe. One finds no such adaptation to fit ethnic diversity in Puerto Rico. Rather, the island’s anarchists were mostly homegrown and from a wide racial representation. Until 1898, anarchist influences arrived in Puerto Rico with Spanish migrant workers. However, large, consistent Spanish migration to the island ended with the war. In fact, the 1910 U.S. Census found that out of a total population of over 1.1 million people on the island, there were only 11,766 residents who were foreign born. While 56.3 percent of these were born in Spain, over 7,400 of the total foreign born arrived before 1901. While Spanish laborers and anarchist activists continued to migrate in the early 1900s to anarchist outposts throughout the Caribbean, such as the Panama Canal Zone, Cuba, and southern Florida, they did not migrate to Puerto Rico. And, unlike the fresh waves of Spanish and Italian anarchists who reinforced the ranks of anarchists in Cuba, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and the United States, no such international reinforcement occurred in Puerto Rico.

Worth looking into further.

Thus, anarchists never jumped on the nationalist, Puerto Rican independence movement bandwagon. To do so would have been to fall into the “servitude” about which Bakunin warned. After all, anarchists had been burned before on this issue. In neighboring Cuba, anarchists supported the war for independence against Spain from 1895 to 1898, seeing it not as a nationalist war but an anticolonial war. Throwing off colonial shackles seemed like a legitimate anarchist endeavor to achieve collective freedom. Yet after 1898, Caribbean anarchists saw how Cuban independence had been hijacked by political and economic leaders in Cuba, the symbols of the war for independence had been co-opted by the state, and Cuban leaders had colluded with their U.S. allies. As a result, most anarchists in Puerto Rico wanted nothing to do with those pushing for independence from the United States. This was the danger of a Boricua concept rooted in patriotism and nationalism: one elite-run state replacing another that lacked any regard for the interests of the popular and laboring classes; all it could offer were hollow symbols and empty words that would mask a new kind of authoritarianism.

Other aspects of that discussion to have.

Chapter 2: Radicals and Reformers

For anarchists in Puerto Rico, the messages were clear. They tried to tell their fellow workers that being involved in elections was a bad idea, that politics was nothing but a shell game. Politicians offered promises to get votes, only to renege on them once elected. And working-class politicians? What did voters really think one or two prolabor politicians could accomplish in a political system designed to benefit capitalists? And, just what did workers really think could be accomplished if somehow working-class candidates did take over the towns and the legislature? Did they really think that the United States would stand by and allow legislation to be passed that would harm the capitalists’ bottom line? Thus, as did their brethren around the world, anarchists in Puerto Rico waged a war against electoral politics. But in this new colonial era, antipolitics agendas had larger anti-imperialist implications by rejecting not only elections but the relationship between the island’s elected representatives, the U.S. government, and an entire electoral system founded on the U.S. model.

Useful for conversations around electoral politics.

He came to believe that Puerto Rican workers should no longer affiliate with the SLP and began to consider aligning with the AFL. The AFL pursued “pure unionism,” seeking immediate economic gains for workers through peaceful negotiations with employers whenever possible. The AFL also rejected worker-based political parties and engaging in electoral politics.

The AFL didn't engage in electoral politics? That's an interesting assumption. I wonder how they got there.

In an open forum to the pueblo productor (producing class), Saturnino Dones asked workers if they knew it was the capitalists, politicians, and religious figures who organized the festivities—and thus grew wealthy from worker expenditures. “These are the working people’s enemies!” In both Cuba and Puerto Rico, anarchists viewed carnival as a capitalist spectacle that garnered profits for businessmen while offering a safety valve for pent-up mass frustration. The appraisal pointed to another issue that anarchists in post-Spanish Cuba and Puerto Rico were encountering: how to gain not only political separation from Spain but also cultural and religious separation from the legacies of Spanish colonialism if the working masses were ever going to create new, truly liberated societies.

Not directly comparable, but pride parades today.

From 1900 to 1904, armed groups from the Republican and Federal parties took turns physically attacking one another and any other political force with whom they disagreed. In San Juan in 1902, for instance, armed mobs led by the Republican José Mauleón attacked Federal supporters. The FLT accused Mauleón of violently assaulting union members too. They appealed to the governor, but to no avail, prompting the union to reject the governor’s claim that there was nothing he could do. Actually, the police did step in, but to arrest FLT leaders, among them Romero Rosa and Cirino. Romero Rosa seems to have been a particularly attractive target of the mob violence. Roving bands not only bruised him but also abused his daughters. During another FLT event, Gómez Acosta—a founder of Ensayo Obrero and El Porvenir Social as well as a labor leader and friend of Cruz, who wrote the prologue to Cruz’s anarchist poetry collection Fragmentos—was shot at by vigilantes, miraculously escaping the eight shots fired at him. Throughout May, the anti-FLT violence reached such proportions that one contemporary charged that the assaults were “converting the city of San Juan into a frightful state of anarchy.” Apparently, though, some anarchists were willing to resort to violence themselves. In 1902 in the midst of the political violence rocking the island, anarchists were accused of planting a pipe bomb that exploded in the southeastern city of Humacao, killing a servant who was taking a break.

Anti-union violence of old.

In addition, the AFL rejected involvement in politics and forming of working-class political parties—an antipolitics stance preached by anarchists.

This keeps getting said, but many members of AFL moved into political parties quite effectively. So how true was it?

While the AFL had no problem with democratic politics and elections, they didn’t want the union effort to be diverted toward political campaigning for working-class parties.

Ah, here it is. Because they had no problem with bourgeois political parties.

Meanwhile, as the FLT leadership praised U.S.-style democracy, anarchists were less sure of that democracy, fearing that U.S. ideals of equality and liberty (ideals shared by both anarchists and the American creed) were merely a veneer hiding a government that worked in tandem with its capitalist class. Along these lines, anarchists distrusted all electoral politics, not just workers partaking in them.

Which the AFL explicitly didn't.

In this Puerto Rico–specific colonial context, when anarchists rejected democratic politics they were also showing skepticism about the larger U.S. project of “Americanizing” the island. Within this skeptical view, anarchists were suspicious of the role that the AFL was playing in the Americanization of the Puerto Rican workforce. Anarchists questioned whether the AFL had the island’s workers and future in its best interests.

And this makes sense. If the AFL is joining, then it's also part of the Americanisation of the island.

While anarchists fretted about U.S. political initiatives and their impacts in Puerto Rico, they also began to question the impact of the AFL, its leader Samuel Gompers, Santiago Iglesias (Gompers’s key representative in Puerto Rico), and other issues related to the impact of the U.S.-based workers movement on the island. Wherever the AFL emerged, it generally encountered anarchist opposition because of the AFL’s willingness to work with employers for wage improvements and the union’s perceived close links to the U.S. government. In anarchist eyes, such collaboration undermined the drive for social revolution. After all, how many labor leaders could be said to have dinner in the White House, as Gompers and Iglesias had done? On the U.S. mainland, the AFL also engaged in “nativist” labor organizing by seeking to restrict membership to U.S. citizens and attacking foreign workers. That nativist versus internationalist vision of the labor movement often brought the AFL and anarchist groups to verbal blows. Puerto Rico, though, was an odd case. Neither citizens nor foreigners, Puerto Rican workers occupied a unique position for both the AFL and the anarchists.

And here it is!

The state had a different view. In his 1903 annual report on conditions in Puerto Rico, Governor Hunt concluded “[t]he fact remains, however, that there has been in the past four years a slow but steady increase in the wages of the ordinary laborer which, with improved sanitary conditions and greater personal liberty of action, have greatly improved his condition. The cost of living has increased to some extent, perhaps, there being complaints of this fact, but, on the other hand, the peon lives better than formerly and has developed a greater earning capacity.” Anarchists must have found this amusing, especially considering the reality they faced. If conditions were so much better, then why did so many islanders flee Puerto Rico to find jobs in Hawai’i, Ecuador, Mexico, or the United States? Ultimately, they believed that Iglesias’s ineffective lobbying efforts undermined the workers cause. In fact, it is not difficult to imagine how watching the AFL-FLT begging for governmental help and protection must have weakened the image of the union in certain workers’ eyes, especially when actual conditions on the ground did not appear to improve following such groveling.

Again, the absolute absurdity that is AFL.

Besides seeing the FLT leadership as an ineffectual lackey of U.S. administrators, anarchists also believed that the AFL as a whole had a bias against Puerto Rican workers, despite the cozy relationship between Iglesias and Gompers. For instance, in 1906 and 1907, anarchists challenged the AFL-linked Cigar Makers International Union (CMIU, or the International). The CMIU was a highly structured union with an abundance of rules coupled with a high initiation fee of three dollars and weekly dues of thirty cents. High fees were leveraged by negotiators who achieved good pay and conditions for members, strike funds, and travel loans, as well as sickness, unemployment, and death benefits. The CMIU was attempting to expand it organizational reach throughout the cigar industry in South Florida and Puerto Rico. In 1908, the union slashed fees to try to attract Tampa workers. For years, the International had campaigned for recognition in Puerto Rico. However, operators feared the combined impact of the CMIU, the FLT, anarchists, and the tradition of parejería. In January 1907, the island’s tobacco workers voted to align themselves with the CMIU. Yet, anarchists were not pleased with this development and had worked to prevent the CMIU’s arrival. Anarchist opposition rested in part on issues of autonomy. They saw CMIU encroachment as a battle to determine who would control labor agitation in general and strikes in particular. Always suspicious of centralization, anarchists feared that local initiatives would fall prey to dictates from a central CMIU union hall that answered to AFL headquarters in the United States.

This distrust of a distant CMIU-AFL monopoly and control worried anarchists on another front. Anarchists criticized how the International charged equivalent dues regardless of a worker’s location. Thus, worse-paid workers on the island paid the same fees and followed the same by-laws as better-paid workers in Tampa, New York, and New Orleans. In essence, Puerto Ricans paid a higher proportion of their wages to the union than their compatriots on the mainland. As one writer noted, the so-called “international” union seemed more interested in mainland-based workers, and should really be referred to as the Unión Internal, not Internacional. Likewise, writing to Havana from Arecibo, Venancio Cruz charged that such practices undermined labor organization on the island, fostering worker apathy. In short, were such unions truly internationalist in scope or were they merely manipulating “internationalist principles” in a larger labor movement power play against Puerto Rican workers? When Cruz published similar criticisms in the FLT’s Unión Obrera, the CMIU fought back, charging that such criticisms undermined all union efforts. In fact, the CMIU slandered Cruz, accusing him of being a secret agent of the factory operators whose words were designed to divide the tobacco workers. Anarchist conspiracy theories were being realized: any anarchist who criticized the CMIU or the AFL ran the risk of being labeled an agent provocateur or a scab.

See: Why we should be cautious of things like the AFL-CIO even today!

A clear snapshot of the love-hate relationship between AFL-linked organizations and Puerto Rico’s anarchists can be seen in a three-month span in mid-1909. In April, a columnist took to the pages of ¡Tierra! to attack Iglesias and earlier harsh words that Iglesias had uttered against Caribbean anarchists. Iglesias had called anarchists pícaros (rogues). In response, this writer called Iglesias a sell-out and a hypocrite: “you were one of them [an anarchist], with the difference that you lost your old work shoes while we, with dignity, kept ours.” The charge of Iglesias having sold out and become part of the labor aristocracy was reinforced in the same column when the writer, building on Iglesias’s history of meetings with Washington politicians, accused Iglesias of “aspiring to suck the Washington dairy from [President] Taft’s teat.”

Lmao. It's hard not to be amused by intracommunity disagreements.

From the anarchist point of view, workers seemed reluctant to join the labor movement in any meaningful way, and then only if joining would garner them a few cents increase in wages. In 1905 in the midst of strike activities in Caguas, Río Grande, Carolina, and Arecibo, Pablo Vega Santos wrote to his comrades in Havana, lamenting what he saw around him. He criticized other workers for so willingly joining carnival celebrations, wasting their time, money, and efforts for a bourgeois celebration. Such festivities, he asserted, illustrated workers’ indifference to the need for a larger social revolution. Here they were, their fellow workers in need of their support and solidarity, but instead they chose to partake in carnival parades and drunken revelries that only benefited the elite.

Okay, but... Was there a consideration that perhaps people who worked their asses off wanted to have fun? I'm genuinely curious because it seems like a constant that people who act as activists think everything's serious.

And even when there are issues worth critiquing (e.g., a man participating in a parade smacking a child for throwing a confetti bomb into a coach), a desire to push for absolute seriousness is infuriating to me. There are criticisms about excessive drinking to be made and how that often plays a part in the abuse of others (generally children, women, and queer folks), but it's also worth recognising that not all drinking is equal (a glass of beer on occasion? isn't the same as excessive consumption).

Osorio claimed that Puerto Rican workers were quick to complain about low wages that didn’t provide enough food for the family but once Saturday evening rolled around they chose to forget these problems by going to taverns to concentrate on the appropriate billiards posture or to carouse with loose women.

It's an interesting thing to see that this is how taverns and pubs were viewed, considering how important they were in organising elsewhere.

Almost to the detriment and exclusion of other people who don't feel comfortable in them for whatever reason (e.g., IWW meetings in pubs).

Chapter 3: Anarchist Alliances, Government Repression

By 1910, the state of public education in Puerto Rico was dismal, but not that different than Cuba, which had also been a recipient of U.S.-guided public-school reform for a decade. In Cuba, the United States created a new education system modeled after the School City experiment in New York, which provided basic instruction, including civics and trades. Such approaches were replicated in Puerto Rico, where U.S. officials viewed public education as a central tool to Americanize Puerto Ricans and make the island a bilingual, bicultural resource linking the United States and Latin America. Thus, not only were students to learn trades but also civics (e.g., saluting the U.S. flag each morning), industrial education, and especially English.

SIGH.

However, such efforts had limited success. A decade after liberation from Spanish rule, both islands had public-school attendance rates hovering around 31 percent. In 1910, over 404,000 Puerto Ricans between six and twenty years old lived on the island, but only 31.6 percent attended school: 35.1 percent of six- to nine-year-olds, 47 percent of ten to fourteen-year-olds, and 13.1 percent of fifteen- to twenty-year-olds. In the second decade of U.S. rule, school enrollments and attendance dropped significantly. While 207,010 students enrolled and 155,830 students actually attended in the 1913–14 school year, these figures fell to 155,657 and 116,779 for 1916 and 1917, respectively, even though the number of teachers and schools increased over the same period. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church and a variety of Protestant churches operating under the American Missionary Association ran schools across the island. The latter in particular were part of the U.S. Americanization project and targeted “training” in manual arts.

Screaming.

In Puerto Rico, this effort to found rationalist schools was left largely to the anarchists and some of their socialist allies. In Cuba from 1909 to 1912, Ferrer’s execution energized the anarchist community, which launched fund-raising drives to create rationalist schools and hire teachers to guide the children. The larger anarchist community around Havana, complete with its own press, was in a much stronger financial and political condition to start schools. The furor over Ferrer’s execution was no more timid in Puerto Rico, but lacking large numbers of activists as well as their own newspaper, anarchists struggled to cobble together whatever they could to create a rationalist educational program. While the freethinkers offered public support for these initiatives, they seem to have not put their money behind the efforts.

Wonder why it is that I say what I say about anarchist press today. Can't be things like this or anything.

The center was not much to speak of: a small library and parlor with the works of the leading radical writers from abroad, a large table to gather around, red flags hanging from the walls, and portraits of Kropotkin, Marx, Bakunin, Máximo Gorki, Anselmo Lorenzo, and other “honored men who figured prominently in the libertarian movement that convulsed throughout the European continent.”

Oh, gag.

For instance, on Labor Day 1910, the city’s activists performed the classic del Valle play Fin de fiesta in the Teatro Yagüez. But an event with a cloudy agenda like the one in Mayagüez could create confusion. The FLT in the city was responsible for the Labor Day festivities. While the day’s events culminated with del Valle’s play, the celebration also included a speech by Dr. Gutiérrez Igaravidez, Governor Colton’s representative to the meeting. Thus, the FLT in Mayagüez included broad representation on its bill; however, when representatives of the colonial government were featured speakers alongside the performance of anarchist plays, it was easy for an audience member to get mixed messages. The more anarchist-led stronghold of Caguas seems to have avoided this problem. During Labor Day celebrations there in September 1910, Vilar and others spoke to an estimated crowd of over a thousand. According to Pablo Vega Santos, it was the largest workers’ gathering in the city’s history—with no proworker message diluted by “official” speakers.

Wonder why it is that "left unity" and "working within the state apparatus" won't work. Hmmm~.

Economics undermined efforts in Caguas. By June 1910, the Caguas economy was on the ropes. The FLT newspaper reported that factories which usually employed 200 to 250 workers were only employing 30 to 40 workers due to a shortage of tobacco leaf. While one could say that workers and potential beneficiaries of a CES might have had more time to go to the center because they lacked employment, the equal reality was that few people had disposable income to spend at the CES for newspapers or even to support the CES’s operations. Despite this, the CES did its best to survive and even extend its reach. Anarchists were accustomed to having no money and making the most out of good intentions and a few dollars. In July, the CES set out to print its own newspaper, launching a fund-raising campaign, but to no avail. On another front, the Caguas CES started to offer day classes for working-class children. In addition, as the strongest CESs in the Americas showed, no CES was worth its name without a band. CES member Rafael Ceferino led the one in Caguas that had been launched during the workers congress earlier in the year. Just as a CES needed music, it also needed plays. One of CES member Enrique Plaza’s fondest memories of the Caguas group was the dramatic performances of plays, among them Gori’s anarchist Primero de mayo (May Day).

Also why I think crowdfunding is a problem.

Juan Vilar was the key to the Caguas CES; however, he could rub people the wrong way. Erudite and dedicated, he saw rationalist education as his true calling. But Vilar was sickly, too, and his health began steadily to deteriorate in 1910. In mid-1910, he became increasingly ill. Stomach pains led to high fevers and blurred vision. Eventually, he had to stop working in the Johnson cigar factory in Caguas. With no money coming in, his compañera went to work. But coworkers also took up a collection, raising enough money to buy some medicine. These initial acts of solidarity, though, were short-lived. Soon, his companion—a fellow teacher at the CES Juventud Estudiosa—also fell ill and was unable to work. Worse, upon hearing that Vilar was feeling better but not yet capable of returning to work, his former colleagues in the factory declined to raise more money to help him. As Vilar put it in a letter to Santiago Iglesias, “That was the last straw.”

Huh.

[Ángel] Acosta, [Foster] Brown, and [George] Colton remained convinced that [Ventura] Grillo was not just a random criminal but, in fact, a violent anarchist who was part of a larger dangerous anarchist element in the city. Governor Colton claimed in July that Grillo “was a member of an anarchist society in Caguas, named ‘Centro de Estudios Sociales,’ that had relations with other societies of like nature in Cuba, Spain and South America.” Colton believed that members of the CES were involved in a plot to kill the two victims based on the fact that [Grillo] was an anarchist member of the CES and no evidence had been unearthed that Grillo had any personal motives for the murders. For the governor, this was more than just a murder investigation: “Anarchy and anarchist societies have no room in this territory nor in any other under the American flag.” Colton sought to reassure Puerto Rican workers that he was on their side and that workers deserved justice, rights, and good earnings. However, “I assure you that I absolutely will not tolerate breaking the law or back-stabbing plots from anarchists or anyone else who considers themselves above the law.”

Wow, surprise.

The CES that Colton identified was obviously Juventud Estudiosa, and to any casual observer of the labor press on the island, it would have been obvious that no secret anarchist cell existed. Anarchists were quite open about who they were and what they believed. Unlike the nearly two dozen men detained by Acosta following the murders and then released for lack of evidence, Vilar (like Grillo) had remained a prisoner, jailed initially on suspicion of conspiracy and held in order to keep him from committing another crime. Then a trumped-up morality conviction kept Vilar in legal limbo. By summer, Vilar’s case remained in the media and courts. Fearing the ongoing strike, coupled with the Vilar case, tobacco companies in Caguas began to forbid the lector in their factories from reading political, independent, or workers newspapers—a move protested by organized labor but apparently to no avail.

It's like the state will do anything to, y'know, silence people!

More broadly, the treatment of anarchists, among them Vilar, began to have rippling effects among many leftists whose early faith in American progress and democratic rule continued to slip away. The example of Vilar’s lawyer, Rafael López Landrón is a case in point. An early supporter of Americanization like many progressives associated with the island’s labor movement, López Landrón supported the various strands of “socialism” found on the island in the early 1900s, including at times a belief in stateless socialism, that is, anarchism. Despite this, he used his talent in the U.S. judicial system on the island to defend people ranging from Vilar in 1911 to Santiago Iglesias and Luis Muñoz Rivera over a decade earlier. But after a decade of U.S. rule, López Landrón and many others began to question their early support of Americanization, and by the 1910s would be calling for Puerto Rican independence—another issue that would divide the Puerto Rican Left...

Understandably so.

Chapter 4: Anarchists, Freethinkers, and Spiritists

All quotes from the conclusion to this book:

Poverty in America is not invisible. We see it, and then we look away.

The same is true of everywhere. Poverty tends to go entirely ignored, even when we pretend we're doing something about it.

Our relationship to poverty in the United States has always been characterized by what sociologist Stanley Cohen calls “cultural denial.” Cultural denial is the process that allows us to know about cruelty, discrimination, and repression, but never openly acknowledge it. It is how we come to know what not to know. Cultural denial is not simply a personal or psychological attribute of individuals; it is a social process organized and supported by schooling, government, religion, media, and other institutions.

This relationship has most certainly been acquired from Europe, even as they claim to be "social" democracies. It's absolutely necessary to recognise these views as being tied to the values that the former colonisers brought with them, particularly those who brought the Puritanical bullshit with them.

It's more clear as we watch Europeans, who are going through austerity, pointing at the United States as being "worse than them" with regards to surveillance and bigotry. They hide behind their GDPR, and they pretend they're superior when they sweep their bigotries under the rug.

Denial is exhausting and expensive. It is uncomfortable for individuals who must endure the cognitive dissonance required to both see and not-see reality. It contorts our physical geography, as we build infrastructure—suburbs, highways, private schools, and prisons—that allow the professional middle class to actively avoid sharing the lives of poor and working-class people. It weakens our social bonds as a political community; people who cannot meet each others’ eyes will find it very difficult to collectively govern.

It's so easy to see how these denials continually ruin the world around us. It is exhausting.

For example, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 dramatized not just the suffering of the poor but also their immense political power. Poor and working people’s activism terrified elites and won significant accommodations: a return to a poor-relief system focused on distributing cash and goods and a move away from institutionalization. But almost immediately, scientific charity rose to take its place. The techniques changed—scientific casework focused on investigation and policing rather than containing the poor in quasi-prisons—but the results were the same. Tens of thousands of people were denied access to public resources, families were torn apart, and the lives of the poor were scrutinized, controlled, and imperiled.

So many people ask why things like third-places or other community-oriented centers have disappeared. This is why. If we all had ways to interact and create stronger connections, we'd be organising for better circumstances far more often.

When we talk about the technologies that mediate our interactions with public agencies today, we tend to focus on their innovative qualities, the ways they break with convention. Their biggest fans call them “disruptors,” arguing that they shake up old relations of power, producing government that is more transparent, responsive, efficient, even inherently more democratic.

This myopic focus on what’s new leads us to miss the important ways that digital tools are embedded in old systems of power and privilege. While the automated eligibility system in Indiana, the coordinated entry system in Los Angeles, and the predictive risk model in Allegheny County may be cutting-edge, they are also part of a deep-rooted and disturbing history. The poorhouse preceded the Constitution as an American institution by 125 years. It is mere fantasy to think that a statistical model or a ranking algorithm will magically upend culture, policies, and institutions built over centuries.

Like the brick-and-mortar poorhouse, the digital poorhouse diverts the poor from public resources. Like scientific charity, it investigates, classifies, and criminalizes. Like the tools birthed during the backlash against welfare rights, it uses integrated databases to target, track, and punish.

They are disruptors, but not in the ways that have been marketed to us.

No poverty regulation system in history has concentrated so much effort on trying to guess how its targets might behave. This is because we, collectively, care less about the actual suffering of those living in poverty and more about the potential threat they might pose to others.

I think this is... true and not at the same time? Now we have automated algorithms that enable this guesswork (on things you can't predict) to happen, but people still did it in their own assessments. Schools were notorious for this.

But it was still possible to prove people wrong, when you can't do that to a machine.

While they are close kin, the differences between the poorhouse of yesterday and the digital poorhouse today are significant. Containment in the physical institution of a county poorhouse had the unintentional result of creating class solidarity across race, gender, and national origin. When we sit at a common table, we might see similarities in our experiences, even if we are forced to eat gruel. Surveillance and digital social sorting drive us apart as smaller and smaller microgroups are targeted for different kinds of aggression and control. When we inhabit an invisible poorhouse, we become more and more isolated, cut off from those around us, even if they share our suffering.

And there it is. The digital poorhouse is part of developing a society of disconnected people, whereas accidentally allowing us to organise is bad.

The digital poorhouse is hard to understand. The software, algorithms, and models that power it are complex and often secret. Sometimes they are protected business processes, as in the case of the IBM and ACS software that denied needy Hoosiers access to cash benefits, food, and health care. Sometimes operational details of a high-tech tool are kept secret so its targets can’t game the algorithm. In Los Angeles, for example, a “Do's and Don’ts” document for workers in homeless services suggested: “Don’t give a client a copy of the VI-SPDAT. Don’t mention that people will receive a score. [W]e do not want to alert clients [and] render the tool useless.” Sometimes the results of a model are kept secret to protect its targets. Marc Cherna and Erin Dalton don’t want the AFST risk score to become a metric shared with judges or investigating caseworkers, subtly influencing their decision-making.

And too many of us are willing to follow rules that we know hurt people.

Similarly, once you break caseworkers’ duties into discrete and interchangeable tasks, install a ranking algorithm and a Homeless Management Information System, or integrate all your public service information in a data warehouse, it is nearly impossible to reverse course. New hires encourage new sets of skills, attitudes, and competencies. Multimillion-dollar contracts give corporations interests to protect. A score that promises to predict the abuse of children quickly becomes impossible to ignore. Now that the AFST is launched, fear of the consequences of not using it will cement its central and permanent place in the system.

And there it is. It's easier to reverse course with humans.

We all live in the digital poorhouse. We have all always lived in the world we built for the poor. We create a society that has no use for the disabled or the elderly, and then are cast aside when we are hurt or grow old. We measure human worth based only on the ability to earn a wage, and suffer in a world that undervalues care and community. We base our economy on exploiting the labor of racial and ethnic minorities, and watch lasting inequities snuff out human potential. We see the world as inevitably riven by bloody competition and are left unable to recognize the many ways we cooperate and lift each other up.

But only the poor lived in the common dorms of the county poorhouse. Only the poor were put under the diagnostic microscope of scientific charity. Today, we all live among the digital traps we have laid for the destitute.

If we cared more about the poor, we would actually be better at protecting everyone.

As my colleague, Mariella Saba of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, always reminds me: it’s vital to keep our eyes on the badge. But the culture of policing wears many uniforms.

And the state doesn’t require a cop to kill a person.

Never has.

If someone finds a freely available online copy of the book, please let me know.

Introduction

The fact that "feminism"—or rather "feminine humanism," of which feminism is merely the nineteenth century avatar—is thought today to be outmoded is a means of conjuring away the problems it posited, problems that are still very far from being solved. To confirm this one need only look at the composition of the committees that run political parties, ministerial councils, and meetings of the United Nations. Despite declarations concerning the political and social equality of men and women, this equality more often than not remains illusory. But that the principle has been accepted is already a considerable achievement; a century ago, it would have seemed foolish and outrageous.

This was written in the 1960s, and it could've been written yesterday. There are still far too many problems that arise out of patriarchy that have not been dealt with and are things that people refuse to deal with because they refuse to acknowledge that patriarchy continues and (to some extent) benefits them.

We don't even need to look at the illegitimate power that is the United Nations or any State government; we can look at the way our own organisations, groups, and collectives are structured and the way work gets done within them. How often are cis men granted a pass for their behaviours, giving them excuse after excuse? To do less than others, to receive more. I've seen this in disability groups where disabled women receive less care than similarly disabled men; one of my friends who worked in the sector recently told me that studies in Norway showed that, even in their "welfare state," disabled women received and average of 17 hours less of care than similarly disabled men. That is ludicrous.

These problems haven't been solved, and they most certainly won't be if we continue to look the other way.

The history of women, considered as a branch of social history, is generally held to be insignificant. For "serious" historians, it deserves to be taken no more seriously than any other "lady's work." An historian of the Commune has recently written: "There will inevitably be feminine demonstrations, and they will be enacted by the petty bourgeoisie. They may be the rowdiest of all, but the essential point does not lie in that; it lies in the fact that the working women of the Commune shattered the illusion according to which the emancipation of their sex was to occur as a side effect of the class struggle." Now this emancipation is by no means an illusion. The women who today have access to intellectual professions (university professors, doctors, engineers), in the capitalist countries as well as in the socialist ones; who earn a living without a protector, either lover or husband; who are directly engaged in society—these women are infinitely more "free" than their grandmothers would have dared to dream. The liberation of woman, then, is not necessarily fused with that of the proletariat. The two do not move at the same rate. The fact that Marxist historians and bourgeois historians are in accordance on this issue proves merely that the former are as bogged down in masculine prejudice as their colleagues, although for them it is more a question of political tactics.

There's something to the class reductionism that is often used by reactionaries (those across the spectrum from "left" to right). For generations, we saw that feminism was inherently believed to be part of a bourgeois issue (and in some ways, that's easy to see both in the construction of history as focusing primarily on bourgeois people as a whole and the fact that sometimes movements can prioritise bourgeois people and their views, even if it's not intentional).

However, there's this desire of many to constantly conflate "identity politics" with bourgeois goals and pretend the proletariat would never support it. We see this in so movements, where workers are constantly put at odds against them:

• Feminism and patriarchy
• Gender identity and sexual orientation ("bourgeois queers")
• Immigrant issues
• Disability issues

There is this attempt to segregate workers away from those causes, even when those causes benefit workers. And I think part of that has a lot to do with the workerism of many leftist political movements but also a large chunk of the fact that our organisations are still organised in ways where hegemonic power still attempts to maintain power within them.

It's why organisations can't withstand abuse allegations against their Leading Characters; it's why they crumble because people leave them for something safer or nothing at all (disillusioned with the political movement).

Other people have traditionally believed that the problem no longer exists. Women hold no interest for them except in the amatory relations—that is, they matter only as objects. Bedroom histories will always be best-sellers. Mme de Pompadour and Mme du Barry still draw attention to themselves to the tastes of the day. Mm de Staël is more interesting for her lovers than for the struggle she waged against Napoleon. Flora Tristan and Pauline Roland interest no one.

This is still so true. There is so much interest in the bedroom histories of many women, even if it is as a means to attempt to discredit them or to contradict their virtues.

Chapter 1: Women During the Second Empire

This banding together for solidarity had two goals, political education and propaganda for the International, which were what separated the cooperatives of working class origin from similar efforts established by the charitable segment of the bourgeoisie. The former societies were only stopgaps which were moving toward social revolution; charity was an end in itself.

Things we've known for so long and still refuse to acknowledge, though now I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that charities are also jobs and industry.

It was not just working women who had complaints to make of an order that excluded women from society. A century ago, a woman could scarcely exist socially without a protector, either husband or lover. The education she received was mediocre or nonexistent. The Law of 1850 had indeed ordered the creation of a girls' school for every commune with a concentrated population of more than 800. But the law lay dead on the books. Out of 48,496 public schools, 18,732 schools were for boys, 11,836 schools were for girls, and the others were coeducational. It is true that the private schools re-established the balance to some extent. But, generally, one child in five never went to any school, because he was in rags and was dying of hunger. Those men and women who taught in elementary schools constituted a decently-dressed proletariat. More than 4,000 schoolmistresses earned less than 400 francs annually. Almost 2,000 earned 100 to 200 francs. We have seen that the minimum budget of a Parisian working woman was fixed at about 500 francs.

The 500 francs comes from a calculation earlier in the book, explaining the rough costs of everything else that's needed at the time. This is for a full year.

The liberal professions were virtually closed to girls of the bourgeoisie. When Julie Daubié sat for her baccalaureate, despite the opposition of the rector of Lyon, and passed that examination, the Minister of Public Education refused in his turn to give her her diploma, for fear of "forever holding up his ministry to ridicule." This incident marks the starting-point of a revolution, and one forgets today that this revolution is the outcome of a patient, daily, and colorless struggle.

It's also interesting to me that, even if this is a "bourgeois issue," a lot of people will not see it for what it is. There has been and remains a constant strain of people who insist that women are inferior and refuse to acknowledge that so many women have had to fight for their placement in any form of society.

Chapter 3: The Siege of Paris

After September 4, when the theaters were closed, even more people were attracted to the Clubs. These Clubs, in which all opinions met and clashed, were of various leanings. Women brought their children along; there, at least, they were out of the cold, but they also attended because of political conviction, and did not hesitate to intervene in the proceedings.

Once again, it is more than clear that if we do not make space for families, especially those with children, we will never prefigure shit. Not entirely sure how it is that these movements have focused so excessively on those with grown or no children, but it is exhausting and absurd.

Women also participated in street demonstrations. On September 18 they took the initiative in demonstrating in sympathy with Strasbourg, which had been besieged for more than a month. "The idea came to some among us—the majority—to get weapons and set forth to help Strasbourg defend herself, and to die with her." Louis Michel and André Léo led a little group that set out for the Hôtel de Ville crying "To Strasbourg!" Women—many schoolteachers, young people, and especially students—joined them along the way.

I long for more radical schoolteachers. We've desperately needed them to wake up for as long as they've existed.

Chapter 4: The 18th of March

Any political system which demands the consensus of the masses and at the same time serves as the expression of the masses, must appeal to popular sentiment and organize a following. Religions, like political movements, need collective demonstrations. Women, who are more emotional than men, are doubtless even more susceptible to this communal appeal.

Not fond of this highlighted sentiment here, but it continues:

But the women also had good reasons for backing the new power. To be sure, the goals of the Commune, set forth in a Declaration to the French People, took no account of women's existence. The men of the Commune did not foresee for a single instant that women might have civic rights, any more than did their "great forebearers" of 1789 and 1793, or the 1848 revolutionaries. But certain measures, like the remission of rent payments or the discontinuation of the sale of articles depositied at the Mont-de-Piété, affected women greatly. A 600-franc pension was to be granted to the wife, legal or not, of any member of the National Guard who had been killed defending the people's rights, after an inquiry that would establish her rights and needs. Each of her children, legitimate or not, could collect a 365-franc pension until he was eighteen. At the expense of the Commune, orphans would receive the education necessary "to make their own way in society."

Mont-de-Piété was a sort of pawn broker.

This was an implicit recognition of the structure of the working-class family, as it really existed, outside the context of religious and bourgeois laws: the recognition of unions libres; of the right of children, legitimate or natural, to subsistence, and the disappearance of the old macula bastardiae of Roman Law, Church, and Civil Code. In this, the Commune, which was handling the Banque de France with kid gloves and did not venture to make any inroads into private property, undoubtedly took one of the most revolutionary steps of its ephemeral reign. That this measure outrated the bourgeoisie, that it was received with jubilation by the members of the Commune—both of these are indications of its significance.

There is one thing here that is infuriating, as there often is a lot of mentions against prostitutes and prostitution. I have a feeling that, even with these movements towards this, a lot of (legally unmarried) women would've still been marked as prostitutes in order to not pay them.

Because this is what happens when you put criteria on something, the people who handle it find ways to not do it. Haven't seen mention of that, but it's worth pointing out that there's a lot of anti-sex work sentiment in the Commune.

Chapter 6: The Clubs

On May 20, citoyenne Valentin urged women to "guard the gates of Paris, while the men go to battle. Then she demanded that the clothing left in the religious communities be sold or distributed "to dress poor children," and that "the flowers upon the altars be given to schoolchildren as prizes, to decorate the garrets of the poor." The proposition was unanimously adopted. Perhaps I am wrong in lingering over this detail, unworthy of a "serious" historian. But I find it admirable that in the midst of fighting, in the midst of poverty, in the feverish atmosphere of the Clubs, a woman should think of giving flowers to children. This seems to me quite indicative of a deep sensibility which which rarely appears in revolutionary movements, which, because the must confront the most urgent situations, have to be schematic.

I also really love these kinds of details. Sometimes everything is written about with such machine precision, as if everything just went as is without... life.

Chapter 7: Opinion and Action

There is no doubt that the women in the Clubs had only very vague ideas concerning socialism. But what they did know, what they did feel in a confused and visceral fashion, was that they had worked all their lives for ridiculous wages, and that, if nothing were to change, their children would be like them: poverty-stricken and exploited. To a young man who was expounding the goals of the Commune, an old working woman in a blue apron, with a square kerchief on her head, got up and answered:

Before I put the quote in that follows, I think it's worth pointing out the weird structure here that women had a "vague idea," but I wonder if this is something that is almost sarcastic in tone about the ways in which women are often talked about? Or perhaps it's a comparison between the "I've read a lot of books" socialist men of the bourgeois and the "I lived the life" socialist women who were fed up. Anyway, the passage quotes one of the ladies of the Commune:

"He tells us that the Commune is going to do something so that the people aren't dying of hunger as they work. Well, that's fine; it's not a bit too soon! Because here I've been a washerwoman for forty years, I've been working every blessed day of the week, without ever having anything to put in my mouth or to pay the rent. Food is so expensive! And so why is it that some can rest from one New Year's Day to the next, while we are always at work? Is that fair? It seems to me that if I were the government, I'd manage things so that working people could be given their turn to rest. If the people had vacations like the rich do, citoyens, they wouldn't complain so much.

Funny how the more things change, the more things seems to stay the same.

At Sainte-Élizabeth-du-Temple, they demanded that women having a specified number of children receive a pension. This proposition seemed grotesque to the reactionary onlooker who reported it; but is it not the origin of family allowances? The Clubs depicted by the adversaries of the Commune as lairs of bandits, drunkards, and prostitutes, were demanding measures whose morality was entirely puritanical. The Vigilance Committee of the republican citoyennes of the 18th arrondissement voted for a motion which would tend to make the prostitution that had been increasing for some time disappear from the streets. The motion was signed by the president, Sophie Poirier, the secretary, Anna Jaclard, and two assistants, Mmes Barois and Tesson. Four hundred signatures followed. The Clube de l'École de Médecine demanded "that all women of suspect morality plying their shameful trade on the public thoroughfares" be immediately arrested, and likewise "the drunkards who have forgotten their self-respect"; that the cafés be closed at 11 o'clock at night; that "stag parties" be forbidden. This document was unanimously approved.

Whew, it's always a good reminder that sometimes we can disagree with history. Or recognise that you understand where certain beliefs come from even if you find them appalling. Particularly, I feel this way about the perspectives about sex workers, which are positively atrocious. Despite the anti-clerical nature of their goals, despite the denunciation of the Church, they still managed to hold onto some of their harsher views.

Also, it's funny to see that it was a "reactionary" sentiment to dislike the family allowance. I can see that as being true (since so many conservatives in places like the US operate under the idea of "taking responsibility for your actions" and punishing already-born children who live in poverty), but it's also a horrifying way to distribute money rather than on a "per person" basis.

Family allowances are most often used to encourage the growth of certain populations, particularly these days. They're also withheld from those of "undesirable" demographics (either in full or in part).

The ideal Commune would have been Savonarola's Florence.

Put this here because holy what the fuck, Savonarola is one of the most confusing people I've ever come across.

What was to become of these prostitutes who could no longer ply their trade? Some of them turned up at the Hôtel de Ville asking to be allowed to care for the injured. They were refused this honor, for, Louise Michel noted, the men of the Commune wanted pure hands tending the Federals. But for Louise Michel, these women, the victims of poverty and of society, had a right to their place in the new world which was being born, and which ought to reject any moral condemnation. "Who, then, would have more of a right than they, the saddest victims of the old world, to give their life for the new one?" Therefore she directed them to a committee of women (the 18th arrondissement Vigilance Committee? the Union des Femmes?) "whose spirits were generous enough to let these women be welcomed." "We shall never bring shame down upon the Commune," these prostitutes said. Many, indeed, died courageously on the barricades during the Bloody Week in May, as did that "Henriette-Tout-le-Monde" whose story has been told by Maurice Dommanget.

Love the highlighting of the irony that the men who likely visited the prostitutes and allowed them to "ply their trade" in health didn't want their "impure" hands touching them in sickness and injury? Forever the ironies persist.

Under the pressure of public opinion and of the Clubs, General Cluseret decided that every man from nineteen to forty years of age be obliged to serve in the National Guard: a useless measure, since it provided only a very weak contingent of men who were really eager to fight (the partisans of the Commune had long ago been at the ramparts and the forts). A clumsy measure, too, since it gave the Commune the appearance of being dictatorial (which it scarcely was), inquisitorial, and intolerable—and all the while ineffective.

Chapter 8: Education

As early as March 26, the Society for New Education named delegates who were to present a project for educational reform to the Commune.

This included three men and three women: Menier, Rama, and Rheims; Henriette Garoste, Louise Laffitte, and Maria Verdure (daughter of schoolteacher Augustin Verdure, also a member of the Commune).

Brought a draft reminiscent of Pauline Roland (1849): Association des Instituteurs et Professeurs Socialistes.

It was necessary for a republic to "make young people ready for self-government through a republican education." This problem took precedence over all others; without its solution, serious and lasting social reforms could never be envisaged. Therefore, all the educational establishments maintained by the Commune, the départemenets, and the State had to be opened to all children, regardless of their faith. In the name of freedom of conscience and of justice, religious or dogmatic instruction had to be abolished in State establishments: "Let neither prayers, nor dogmas, nor anything that is reserved for the individual conscience be either taught or practiced there." Questions that were within the domain of religion, therefore, had to be removed from examinations. Teaching methods should always be "experimental and scientific," based upon "the observation of facts"; therefore, teaching organizations could exist only as private or non-State establishments. In short, schooling had to be considered as a public service; it had to be free, complete (with the exception of competition for professional specialties), and obligatory, whatever the social position of the parent. In response to the delegates of the Society of New Education, the Commune answered that it was in complete agreement with their plan, and that it considered this first step an "incentive to set out on a path that it had decided to take."

So much of this is... a half-half for me, so it's interesting to look back on it. Within the context, I understand why it is that they thought that schools should be the things we kept, reformed, and opened to everyone. When you realise that a lot of the people who were doing these structures were of the "intellectual classes," it's even more clear because they often see the benefit of doing things the way they did them. It's common. It was also that schools in the 1870s, even though they were made compulsory, were very... questionable. Many in rural areas were primarily operated by the Church, they were mostly not secular... and so on. So there was a mixture of seeing the positives of the school and wanting to keep it.

However, while I agree that there needs to be cross-generational learning, this is something that needs to be reconsidered as a one-way direction: adult to child. Also, if children are perpetually placed into one institution... how are they learning? That's still indoctrination, even if the ideas are better. How do they explore their own needs?

Perhaps it's also because the relationship to schools is starting to change, particularly now that we're recognising how they homogenise us rather than support the range of people in them.

For her part, Louise Michel sent the Commune a summary of an educational method that she had been thinking about for a long time. It was necessary to teach as many elementary ideas as possible with "the fewest, simplest, and most comprehensible words possible." She attached great importance to the moral training of her pupils. Their conscience ought to be developed to the point that "no reward or punishment can exist apart from the feeling of having done one's duty, or having acted badly." As for the religious problem, that should be left to the will of the parents. With her friends in the Montmartre Vigilance Committee—Sophie Poirier, Marie Cartier (née Lemonnier), and Mme Dauguet—Louise Michel demanded secular professional schools and orphanages to replace "the schools and orphanages for ignoramuses."

See, here's part of the context for why they'd want to reform what exists over replace.

Anyway, a lot of these reforms took place and were part of France after the fact. Which is interesting, considering the ways in which the ideas were took up to placate many people.

Chapter 9: A Great Journalist

The goals of the Commune, the coherent thought which quickened the best of the Communards, are both expressed by André Léo's excellent articles. And one might wonder through what injustice of History a woman whose novels are above average, and who played an important role in the Commune, has nowhere found her rightful place. Benoît Malon—who, one must admit, became her husband—paid her this tribute: "This woman, whose name is among those of the greatest writers of our time, and whom Rossel, who knew what he was talking about, called citoyen André Léo, was equally devoted to the cause of the people and to serving it with her writings, her speeches, and her total support." Yet literary historians who set third-rate writers up in the eyes of posterity never even mention her name, and the historians of the Commune scarcely notice her. No doubt there are several reasons for this. The first is that André Léo was a woman, and women need much more talent than do men in order to be recognized. Second, André Léo was implicated in the Commune, and literary historians generally tend to be very traditionalistic. Third, however devoted André Léo may have been to the Commune—a devotion that she retained all her life—she did not figure among its extremists, and did not hesitate to criticize the mistakes and violence of the Commune's supporters. Tending toward Bakunin rather than Marx, she thus cannot be ranked among the prophets and saints of the First International. In the eyes of orthodox Marxists, André Léo is an "individual," someone smacking of anarchism, and vaguely disturbing. In the eyes of anarchistic revolutionaries, she is much too reasonable. In the eyes of the bourgeoisie, she is a revolutionary. In short, there is no category for her; she is among those people who could not be annexed by a single cause.

This is so incredibly unsurprising, considering how many people outside of hegemonic demographics get erased from history because people will overlook them for... so many reasons.

In the newspaper La Sociale, André Léo thus became the zealous but lucid promoter of the Commune. As early as the 9th of April, she recorded the isolation of Paris, the mutual lack of understanding between the capital and the provinces. "Both are in the wrong, and for Paris, the more intelligent, the fault is perhaps greater." Thus it was necessary for Paris to enlighten the countryside and the provinces, and explain that they all had the same oppressors. It was right for Paris not to imitate the violence its enemies had done to thought and liberty, not to transgress the principles that were the very bases of its demands. In this, André Léo implicitly poses the eternal question of means and ends. How can just policies be enacted by unjust means, when the end is always contained in the means put forth to achieve it, the means which determine it? "We must support our faith in a worthy manner; we must show in all its brilliance the idea we have the honor of representing; we must not let it be obscured by error or vituperation, must not disturb the conscience of those who see ideas only through men." Therefore, one should not proclaim a Commune and then act as if it were the Constituent Assembly.

This section is quite long, but there is so much here about André Léo and her philosophy. She seems like an interesting person, though I find it interesting that she'd pose Paris (the city) as "the intelligent" when she later (next) will talk about how city and rural people need to understand each other. But it's unsurprising because of how common this is, rather than moving the thoughts between the two and building cohesive philosophies between the two.

As a Commune, Paris should accept the assembly, elected by the provinces. Fighting against the assembly, Paris was no longer the Commune, but the Revolution. Thus it was right to make a frank avowal of the social idea, the revolutionary idea, that one represented. "Now it no longer has anything to contrive. If it does not yield to the lesser, it will not yield to the greater." It was, then a fight to the death between Revolution and Monarchy, between poor and privileged, between worker and parasite, between people and exploiters. The peasant, too, was among the exploited; but his condition was hidden from him by his antiquated ideas. Thus he had to be shown where his interest lay. Granted, it would be preferable to appeal to his intelligence. But whose fault was it? Who had abolished freedom of the press? Who had refused the people education, "without which universal suffrage is nothing but a trap in which democracy is caught, and perishes"? The responsibility devolved upon the men of lies and treason who had wanted merciless, bloody battle. Next came a manifesto, drafted almost entirely by André Léo, addressed to rural workers. It was necessary to end the antagonism between workers and peasants, between the city and the country (a problem against which all the twentieth-century revolutions would stumble).

This is a continuation even until today. Being a former rural person living in the city, the way that people talk about us is... appalling. There is an excessive belief that we're unable to see our own oppressions, and there is a refusal to listen to us as if we know what's best for us. There's also an assumption that we're all the same. And you can see that, to an extent, here.

Continuing the long paragraph:

"Brother, you have been deceived. Our interest are the same. What I am asking for, you want too; the freedom that I demand is your own..." What did it matter whether the oppressor was called landowner or industry? Everywhere, the producers of wealth lacked the necessities of life. Everywhere, they lacked "liberty, leisure, the life of the mind, and the life of the heart." For centuries it had been said that property was the fruit of labor. This was a lie. That house, that land, on which the peasant worked all his life, did not belong to him; or if they did belong to him, they were burdened with debts, and he or his children would have to sell them. "The rich are lazy; the workers are poor and will remain poor." Against this injustice Paris had risen and wanted to change its laws. "Paris wants the peasant's son to be as well educated as the son of the man who is rich, and rich for no reason, for human knowledge is the common good of all men." Paris no longer wanted a king or highly-paid offices. These economies would make it possible to establish homes for the elderly. Paris wanted those responsible for the war to pay the 5 billion francs owed to Prussia. Paris wanted justice to be free, and to be done by judges chosen by the people. Finally, Paris wanted "the peasant to have his land, the worker to have his tool; work to be available for everybody."

It's interesting that so many people are still not recognising how, though the workerist feeling worked here in the context of the Commune (though was still a problem)... That we keep doing it. You'd think we'd have realised that workerism is a problem. I point this out because, while it works here, it should never be the end goal.

Finishing the paragraph:

It was said that the Parisians were socialists, "dividers." But who said that? The thieves who cried "Stop, thief!" to put people on the wrong track. The real "dividers" were "those who do nothing but get fat from the work of others." The cause that Paris was defending and the cause of the worker were thus the same. The generals who that day were attacking Paris were those who had betrayed France: the deputies appointed by the provinces wanted to restore Henri V. "If Paris falls, the yoke of poverty will remain on your neck, and will pass on to your children."

And it did.

Unlike most of the men of the Commune, who so often went astray into vain discussions, devoting themselves to details and neglecting what was essential, André Léo never lost sight of the two objectives that, if the Commune were to triumph, were the most urgent: the indispensable support of the provinces, and the armed struggle against Versailles. In a very fine article, she extolled the soldiers of the Commune, those sixty thousand men who, for more than three weeks, had held their own against a hardened army of old soldiers, policemen, and gendarmes. Who were they, then these dead men whose names and professions were listed every day? A shoemaker, a stonecutter, a carpenter, a blacksmith.

Lmao, this feels like every anarchist collective or labour union meeting I've been at in my life, I swear.

Chapter 10: Ambulance Nurses, Canteen Workers, Soldiers

Insofar as it was a revolutionary power, the Commune would have done better to take over the Banque de France than to carry out measures on a secondary level, which disorganized the hospital services and contributed to futile and inextricable disorder. But the men of the Commune did not discern the hierarchies of urgency. Their debates, like their decisions, were often marked by revolutionary childishness.

Literally still feels relevant in how so many places are organised, I swear.

But, in this struggle to the death, Versailles had no more mercy for nurses than it did prisoners: both were shot. Lieutenant Butin, sent with truce flags to gather up the injured at the Vanves fort, was greeted with rifle fire by the Versailles soldiers despite his white flag and the flag of the Geneva Convention; he had to return in haste to the lines of Federals. An ambulance nurse who was about to lift up a wounded man was raped and killed by five Versailles men. The Commune seized upon the affair, and considered applying the decree concerning hostages which had been voted in on April 5, after the massacre of Flourens, Duval, and prisoners taken by Versailles. This decree aroused the indignation of all right-minded people, but was merely a response to the murders committed by order of Thiers. Moreover, the debate revealed that the men of the Commune were much more respectful of their enemies' lives than were their adversaries.

One of the things I didn't realise was that the Geneva Conventions were much older than I'd thought they were, but it's entirely unsurprising that the State decided to murder people and ignore them. The Geneva Conventions, as we've seen even in my lifetime, appear to never apply to people within your own country... So what is the point of either them or the State?

The decree concerning hostages was not actually applied in reprisal for the murder of the ambulance nurse. It would take the mass murders of Federals by the Versailles army, during the Bloody Week in May, for the exasperated crowds to abandon themselves to violence against the hostages.

Just a reminder.

Everywhere along the outposts, André Léo noticed a dual attitude toward the ambulance nurses. The officers and surgeons were clearly hostile to them; the troops were in favor of them. Similarly, in 1849, Jeanne Deroin, offering her (illegal) candidacy, had encountered only sarcasm in the bourgeois districts, whereas those who heard her in Faubourg Saint-Antoine greeted her sympathetically.

This is also why I get so tired of people talking about how people in the working class are more bigoted. They have their problems, but they are often more sympathetic.

The book quotes the following (from La Sociale, May 6):

Alongside of that bourgeois, authoritarian mentality, so narrow and so petty, which unfortunately exists in so many of our commanders, there blazes in our citoyen soldiers the keen, exalted, profound sentiment of the new life. It is they who believe in the great forces that save the world; they acclaim these, they do not outlaw them. They know what the right of all is contained in their right. Whereas most of the commanders are still only military men, the soldiers are real citizens...

It's so ridiculous how we could update this for today. It's absurd.

Rossel—the student at the École Polytechnique who became the Commune's Minister of War, and who was without doubt one of the strangest and most attractive figures of the Revolution—expressed his regrets at the situation André Léo pointed out to him, and asked her to tell him "through the public press" (a consistent revolutionary, Rossel was a foe of secrecy) how to set it right. "The noble and frank tone of your recent proclamations," answered André Léo, "made me sense a man who was incapable of common bias. You know better than I what you can do to make use of the devotion of republican women, for that is inherent in your power..." Women were running up against masculine prejudices and they surgeons' esprit de corps at a time when, on the contrary, it was necessary to move toward "that responsible brotherhood of men and women, that unity of feelings and ideas, which alone can form, in honor, equality, and peace, the Commune of the future."

Absolutely adore the whole thing about "answer me through the press," but the constant reminder that cis men fail to recognise the power of everyone else? Sigh.

The Republic could be established only upon such a recognition of equality. André Léo submitted to Rossel an idea of Dr Jaclard, the head of the 17th Legion (as we have seen, his wife Anna played an important role in the organization of the ambulance stations). Doctors without antifeminine prejudices, and the three or four young women who had passed their examinations at the École de Médecine, were to be placed in charge of several ambulance stations. "These women had the courage to force the doors of science; they will certainly not fail to serve Humanity and the Revolution." But, by contrast to Rossel, General Dombrowski displayed an eminently reactionary attitude toward women. André Léo sharply reminded him that without the participation of women, the 18th of March would have ended in failure: "You would never have been General of the Commune, citoyen Dombrowski."

I find it charming to try to knock someone down a few pegs. But it's also something that's necessary to recognise. If you don't support everyone, you support no one; you will always fail.

She asked the general to do a little reasoning. Could the Revolution have been accomplished without women? That had been the mistake of the First Revolution: women had been excluded from freedom and equality; then, returning to Catholicism, they had strengthened the forces of reaction. The republicans were full of inconsistencies: they did not want women to be under priestly thumbs, but they were upset when women were free-thinkers and wanted to act like free, equal human beings. The republicans had dethroned the Emperor and God, but only to put themselves in the place of both. The republicans needed subjects—or, at least, subjected women. They did not want to admit, then as before, that woman was responsible to herself. "She should remain neutral and passive, under the guidance of man. She will have done nothing but change her confessor." But God possessed on enormous advantage over man: he remained unknown, which enabled him to be ideal.

It's an interesting framing that I hadn't actually thought of. Perhaps it's something to keep in mind as I continue looking into this time.

Religion condemned reason and knowledge. The Revolution, on the other hand, postulated that reason and liberty be exercised in the search for Truth and Justice. "The Revolution is the liberty and the responsibility of every human being, limited only by the rights of all, without privilege of race or of sex." Therefore women could not but be concerned; yet people talked about the freeing of man, but not of woman. Women were rejected and discouraged when they wanted to serve the Revolution. It is in this sense that their rejection was a reactionary step. A history of the period since 1789 could be written under the title "A History of the Inconsistencies of the Revolutionary Party." But this attitude of many Commune officers toward women corresponds to an age-old feeling that is too deep and too widespread for it to be easily changed, despite various interventions. Thus the Club de la Révolution Sociale in its turn asked the 17th arrondissement municipal authorities to intervene on behalf of ambulance nurses with the surgeons and battalion commanders.

Written in the 1960s, felt in the 2020s, about the 1870s. For fuck's sake.

Content warning on the next few for war crimes (including sexual assault and murder) against women.

On April 3, at the time of a sortie when Flourens and General Duval were murdered by Versailles soldiers, the geographer Élisée Reclus, taken prisoner, gives us the following account of a canteen worker. "The poor woman was in the row in front of mine, alongside of her husband. She was not at all pretty, nor was she young: rather, a poor, middle-aged proletarian, small, marching with difficulty. Insults rained down upon her, all from officers prancing on horseback along the road." A very young hussar officer said. "You know what we're going to do with her? We're going to screw her with a red-hot iron." A vast, horrified silence fell among the soldiers.

Absolutely disgusting.

Often these women were heroic. Even the most ardent antifeminists have rarely denied that women have courage. At Neuilly, a canteen worker with a head wound had the wound dressed and then returned to combat. Another, chased by a gendarme, suddenly turned around and killed him point-blank. Her comrades and the crowd cheered her when she came back within the Paris walls. On the Châtillon Plain, a canteen worker was the last to retreat, with a group of National Guards, and turned around every minute to fire her gun again. In the 137th Battalion, a young canteen worker—almost a child—never stopped firing the cannon despite the shells, coming from Châtillon, which were falling all around her. When the Federals had succeeded in evacuating the Vanves fort, by means of the catacombs and quarries under the region, the newspapers noted that "it was women who, in this situation, showed the most calmness, presence of mind, and courage. The ambulance nurses wanted to carry off the wounded. The canteen workers were distributing stimulants, and keeping watch over the torches."

I genuinely enjoy seeing these kinds of descriptions, which are so entirely lacking in most histories.

Chapter 11: Bloody Week

A remark is called for here. A large proportion of these women were born in the provinces. As for the men, the proportion was less, but still quite considerable: the Parisian insurrection of 1871 was carried out by provincials. There are doubtless several explanations for this paradox. These men and women who had broken ties with their villages and come to Paris, had given proof in their private lives of a will to renewal, a spirit of adventure, which also were what impelled them to join the ranks of the Social Revolution. Doubtless, too, they were less integrated into traditional urban life. Those who are settled always compose the bulk of conservatives; peasants are adequate proof of this. These hypotheses are certainly worthy of further research.

I feel this so much, though I wonder how many other migrants feel this way.

At this point we definitely must bring up the question of the fires for which eyewitnesses and bourgeois historians have scribed full responsibility to the Communards. These fires actually had several causes: first, the incendiary shells and the kerosene bombs which the Army of Versailles had been using since the beginning of April. Many houses in Paris and the suburbs were burned thus, during the Second Siege of Paris, by the shells of the friends of order and property. These were, no doubt, "good" fires—regrettable, certainly, but normal facts of war. Some of the fires during the last week of May were also attributable to Bonapartist agents, who were trying thus to eliminate any traces that were compromising for the personnel of the Empire. In fact, it is strange to note that the Communards, those "dividers" did not attack the houses of the rich; that the Communards, those anticlericals, did not burn down the churches; but that what disappeared in flames were buildings like the Court of Accounts, the Council of State, or the Ministry of Finance—buildings that contained the archives of the Empire's administration. Perhaps, too, certain people hoped to receive large indemnities.

Some things that often get neglected in the discussion about tactics, particularly when it comes to the State stopping things that will hurt it.

But, having made these reservations, it is certain that the Federals bore a great part of the responsibility for the Paris fires. "Fever of the besieged," "the madness of despair," "revolutionary vandalism"—easily, but a little too hastily, said. Actually, the Versailles troops fired from the shelter of the houses until the insurgents had exhausted their last ammunition; then they advanced on the double and shot down the defenders. It was to counter this tactic that the Federals set fire to the buildings near the barricades; thus they flushed the Versailles soldiers out into the open. Marx vindicated the Commune, which "used fire strictly as a means of defense, to keep the Versailles troops from the avenues which Haussmann had opened out expressly for artillery fire." For the Federals, it was a question of "covering their defeat, just as the Versailles troops opened their advance by shells which destroyed at least as many buildings as did the Commune." Moreover, the Federals resorted to incendiarism only when Versailles began its mass execution of prisoners—which was what invested the struggle with its final and inexpiable character.

Also something else to consider. We often don't give nuance to anyone "destroying their home," but these kinds of events are worth remembering.

Chapter 12: Were There Any Pétroleuses?

But the Paris fires, during the course of an armed struggle, present another problem. They were lit during the fighting, and lit by fighters. There is no reason to think that the women who were helping to build and defend the barricades did not also have a hand in these fires. In the statutes of the Union des Femmes pour la Défense de Paris et les Soins aux Blessés, we read the following brief sentence: "Article 14: The money left over from the administrative costs will be used ... for buying kerosene and weapons for the citoyennes who will fight at the barricades; should the occasion arise, weapons will be distributed according to the drawing of lots." It is difficult to concede, along with certain historians motivated by I know not what sort of hypocritical daintiness, that the word "kerosene" coupled with the word "weapons" has, here, only a domestic meaning—harmless kerosene to light the family lamps. It is more likely that kerosene had already been regarded as the ultimate means of defending the Commune.

Perpetual erasure and obfuscation because people refuse to acknowledge what was directly stated.

As for Anne-Marie Menand, called Jeanne-Marie (could it be Rimbaud's?), she was known in the area around La Madeleine as "the woman with the yellow dog." She was a poor creature, an easy target for Maxime du Camp's persecution: "I have never seen such ugliness. Dark-skinned, with staring eyes, dull and dirty hair, her face pocked and freckled, thin lips and a silly laugh, she had some wild quality about her, which reminded one of the panic of nocturnal birds suddenly put into the daylight..." We know the process: physical defects (including freckles) indicate a corresponding moral ugliness, and become a sign of predestination to evil. In the same way, but conversely, people like Vuillaume and Vallès never saw anything but beautiful, young, joyful, healthy girls among the Commune fighters—which is equally absurd.

Still something that happens, too. Why is so much of this so old but so recent?

Chapter 13: The Execution of Hostages

During the course of this dreadful bloodshed, the Federals executed, for their part, 84 hostages. But the execution of the Archbishop of Paris, the execution of Jesuits, of Dominicans, and of the Comte de Beaufort, who was considered to be a traitor—these weight more heavily in history than the thousands of nameless murders perpetrated by the soldiers of order: bootmakers, stonecutters, masons, day laborers, or seamstresses—small fry, neglected by history. Mme de Lamalle's head on the end of a stick weighed much more in the traditional balance of history than the sacrifice of thousands of unknown people. Right-thinking people were indignant at the former, but considered the latter insignificant. The masses form the vile matter of history. A hundred thousand infantrymen are not worth the death of a general.

Always, and we continue to talk about it in this way. It's so fucking ridiculous how much we pretend the deaths of the wealthy, the powerful... are worth more than anyone else.

Women were mixed up in these executions. Maxime du Camp, once more, accused them of having driven and excited the men, of having sometimes delivered the first blows. One of the men active in the Commune, Da Costa, expressed the same opinion. Thus, by means of a sort of latent antifeminism, the enemies and the supporters of the Commune shifted the responsibility for the summary executions onto women. But in this matter too, the fact seems to be that they had only walk-on roles; they were neither better nor worse than the men around them, neither more pitiable nor more ferocious.

AND AGAIN. Something else that happens, not even just to women. But marginalised people as a whole.

Chapter 14: The Major Trials

Certainly André Léo would not defend the "blindness" and "incompetence" of most of the men of the Commune, whom she never ceased to denounce. But "these mistakes became honorable by comparison with the orgy of infamy that followed them." She explained things and brought them back to focus. The law concerning hostages was administered by the mob only after May 23, when the Commune no longer existed and when Versailles had begun its mass slaughter. The fires had been caused by the Versailles shells, as much as by the need for defense. The Commune had killed sixty-four; the number of murdered Communards mounted to fifteen or twenty thousand (and here André Léo, always scrupulous, estimates far lower than the actual figure). Thus, it was the murderers who were making the accusations. On the one side were all the defenders of privilege; on the other were the democrats. But the latter remained divided, for, as André Léo explained, some preferred liberty, and others equality. Well, "there can be no equality without liberty, nor any liberty without equality." And it was that which separated the socialists from the liberal bourgeoisie. But André Léo noted—and it is even more true today—that the middle- and lower-income bourgeoisie suffered as much as the common people from the capitalist government. "The law of capital is aristocratic by nature," she went on. "It tends increasingly to concentrate power in the hands of a few; it inevitably creates an oligarchy, which is master of the nation's power... It pursues the interest of a few as against the interest of all... It is opposed to the new conception of justice... It holds in servitude, not only the poor, but the great majority of the bourgeoisie who live by their work and their ability"—and wo, perhaps even more than manual laborers, were dependent upon the whim of the capitalists. Therefore it was to the interest of the working class, and also a great portion of the bourgeoisie, to abolish the law of capital; and it was necessary to find a way to do so. The March 18th Revolution had been guided, not by the socialists, but by "bourgeois Jacobinism." André Léo wanted all factions of democracy to unite so as to establish a common program that would include all freedoms (press, assembly, etc), communal liberties, a single and graduated tax, the organization of a citizens' army, and a free, democratic and universal education. "As long as a child is poor... as long as he grows up with no ideal but the tavern, no future but the day-to-day work of a beast of burden, most members of humanity will be deprived of their rights... equality will be only a decoy, and war—the most horrible, the most desperate of all wars, be it unleashed or latent—will desolate the world and dishonor humanity."

She continues:

This explanation, this perspective on civil war, provoked violent interruptions; the president of the Congress for Peace forbade André Léo to go on with her speech. "I had come to this Congress [in Lausanne, Switzerland in September 1871] with one hope, and I left it with profound sadness," she concluded. The bourgeoisie, even the liberal bourgeoisie, could not permit itself to be reminded of the existence of the "class struggle."

Chapter 15: From Auberive to New Caledonia

Finally, and particularly, there were the people. Whereas many of the deported Communards shared the other whites' scorn of the natives, Louise Michel made friends with a Polynesian employee of the penitentiary administration, "who wanted to learn the things the whites know." She gave him lessons; in exchange, he taught her the rudiments of the Polynesian dialects. Then she plunged deep into the jungle to look for tribes still practicing cannibalism; she succeeded in gaining the confidence of one of these, and collected its legends and its music. She did not share Rousseau's theoretical admiration for the "noble savages," but neither did she take part in "civilized" scorn for them. She studied them as an ethnographer, and loved them because they were a part of humanity. When, in 1878, a native revolt broke out, some of the Communards joined the army of repression; but Louise Michel took the part of the Polynesians and secretly aided them. The insurrection was drowned in blood. As for the Arab deportees from Algeria, "they were simple and good, and of great justice," remarked Louise Michel.

So much going on here.

Names to follow up on later:

• Victorine Brochon (butcher co-operative in La Chapelle)
• Nathalie Lemel (book binder who started the food co-op La Marmite and was in the First International)
• Marguerite Tinayre (novelist- pen name: Jules Paty, elementary teacher, consumer co-op Société des équitables de Paris)
• Christine de Pisan
• Juliette Lamber (Mme Edmond Adam)
• Jenny d'Héricourt
• Maria Deraismes
• Paule Minck (Paulina Mekarska - Les Mouches et les Araignées)
• André Léo (Léonide Béra - novelist)
• Olympe Audouard (Le Paillon, La Revue Cosmopolite)
• Noémie Reclus
• Mme Jules Simon (Les Droit des Femmes)
• Adèle Esquiros (married to Alphonse Esquiros)
• Elizabeth Dmitrieff
• Sophie Poirier
• Marquant
• Béatrix Excaffon
• Adélaide Valentin
• Noémie Colleville
• Sophie Graix
• Joséphine Prat
• Céline and Aimée Delvainquier
• Anna Jaclard (Vassilievna Korvina Krukovskaya - bookbinder, married to Victor Jaclard; sister Sophie - Yuri Orbelov, married to Vladimir Kovalesky)
• Fornarina de Fonseca (Eléonora de Fonseca)
• Lodoyska Kawecka
• Mme Brossut
• Joséphine Dulimbert
• Elizabeth Deguy
• Sidonie Herbelin
• Blanche Lefebvre (dressmaker)
• Victorine Gorget (laundress)
• Marie Ségaud (Orlawsky, seamstress)
• Rosalie Bordas

Quotes from this book:

I don't like this essay, and it feels as if it's very "progress is a linear progression." It isn't. Progress has cycles, and they overlap.

One might suggest an even darker possibility. A case could be made that even the shift into R&D on information technologies and medicine was not so much a reorientation towards market-driven consumer imperatives, but part of an all-out effort to follow the technological humbling of the Soviet Union with total victory in the global class war: not only the imposition of absolute U.S. military dominance overseas, but the utter rout of social movements back home. The technologies that emerged were in almost every case the kind that proved most conducive to surveillance, work discipline, and social control. Computers have opened up certain spaces of freedom, as we’re constantly reminded, but instead of leading to the workless utopia Abbie Hoffman or Guy Debord imagined, they have been employed in such a way as to produce the opposite effect. Information technology has allowed a financialization of capital that has driven workers ever more desperately into debt, while, at the same time, allowed employers to create new “flexible” work regimes that have destroyed traditional job security and led to a massive increase in overall working hours for almost all segments of the population. Along with the export of traditional factory jobs, this has put the union movement to rout and thus destroyed any real possibility of effective working-class politics. Meanwhile, despite unprecedented investment in research on medicine and life sciences, we still await cures for cancer or even of the common cold; instead, the most dramatic medical breakthroughs we have seen have taken the form of drugs like Prozac, Zoloft, or Ritalin—tailor-made, one might say, to ensure that these new professional demands don’t drive us completely, dysfunctionally, crazy.

As always, I'm not fond of people talking disparagingly with regards to medications that help with mental health issues and/or cognitive disabilities. While Ritalin certainly does not work for me, I also know that other ADHD medications still make it possible for me to do the things I want to do even when I don't have to actively be engaged in "the system."

I don't think most people understand what it's like to sit down and try to read books, any and all, and not even be able to focus on the words in front of your face because your brain simply won't let you with everything else happening around you (and not because you're thinking about other things, though that is a form of distraction most people can resonate with). I don't think most people understand what it is to have your whole life halted by pondering whether or not you should even be alive. We should be more careful about the narratives that we launder into left spaces, even if our so-called "greats" did it for us.

Are there discussions to have about how psychiatry is used and abused in order to punish people? Yes, but that argument rests within similar conversations to the medical system as a whole and the prison industrial complex. So that final line in this section really annoys me, especially coming from someone as lauded as Graeber has been.

ANYWAY, I think there is something to the bolded part. This part, which I do think has some merit, is also why I find the final line to be nonsensical and absurd. Are those things used to control? Certainly, they have been.

But he should've spent more time focusing on the things that he had already brought up, as he had a stronger point there. Almost everything that we've seen developed in many of our lifetimes has come to be part of a surveillance system.

Here, I think our collective fascination with the mythic origins of Silicon Valley and the Internet have blinded us to what’s really going on. It has allowed us imagine that research and development is now driven, primarily, by small teams of plucky entrepreneurs, or the sort of decentralized cooperation that creates open-source software. It isn’t. These are just the sort of research teams most likely to produce results. If anything, research has been moving in the opposite direction. It is still driven by giant, bureaucratic projects; what has changed is the bureaucratic culture. The increasing interpenetration of government, university, and private firms has led all parties to adopt language, sensibilities, and organizational forms that originated in the corporate world. While this might have helped somewhat in speeding up the creation of immediately marketable products—as this is what corporate bureaucracies are designed to do—in terms of fostering original research, the results have been catastrophic.

The laundering of corporate sensibilities is a topic that I wish he would've spent more time on here. He really could've written multiple essays. Perhaps others can take up that mantle because there are a dozen or so topics here that would've done better with depth.

However, there's also the connections to things like the philanthropic foundations that I would've liked to see covered here, too. Certainly these 'titans of industry' who set up nonprofits to launder their images (people who it's clear Gates got his inspiration from) had an impact on how those structures inserted themselves into places they certainly should never have been (particularly outside the United States).

Here I can speak from experience. My own knowledge comes largely from universities, both in the United States and the UK. In both countries, the last thirty years have seen a veritable explosion of the proportion of working hours spent on administrative paperwork, at the expense of pretty much everything else. In my own university, for instance, we have not only more administrative staff than faculty, but the faculty, too, are expected to spend at least as much time on administrative responsibilities as on teaching and research combined. This is more or less par for the course for universities worldwide. The explosion of paperwork, in turn, is a direct result of the introduction of corporate management techniques, which are always justified as ways of increasing efficiency, by introducing competition at every level. What these management techniques invariably end up meaning in practice is that everyone winds up spending most of their time trying to sell each other things: grant proposals; book proposals; assessments of our students’ job and grant applications; assessments of our colleagues; prospectuses for new interdisciplinary majors, institutes, conference workshops, and universities themselves, which have now become brands to be marketed to prospective students or contributors. Marketing and PR thus come to engulf every aspect of university life.

It's also worth considering how this has funneled downward in the education industry, how it has become commonplace among K-12 teachers and has been introduced in numerous ways (purchasing corporate services, the development of charters and academies, hiring corporate outsiders, etc). PR and marketing are core to a lot of schools, including public ones.

The result is a sea of documents about the fostering of “imagination” and “creativity,” set in an environment that might as well have been designed to strangle any actual manifestations of imagination and creativity in the cradle. I am not a scientist. I work in social theory. But I have seen the results in my own field of endeavor. No major new works of social theory have emerged in the United States in the last thirty years. We have, instead, been largely reduced to the equivalent of Medieval scholastics, scribbling endless annotations on French theory from the 1970s, despite the guilty awareness that if contemporary incarnations of Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, or even Pierre Bourdieu were to appear in the U.S. academy, they would be unlikely to even make it through grad school, and if they somehow did make it, they would almost certainly be denied tenure.

Why is it that everyone looks at these people as being so great when a lot of their work was definitely on the backs of people far more vulnerable than they ever would've been? And also for their relationships to harmful individuals (like pederasts)? It's perplexing.

Also perplexing is this idea of one person who will come up with these ideas in the way that Graeber talks about. Perhaps his time in academia got to him, but he often focuses in on one person when he should've been more aware of the collective endeavour.

There was a time when academia was society’s refuge for the eccentric, brilliant, and impractical. No longer. It is now the domain of professional self-marketers. As for the eccentric, brilliant, and impractical: it would seem society now has no place for them at all.

And who was allowed to be eccentric, brilliant, and impractical? Because it really feels, as always, your work aims to recognise your position within whiteness and patriarchy and suddenly drops those balls during analysis.

In the natural sciences, to the tyranny of managerialism we can also add the creeping privatization of research results. As the British economist David Harvie has recently reminded us, “open source” research is not new. Scholarly research has always been open-source in the sense that scholars share materials and results. There is competition, certainly, but it is, as he nicely puts it, “convivial”:

Convivial for whom? I feel like I might lose my mind asking this because we know that it wasn't "convivial" for people who were overtly harmed by academia and the competition of scientific discovery in the past. Was it "convivial" for Rosalind Franklin, whose work went largely unrecognised while the men who stole it from here was recognised? Was it "convivial" for the many Black women who were NASA computers and mathematicians when their work was obscured for all the white people (usually men)?

Who was this field convivial for? And how dare you even claim that. You should have known better by the time you published this piece.

Not only that, the person he quoted in this piece said this:

Convivial competition is where I (or my team) wish to be the first to prove a particular conjecture, to explain a particular phenomenon, to discover a particular species, star or particle, in the same way that if I race my bike against my friend I wish to win. But convivial competition does not exclude cooperation, in that rival researchers (or research teams) will share preliminary results, experience of techniques and so on … Of course, the shared knowledge, accessible through books, articles, computer software and directly, through dialogue with other scientists, forms an intellectual commons.

Did you ask your friend if they wanted to race you? Similarly, did you ask anyone if they wanted to compete with you in these "convivial competitions?" Or did you just do them? And for what purpose? It's absolute horse shit to ever talk like this, and it's even worse when the person doing so just outright uses this quote as if that's how everyone felt. Truly, it feels like only people who have structural power over everyone else feel this way.

It is worth discussing what "convivial competition" looks like, but it's also worth figuring out if it's consensual. If everyone has agreed to it (e.g., friendly ribbing between two people), fine. But often times, people (usually cis white men) perceive their "friendly" and "convivial" competition without considering the realities of the non-white people and non-cis men they're competing with. Many of us do not agree to those terms and have a different understanding of the world. It's necessary to consider that.

Quotes from this article:

Before I get started, here's a thing I don't like about Matt's work thus far: He conflates too much with everything else. He does not critique events, he derides them inherently; he does not recognise that most people do not follow the beliefs he claims and builds strawmen to knock down (or talks about the few examples that exist while ignoring the many who aren't examples of what he's discussing).

It must be nice to do that from one of the places with some of the less serious anarchists, with those who fail to even consider people outside of hegemonic power (in any capacity) until they need solidarity (and refuse to give it in return). For it's not their opinions that are ever addressed; they are seen as unworthy until they can be used as baton.

But if we are not struggling as an organised class at work, where should such affinity groups be engaged in struggle? Insurrectionists have typically advocated a politics of ‘constant attack’. They relish in the images of street fights with police, the lighting of fires, and looting of stores.

I'm sorry, what are you talking about? This is not how all insurrectionary anarchists even talk or think, nor is it constant the world over. And it's not that they relish in those images. I mean, you reference Alfredo Bonanno. He deliberates about whether it would've been better to shoot Montanelli in the face than the legs ("Why on earth did these dear children shoot Montanelli in the legs? Wouldn’t it have been better to have shot him in the mouth?" in Armed Joy).

He's not relishing in that image, he's discussing about which tactic was better, what happened subsequent to him being shot in the legs, what would've happened had they shot him in the head, and how heavy of a decision it would've been to do that. He then ends that part by saying: "Revolutionaries are pious folk. The revolution is not a pious event." I cannot see any form of relishing going on here, and it feels insulting to say that insurrectionary anarchists would think this way.

The people you're talking about? Are those who glorify violence as much as they do military action.

Even many anarcha-feminists, who often talk about the theory around Kill Your Local Rapist, do not want to hurt people. They think about the consequences of doing so, and that includes the consequences to themselves and their consciences.

It’s obviously a good thing to feed someone who is hungry and we have no objections to breaking the law, but this is a strange idea of freedom. It assumes the insurmountable permanence of a society based on the existence of bosses, governments, and commodities. It proposes that we act as if capital and the State can never really be overthrown through a concrete transformation of social relations in production. Things can’t be changed, they can only be subverted or defied.

No, it doesn't. The overwhelming majority of insurrectionists I have read or talked to have seen themselves as a line of defense, not the end-all-be-all of getting to an anarchistic world. This includes the very one you fucking cite and the very fucking passage you choose to cite him in: "We have seen that a specific minority must take charge of the initial attack, surprising power and determining a situation of confusion which could put the forces of repression into difficulty and make the exploited masses reflect upon whether to intervene or not."

Not everyone has to intervene in that manner. And he even defines what is meant by 'specific minority', which he says isn't all anarchists or the whole revolution. It's right there.

With the George Flloyd Rebellion the politics of insurrectionary anarchism was put to a serious test.

It really wasn't.

The insurrectionists were presented with a nation-wide uprising which broke from legality and the control of any organisation.

Let's go back to that "specific minority" of people Bonanno mentions. Does this sentence make sense with that part of insurrectionist theory? I don't think so. Because not everyone in the street wants to participate in insurrectionary actions.

The ‘CHAZ’ (which, in reality, was never able to develop beyond a cop-free block-party) quickly stagnated, with no clear aims other than maintaining the occupation. The affinity groups attempted to maintain the rage, but were unable to encourage the rebellion in a revolutionary direction.

He cites an article from CrimethInc that talks about this and still walks away with that basic ass understanding? How do you walk away with that limited critique after you read this part (and the bits after): "At the same time, when the police are still so powerful and the ruling class that they serve is scrambling to legitimize them in the public eye, establishing a cop-free zone involves challenges and risks."

CrimethInc even mentions how these tactics have been used against Exarchia in Greece (which, for the record, goes unmentioned). The same applies to anything else outside the United States.

And even if you read Black Rose's critique and discussion, they don't refer to anyone as insurrectionary anarchists. Because I don't think many, if any, of those people aligned themselves to that theory. They also highlight really big issues (e.g., "no decision making process" and "failure of white ally politics"). It's a brutal misreading and misunderstanding of a theory if you're basing it on one thing in the United States.

All manner of cranks and adventurists were attracted to the project.

That's because this wasn't insurrectionary anarchism in action. I do not know how hard this is to understand, but it feels willful at this point.

Ultimately, a few armed individuals (having appointed themselves as a ‘patrol’) fired on and killed a few black teenagers speeding by in their car. Amidst the fog of uncertainty, vague reports spread on social media, exciting those who equate the use of arms with militancy. The killings were initially lauded in some insurrectionist corners of the internet as a successful case of ‘revolutionary self-defence’ against ‘right-wing infiltrators’.

Is there a point where we actually discuss these things? Instead of tossing them around to play gotcha points and neglecting that, while these are examples of right-wing and/or white supremacy in action, it doesn't fit into what is actually described by insurrectionary anarchism? And again, still requires people to actually align themselves with it?

Along with addressing the points as stated? Because the CrimethInc article he links says that DeJuan Young described experiencing attacks from white supremacists and others who infiltrated (not discussed in this article). It also fails to engage with this element of the Black Rose article, reading: "One of the most disturbing and important lessons from the CHOP is the need to develop well-organized and effective collective self-defense. On the night of Juneteenth, there were literally thousands of people in the space, many of them tourists and party goers."

The same article continues, "The first shooting was not the result of vigilante anti-protest political violence but violence that sprang from sources internal to the CHOP zone. In the days that followed, several more shootings took place in and around the zone. Though the shooters and motives are largely still unknown, it appears likely that a majority of the shootings were the result of interpersonal violence and gang retaliation."

And if we look back to Bonanno, he states: "It is precisely the comrades that are available for action who make up the specific minority. They will be the ones to prepare and realize the insurrection in the ways and forms which the experience of the revolutionary struggle as a whole has transmitted to us, taking into consideration the recent modifications of the State and the bosses. The method cannot fail to take account of minimal organizational forms of the base which will have to solve the various problems that will arise during the insurrectional preparation. In these organizational forms the responsibility for the work to be done must obviously fall on the revolutionary anarchist comrades and cannot be left to goodwill or improvisation. At this stage the very rules of survival impose the indispensable conditions of security and caution. The urgency of action puts an end to pointless chatter."

I wonder why he might say this. Could there have been any historical context for the development of his thought? Maybe some overtly authoritarian organisations in the 70s who kept pushing the working class out? Or any kind of heavy military shit going on in the 80s? Context matters for what people say and think.

Gilet Jaunes (Yellow Vest) movement in France

Can someone tell me what the ideology of the Yellow Vests was? And what happened to them over time? Because it takes only a few minutes to find out that, while anti-government, they weren't inherently a movement of anarchists. Or insurrectionary anarchists, at that.

Oh, and bonus because this is hidden in a citation:

One can’t help but recall the uncritical enthusiasm demonstrated by many insurrectionary anarchists during the 2014 Euromaidan uprising in Ukraine. Not only was there little interest in the political character of the struggle, but even in the influential presence of far-right elements. People were in the streets, in violent conflict with the brutality of the State… Molotovs were being thrown! ‘What else is there to a revolution?’ This is how an ‘anarchist’ thinks when they are not concerned with class struggle and the need to transform the structures of production and distribution.

Which ones? Because guess what, that shit wasn't true for where I am. Most anarchists of all ilks in Eastern Europe knew better. So let's try again: Who are you criticising here? Because I'm noticing a theme, and it's often for English-speaking anarchists (and some Western ones) to grab hold of movements that they don't understand and to support them uncritically.

Wanna guess what? I can do that with the Anarchist Federation and their uncritical support of the Trucker Convoy in Canada (something suspiciously missing, which I suppose is perhaps because of how overtly right-wing that was and how nonsensical it was that someone in London thought it was at all a left-wing protest), but that doesn't mean it applies to all anarchists. Just like other left-wing groups have held onto the Dutch farmers or have decided to be anti-Ukraine. There are moments where, yes, we need to criticise people for grabbing onto any right-wing movement as if it's a fucking lifesaver (it isn't); it's also worth recognising who is actually involved.

Should I blanket all anarchists for uncritically supporting things we definitely shouldn't? Or should I make examples of the ones who do that, which proves the point that not all of us uncritically support shit? I think the latter proves more useful.

The pamphlet is notable, however, in that – when not simply reducing our class struggle politics to either a strawman of conservative syndicalism, or an opportunistic tailing of social movements – it concedes so much to the mass-anarchist analysis.

So do most insurrectionary anarchists, if you'd bother to spend any time talking to them at all.

... And I can't continue commenting because it turns into something devoid of context and substance, focusing on who Bonanno quotes and how right the author might be about the position he's taken.

Quotes from here:

Neo-anarchism is a modern conception of anarchism largely informed by the feminist and peace movements of the 70s, the environmental movement of the 80s, the alter-globalisation movement of the 90s, and the Argentinian uprising of 2001; which coined the term horizontalidad (‘horizontalism’) to describe the movement’s rejection of representative democracy, the use of general assemblies to coordinate activity, and converting abandoned or bankrupt factories into cooperative businesses.

Reading to the end of the article, I'm confused. Why is he singling out these specific movements when talking about 'neo-anarchism'? And why is 'neo-anarchism' the chosen term, rather than being something that actually would linguistically make sense (as in, something that has changed and is different from classical anarchism)? What is he meaning by this?

Because there are... multiple definitions that I've encountered for 'neo-anarchism', and I don't know which one he's trying to choose. (And all of them, I find deeply inadequate and unnecessarily confusing.) If you're detailing 'lifestyle anarchism', then say that; that's at least clear and unlikely to cause confusion.

But again, why these movements? By choosing to highlight these movements, you're showing quite a bit of your ass here: Classical anarchism rarely, if ever, engaged in feminism (whole hosts of anarchists thought women didn't belong anywhere in the movement; people quote James Guillaume as if he was so valuable to the movement, but he thought anyone feminine didn't belong). Classical anarchism barely touched on the environment and was responding largely to industrialisation, when it did talk about it, and it often neglected the impacts on a lot of people with regards to the other movements (or simply was out of date to deal with events happening in the 90s, 2000s, and so on).

I would also highlight that classical anarchism really struggled considering its lack of care and consideration for any of these concepts, particularly with regards to race (which was left out here, as race-focused Civil Rights Movements also informed modern anarchism). It's also worth pointing out that queer liberation was part of this, which was also tied into disability justice movements. Some people mentioned it, but there was a lot of eugenics in classical anarchism (which hit a lot of people in all three of these groups).

I know there's limited space to consider these things, but they are all really important to include in how modern anarchism is being developed as we go along. It's also worth recognising how often a lot of people get written out of anarchism for focus on certain topics, and this is no different.

And it's also important to not simply denigrate these movements when there are others that a lot of lifestylists tend to refer back to, like communes.

Anarchists have generally agreed that the appropriate form of decision making depends on the circumstances concerned, and frequently endorsed variations of majoritarian voting; particularly in mass organisations based on commonalities other than close-ideological affinity, such as unions. The focus for anarchists has generally not been the form of decision-making, but instead the principles of free association and solidarity. Furthermore, though anarchists have always stressed the right of the minority to be free of the majority’s coercion, it is even more important that the great majority be free of minoritarian rule or sabotage.

True, many of our ideas are based around how decisions are made and our relationships to those decisions (and what we can do in response to them).

The fundamental limitations of the ‘public occupation’ or ‘autonomous zone’ , and the defeats which have followed from these limitations, have led some former advocates of the strategy to make a notable transition from neo-anarchism to parliamentary politics. Though inexplicable to some outside observers, the change is easily understood when we consider neo-anarchism’s peculiar view of ‘direct democracy’, or ‘horizontally organised spaces’, as the defining characteristic of anarchism, and not a theory of libertarian revolution against the State and capital.

Where, though? And what kind of public occupations are you talking about?

The EZLN (who do not describe themselves as anarchists but are people who many anarchists look toward for inspiration) have been largely successful in configuring occupation of space, even though they may often have to protect themselves from the government and other outside forces. This is, often, one of the ideas that people have when they think about these spaces.

However, when we look at examples in the United States, there are... problems. And many of them stem from a failure of people to unlearn the toxicity that resides within their own skulls. These examples tend to end in a handful of ways: with the fatal deaths of people (often people of colour, particularly Black people) at the hands of people (frequently white men) "protecting" the community or with some form of legal recognition (e.g., legalised squats).

Legalising squats often happens in Europe, too. However, a more common tactic is that people here tend to lose their squat because the government finds a "legitimate" reason to bulldoze it (see: ROG in Ljubljana).

And here's some more fun pieces of information for you to add to this context: I saw no one outside of Eastern Europe even talk about Slovenia. No one. Internationalism doesn't happen with the US, with Canada, with Australia or New Zealand, or with Western Europe. So again, I have to ask: Where? Which ones? And why don't these occupations succeed?

And why is so much solidarity expected from people outside of those named locations, who ask for international solidarity and are met with silence or hostility? It's telling.

If we accept the idea of anarchism as proposed by the neo-anarchists, there is no fundamental contradiction between anarchism and involvement in parliamentary politics.

Oh, "neo-anarchists" are referring to those who go to more liberal directions of politicking. I don't agree with this at all and think that this is a useless conflation of terminology and tactics. It also feels strangely as if it's denigrating whole hosts of ideas that classical anarchism left out, that have been pushing their way into a largely patriarchal anarchism that has refused to see us, and now we're being denigrated by someone trying to play with words and conflate positions.

More recently we have witnessed the absurdity of a self-proclaimed ‘libertarian socialist’, Gabriel Boric (who touts his association with Chile’s radical student movement), ascending to the presidency in the aftermath of a militant popular uprising.

Instead of ceding or handing over ways of talking about things (or creating confusing and conflicting terminology), why not call these people for what they are? Liberals. They are not any form of anarchist, new or otherwise. They are people who drape themselves in radical movements (even if they were there) to gain access to the power they seek. They're grifters or co-opters.

They are not anarchists. We can denounce them without giving them a title that confuses people.

The reality is that there is no way to fully ‘prefigure’ anarchy and communism through ‘directly democratic’ spaces of ‘autonomy’. Anarchism requires a specific anarchist movement and anarchist practice. Though we must certainly organise ourselves from the bottom up, with a consistent federalist structure, we can not simply bring about our ideal by ‘living anarchisticly’ or relating to one another as ‘horizontally’ as possible. Similarly, the content of anarchism can not be limited to the structure of our movement – its content of revolutionary class struggle must be maintained.

I think there's a balance to be struck, and we need to strike it. Not that we need to concede to party politics, but we need to recognise that some people can only 'live anarchistically', and many of you aren't doing shit to make it easier for us to go beyond that.

I've said this before: As a migrant, I don't have the stability to do a lot of outward anarchist stuff because I can be deported or have my visa denied for my views. Tell me, what are my fellow anarchists doing to prevent that? And not just for me, but for others.

Once again, there are a lot of conflicting variables that a lot of Western anarchists refuse to engage with because honestly? Most of us never have to deal with them, so we do fucking nothing to actually make it possible for people beyond the simple actions of engaging with each other through horizontal methods or doing what little we can.

All quotes come from this report (archive):

The central argument of this report is that this changed advertising environment should not happen by stealth; instead it should be discussed in the open and ultimately be up to society to decide what is advertised, when, where and how.

I agree with this central argument (though I have a feeling I will not agree on strategy). Advertising should be something that we all have deep conversations about, especially considering the ways in which it shapes our radical movements and the ways that we claim we want to live. I think it's actually subverting our stated goals, especially when we rely upon that of the status quo.

Because of its powers of persuasion and influence, governments have long since determined that it is in the public interest to legislate to restrict and limit advertising. From the earliest standards on accuracy, to bans on most advertisements for tobacco and now alcohol, from lines drawn in the sand about the advertising of medicines and watersheds for children’s TV, governments have always had to intervene on behalf of society.

I see their point but disagree with the analysis. They did not have to "intervene on behalf of society." They intervened because they saw where the tipping point was and wanted to maintain control by giving in somewhat. It enabled them to pretend they cared and shared the values we had, and this is particularly true with regards to tobacco and alcohol.

At the time of writing, the people in question might not have known what companies like Philip Morris were up to with things like the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World.

• In a free society we should be able to decide when and where we are subjected to advertising. If we as individuals decide to read a magazine or watch a commercial TV channel then we are accepting the adverts that come with them.

I disagree and think there is much to learn about the differences between "tolerate the existence of" and "accept the existence of." I do not accept that there are commercials and advertisements anywhere; I merely tolerate it because I have little control.

So the report calls for a ban on all advertising in public spaces, a limit to be placed on shopfront marketing, a ban on buzz marketing (public viral marketing techniques that are contrived to look authentic) and continuing restrictions on product placement on television.

I think we all need to get better about recognising this, especially as it happens in the virality of social media.

• The advertising industry increasingly uses children’s vulnerability to its persuasive powers to unlock their parents’ purse strings. Studies show that children under 12 do not have the cognitive ability to know whether they are being sold to, let alone make decisions on what they like, or choose to ignore the marketing altogether. The government recently called for the provision of improved education for children to deal with the growth in adverts they face. But as this report shows, many of these adverts are aimed at securing an emotional rather a rational response and therefore cannot be filtered out through education alone.

"Does not have the cognitive ability" is very strong wording here that I do not approve of.

Whether children recognise things as advertisements should also be part of the lessons they learn from older people in their lives. Often, we can't recognise advertisements (see: Marvel movies, which are literally advertisements we pay to go watch that then promote the next movie in the pipeline). It's also why product placement works on us, too (e.g., KFC sponsors a program and everyone in it is eating KFC). It would benefit us all to learn the mechanics of these things and pay more active attention and try to decrease our passive reception of them.

Also "make decisions on what they like." This sounds like the same kind of research that says that children don't know who they are. It would behoof these people to find sources that actually engage with children and their perceptions of the world, rather than the adult-centric models we've been enmeshed in.

This is also why I wouldn't want a government-sponsored curriculum around advertising and its impacts. I would not trust them to do any of that, particularly because their goals are entwined with those of the advertisers.

So the report calls for a ban on all television advertising to children under the age of 12. It also calls for an open debate on a ban on all alcohol marketing, recognising that teenage alcoholism can have a damaging effect on young people’s health. Banning advertising of alcohol could help reduce this. The government should follow the example now set by Spain, which outlaws 'cult of the body' adverts before the watershed; these are linked to the rise in anorexia and bulimia in young people.

I'm curious to learn something about Spain's laws outlawing "cult of the body" advertisements. What even qualifies? And how does that look 12 years later? (There's also apparently this thing about toy manufacturers having a 'self-regulatory code' to not use gender stereotypes in their advertising, but I wonder how successful that will even be.)

It's also really odd that it's only children under 12 that would receive this? Why not everyone? This isn't about striking a balance; this is literally about outlining acceptable advertising and unacceptable advertising. Why is it okay to bombard me but not a child? (It's not okay to bombard anyone.)

• Third, the advertising industry is increasingly working online and capturing the Internet by surveying and storing every click of information we make. This information is then used to target adverts directly at us. The Internet should be a socially valued ‘common good’ and its commercialisation for private gain should be resisted. So the report calls for Ofcom to review introducing new regulations to limit the amount of information being gathered, stored and used without our expressed permission.

This is fun, considering the GDPR and all the nonsensical ways this is currently being handled.

• Excessive advertising turns a never ending series of new needs into new wants, and crowds out the space for other visions of the good society, where time and relationships matter more than what we buy. Advertising encourages us to run ever faster on the treadmill of modern consumer life; in so doing it contributes to growing consumer debt, a number of social problems which this report discusses, and to the very real prospect of climate change beyond our ability to manage. So the report calls for a tax on all advertising that encourages greater consumption to limit its scope and slow the pace of growth for the good of society and the future of the planet.

"A tax on all advertising that encourages greater consumption" would be... literally all advertising. That would've been fewer words, but ("left-leaning") liberals always try to pretend they're saying something else.

• In recognition of the enormous creative skills in the industry and the potential to use their powers of persuasion for good social and environmental causes, and not just profit, the report calls for a time and resources levy to be placed on the advertising companies themselves, so that a small percentage of their workers’ time is used for constructive social purposes – not always for commercial interests. People could then be better persuaded to recycle, donate or volunteer.

This is weird to me. They want to decrease commercial advertising (good) but then want to prompt people to work on campaigns without a critical eye to what those campaigns promote. Why not let the workers have... time to themselves to be creative? To work on things that would improve their own local communities, not just in creating NGO advertising? This is a weird balance.

Also, what if the "volunteering" they want to do an advertising campaign for is... for a transphobic group? Or eugenicists disguising themselves as people who help autistics folks? Did anyone stop to consider the potential for harm here? Probably not.

• This report argues that the industry should be held to account for the adverts it creates. Companies are responsible for the products they make and we believe that advertising should be no exception. So we are calling for regulations to stipulate that advertising agencies have their name or logo on all the adverts they are responsible for creating. Transparency is important; advertising agencies should be recognised for their contribution to good causes as well as held to account for any work deemed to be harmful.

I don't really disagree here with pushing agencies to put their name on their projects. I've always thought it strange that I can't track back most advertisements to an advertising agency; I can only link it to the company it's advertising. And that makes sense, since they okayed it. But why shouldn't we know who also helped develop it?

• The bulk of advertising is still ‘regulated’ voluntarily through the Advertising Standards Authority. Given the importance of the industry and its reach and impact on so much of our lives, this is no longer acceptable. This report calls for the Advertising Standards Authority to be put on a statutory basis, setting out criteria on what types of adverts are unacceptable. It should:
  
• strengthen local authorities’ powers to restrict outdoor advertising;
• introduce in some circumstances a right of reply by charities etc to claims made in TV advertising;
• ban advertising on mobile phones.

I think making a list of 'acceptable' advertisements is a problem and will lead to further issues, so I wouldn't support this. I also think local authorities receive too much power to decide what is allowed on 'their' streets, ignoring what residents want.

I think everyone has the right to reply to claims made in advertisement, so I don't know why it should be limited. But I'm fine with keeping people out of my goddamned phone.

We are still coming out of the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s; the advertising industry and the big corporations they serve want not just to get us back on the treadmill of consumption as soon as possible, but for us to buy more than ever, using new techniques, technology and science. This puts us at a turning point: we either go back to where we left off on the route to the world of consumption or we decide to live a better and more balanced life in which we take more collective and democratic control over the world and in particular the market, which should exist to serve our interests – rather than us serving those of the market. To do that we must address the advertising effect.

Almost wonder what these people would make of what would happen a mere seven years later, compounding an economic crisis that hadn't actually rebounded in any meaningful way.

Introduction: advertising and the good society

The goal of advertising then is not the creation of happiness and consumer fulfilment. Instead the purpose and consequence seems to be the creation of a mood of restless dissatisfaction with what we have got and who we are so that we go out and buy more. Advertising is no longer there to inform about the advantages of one product over a rival. Society, in an age of relative abundance, has long since gone past the point of rational decision making when it comes to purchasing. Everything is about emotion and in particular the ability to tap into our deepest needs and insecurities to get us to buy more. Today happiness can only be fleeting, and must last little longer than the time it takes to carry the latest purchase home; then the process of wanting more and needing more must be started again.

Was this ever the true goal of advertising? Look back at the history prior to Bernays. Con artists advertised nonsense all the time in the hopes of hooking buyers into their phony products or projects. Advertising has never really been about informing, unless you count "informing people about its existence." It has always hidden problematic elements, even in its oldest stages.

For now we should reflect on a world where everyone is on a consumer treadmill, spurred on in large part by the role of advertising in creating ever more new things to need. Others have it, so we want it. In this way advertising takes the form of a collective action problem. Driven on by the seductive images of success and aspiration we compete with each other for status, but simply make ourselves feel like failures as we out bid each other for the latest car, gadget or holiday. We cannot win this race because there is no finishing line as an endless stream of new things to desire are created and sold to us. In the crowd, if the person at the front stands on tip toes then we all have to; and everyone is worse off.

I have some questions: What is the impact of advertising on communities who actively discuss these things and actively discourage competition and material status? Because there are people within our own communities who don't engage in this nearly as much. How do they exist? And why don't we look at what they may do to help curb what these advertisements drive? I'm genuinely interested and feel like not enough is done to consider what our own actions do in combination with those of advertisers and large corporations or governments.

In suggesting this we are not saying that people should stop buying or advertisers should stop advertising altogether. Buying things is important to us as an expression of identity, sense of belonging and difference, but many of us buy too much.

Excuse me, what. Buying things is important to us as an expression of identity? How? Cultural creation and the development of items is one thing, but the act of buying them isn't an expression of identity. I could very easily have another brand of monitor, a different computer, and so on; my life wouldn't be different. Perhaps my choices lead me to choose the brands I do because the brands I choose accommodate the things I need.

I don't particularly care about Gigabyte as a company, but I like that their existence in certain areas where I live makes it easier to obtain a laptop with a keyboard layout that doesn't confuse me and force me to relearn what it looks like (when I need to look at it). It wouldn't matter to me if Dell, Lenovo, or Microsoft decided to start selling laptops with the keyboard layout I prefer; as long as I could find one, that's enough for me.

My choice is less on brand and more on what I need. Is that an expression of identity? Kind of. It at least highlights what language I use most often. But is it a necessary one? Not really. I could relearn keyboard layouts.

I also don't find the 'buying' of things to be related to my identity. I'm not the one making decisions about what is available, how, where, etc. When I buy clothes, perhaps they match some of my style preferences... but they are not perfect because that's the whole thing with fast fashion. When I make them, they are closer to perfect or more tolerable. When I have someone else make them for me, the same applies. (Except the latter is something I can't really afford.)

Money makes some things easier – it means you don’t have to worry about a big gas bill, or how to pay for the next school trip – but happiness is elusive and can’t be bought.

Mate, "happiness" is a shitty goal. Being happy, wanting to be happy... that's all fine. Making that your goal in life? Ridiculous. And not because this world is harsh or hard or difficult or whatever, but because our lives can't always be happy. We can't always be happy, and sometimes we need to not be happy. (Toxic positivity helps no one.)

That said, I hate this framing. In a capitalist society, everyone knows that having money makes it easier for people to be happy because they have less time worrying. So this framing is nonsense from the jump.

Advertising recognises this – which is why Nokia, the phone manufacturer, has the catch line ‘connecting people’, and there is a range of snacks called Friendchips. Volvo tells us that ‘Life is better if lived together’ and Orange that ‘Without others I am nothing’. Advertising tries to convince us that we need to purchase to experience fulfilling social relationships. But in attempting to purchase the relationships we need we degrade and damage them.

Have we considered that advertising is making use of alienation in society? Also, I wonder if this belief has changed in the past decade because it feels... so... out of date and out of touch. Or perhaps it just always did for me because it was never a thing I grew up hearing. Yes, the advertisements tried to sell us togetherness, but they... never met that. And the things that did are things that have almost ensured that people don't interact (e.g., video games).

Microsoft is currently spending millions trying to tell us that we invented Windows 7. If we think we built it then they think we will buy more of it.

Again, how effective is this campaign? Because we all knew in 2013, just as we do now, that there are effectively three operating systems with two being the major stakeholders: Windows and Mac (with Linux being behind those). We're all well aware that if we buy new computers, they are unlikely to come with anything else.

So what is the goal of such a campaign? Because, as an advertising one that plans to make us consume more, I can't imagine that it's really very effective. What is it doing to us? That should be what you're addressing in this report and any others in the future.

For a better society we need to get the balance right between decisions made as consumers and as citizens. Too much advertising that encourages too much consumerism undermines the chances of a good society and a good, well-balanced life.

I do not find this at all useful because we shouldn't be focusing on anything "as consumers." We should be focusing on the kind of world we want, full stop. Being a consumer should be part of that world, and we should be discussing the role of the consumer and what we want that role to mean.

Personally, I want to delete all elements of capitalist consumption.

Advertising can be an important part of the good society but it should be about providing information to us as consumers and citizens.

Please, tell me more about how advertising "can be an important part" or ever provided information. (The thing is that it hasn't. Ever. The goal is to obscure a lot of information in service if selling something, ergo you cannot have useful advertising.)

No one wants a world in which we don’t all share the enjoyment of funny adverts.

I would be very fine without "funny adverts" because we could start putting humour somewhere else.

And in times of crisis, like wars or natural disasters, public adverts can play a critical role in mobilising shared effort.

And spreading propaganda for people involved in those spaces to make them seem more friendly than they really are. For example, it's not surprising that during LGBTQ+ Pride there is an uptick in companies trying to rainbow wash themselves to "support" us. It's particularly fun when Raytheon does it, trying to make themselves look fantastic and wonderful! Same goes for the literal CIA. Both of these institutions participate in war crimes, but they're made to look nicer during that time because they're being supportive. They do not care that they are also responsible for murdering queer people outside of the United States and Western Europe.

Public adverts can easily be replaced with anything else. We do not need them. Sloganeering has done us very little good.

The first is the issue of choice and place. People should have the freedom to choose when they are exposed to advertising: when to look at product information and when not to. If we decide to buy a newspaper or magazine, or to subscribe to a television channel, then we are making the choice to look at the adverts that come with it.

No, we are not. I do not subscribe to cable television anywhere and opt-in to the advertisements; the advertisements come as part of the package, and I don't get a choice on what they are for. I also do not get a choice about which shows they choose to advertise on, so companies are able to buy slots to support shows that I find incredibly insidious.

I do not get to choose who buys ad space in newspapers or in magazines. I do not get to choose anything other than my own subscriptions, which does not influence the advertisements at all.

Here we should be free from private and commercial interest, and billboards and shop signs should not be allowed to disfigure our towns and roadsides.

Here's where I have mixed feelings. I absolutely think that advertising? Needs to stop. But there have been so many interesting signs that were artfully done as part of shops, which people in places like Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and North America absolutely do not get to see. There were nail salons with amazing shop signs that were just so interesting to me when I lived in Taiwan; there were shop signs that were actually really funny. There were cute ones in China.

Perhaps it's also the fact that we don't look at our shop spaces as places for art and showing people what we do in an artistic manner. This isn't to glorify China and Taiwan (they have so much light pollution that, if you're photosensitive, it can quite literally make you sick), but it is to say that there's a bizarre refusal to recognise what makes one interesting and the other obnoxious.

Which is funny for a "middle of the road, let's find some balance" kind of report.

Second, our civil liberties demand that the Internet should be a site for common good and not commercial practice without our permission. What we look at and search for should not be recorded without our expressed permission so that it can be used to compile data to sell us more.

I think if you actually mixed with people who focused more on what happens with our data, beyond advertising, you'd have a better argument. I don't disagree with this; I find it intrusive for services to sell me IVF because of my age and (wrongly) perceived gender, along with an (incorrect) assumption that all people owning uteruses want to give birth. I find the sales practices of raising prices based on how many times I've looked at something obscene.

But I really think this argument would be so much better if paired with what data tracking actually does beyond the realm of advertisement.

Third, children should be better protected. Children cannot deal with the increasing blitz of advertising they are exposed to; they do not understand its purpose and are at risk of exploitation. Armies of psychologists and child developments experts are recruited to work out how to sell more to children at an age when they don’t even understand the concept of being sold to. They need our protection.

This rhetoric is harmful. We need to work with children to both help them navigate something that is, unfortunately, not going to stop any time soon and to help them decrease their interaction with it. However, this "increasing blitz of advertising" doesn't only impact kids. Why focus on children when it impacts all of us?

And again, the protection thing rings hollow. What children need is for adults to stop inserting ourselves into their lives; they need those "armies of psychologists and child development experts" to quit, pure and simple. We need to give them an incentive to quit, to stop their harmful behaviours.

A study by the Children’s Society found that hyper consumption is causing a range of problems for children, including high family break-up, teenage unkindness and pressures towards premature sexualisation.

This feels like a really shoddy description of whatever that study found, particularly because it makes it sound like children are responsible for their families breaking up due to their own hyper-consumption. It's also not even referenced in the notes for this report beyond this, which is very strange.

I believe the reference is to a 2008 study (news article), which I could only find on the Internet Archive because the page no longer exists.

Fun to note some of the things in that report that should've been excluded, such as use of obesity as a metric (obesity does not measure health). It also politely demonises mothers who leave fathers, and the people writing the Compass report keep attributing that to financial stability as a result of advertisements. The study they use does not state that and doesn't even make that assumption. (It doesn't discuss how women having more financial independence lets them leave abusive husbands, so... Whoops.)

Anyway, there's a weird belief written throughout this paper that middle-aged people are better at reading advertisements, and I feel like that's just bias because most of these reports are written by people who are neither children nor the elderly. (And honestly, so many of us have bought into shit like "hustle culture" and capitalist programming. So how are we less susceptible?)

Fourth, society as a whole, working through government, should decide what constitutes the good society and what role advertising should play in it.

If our current governments refuse to participate in creating 'good' societies, why should we bother doing anything through them and not through more local measures? Genuine question, especially considering I have the current knowledge of how we're ignoring pandemics and fatal illnesses for the sake of economy.

Fifth, the advertising industry, because of the leading role it plays in the creation of a consumer society, has a responsibility to provide at least some help for ‘good causes’ free of charge and should be praised for the good campaigns it runs and held to account for those that are socially or environmentally damaging.

What qualifies as a "good cause?" Should we support the major organisations because they're well-known, even though they often engage in harmful rhetoric? And also have more funds than smaller ones? What if an organisation is part of a fascist pipeline but has rhetoric that average people buy into? Because... this sounds damaging, too.

The problems caused by the advertising effect

It is impossible to prove a causal link with the growth in advertising but in his book Affluenza, Oliver James describes this new consumerism as a form of selfish capitalism, intimately intertwined with cyclical consumerism: the more anxious and depressed we are, the more we must consume, the more we consume, the more anxious and depressed we become – unable to break the cycle this will only get worse.

If it's impossible to prove a causal link, perhaps don't try to pretend that there is one everywhere else? Also, is it just me or does everyone who mentions Affluenza have a severe problem around ableism and ageism? Because we're hitting close to the "acceptable" ableism of being shit towards neurodivergent people (who simultaneously are being ignored and manipulated by these reports).

Indeed David Cameron recently spoke out against the ‘harmful and creepy’ sexualisation of children, blaming irresponsible business for its aggressive approach: ‘The marketing and advertising agencies even have a term for it: KGOY “Kids Growing Older Younger”… It may be good for business, but it’s not good for families and it’s not good for society, and we should say so.’

How? I mean, this is something that is true (and can be seen in the ways in which child stars and teenage celebrities are treated), but this is more than just advertising. Also, the creepiest institutions are ones that are enabled by "good causes."

Like the Church.

Also, pretty sure David Cameron is harmful for society... as he has shown even during a global pandemic in the Greensill scandal. And in 2013, he decided to be a dick about immigration... like a lot of Europeans, which negatively impacts children a lot. So I don't know that I'd trust him on doing something to "protect kids."

Advertising is the business of creating discontent and unhappiness, and it is working.

False. Advertising can create discontent and unhappiness, but our whole lives do that, too. Advertising is trying to sell us shit through any means necessary. That also includes things like toxic positivity.

Most people probably won’t get into debt to buy a Jaguar – often it is purchases of more trivial things like clothes and shoes that lead people gradually to creep into greater debt and sometimes it is the basics like rent and food that drive people to borrow more.

Here are a few hints that are unrelated to your report and thus not things you give a shit about:

• Give people free housing.
• Give people free food.
• If we're required to wear clothes and shoes (which we are, especially in winter), make them free, too.

Perhaps your issues lie more with the economic system at hand and less the advertisements.

In the UK as individuals we now owe a collective £1.3 trillion on credit cards, store cards, mortgages and loans. This figure is around 140 per cent of household income and has increased dramatically over the last decade; it stood at 105 per cent just ten years ago.

Do people have mortgages because of advertisements? Or is there another reason? Did students take out student loans because of advertisements? Or is there another reason? Do people buy food and clothes on credit because of advertisements? Or is there another reason?

This is all correlative to the stated goal of this report.

Low income households with debt have the highest level of debt in relation to their income, meaning that their financial insecurity is much greater than those even slightly up the ladder, and this has got worse over the last decade.

Do people have debt because of advertisements?

This level of debt is bad not just for individuals but for economic stability, as the root of the current financial crisis has been traced to the collapse of the sub-prime market and easy credit.

Which can be traced to... greed? Perhaps. The debt conversation feels like an obscured way to say you want to blame individuals.

We are also working harder and longer in order to stay on the treadmill, to make the money necessary to conform to the model of human life that is advertised. This means that we are increasingly time poor.

So, let's also consider the fact that: More work doesn't mean more money. A lot of people work overtime (see: teachers) and not get paid for it. At all. This work-life balance has been in play for... decades. People have been taught that doing this means their performance reviews get better! But they don't. Companies don't care and exploit people who overwork.

So, now let's think about this: How does this relate to advertising?

It largely doesn't. Our lives on the "work-to-spend treadmill" are more out of necessity than desire for stuff. You already acknowledged that we spend more money on necessities that we require to live, which are not things that are generally advertised for. (Lidl may have advertisements, but it often can be the only grocer in the area or have low competition. And if Lidl is all I've got, its advertisements only tell me when its prices increase or when they have sales.)

We need time to be parents, friends, neighbours, volunteers and citizens. But we are constantly rushed and harried, in a long hours, high-spending culture. Working and spending is now prioritised over other social activities, particularly care. There is a finite amount of time and we all have a finite amount of money – if we choose to spend our time and money consuming we lose out on the other things. Advertising contributes to this loss of balance through the pressure it places on us to consume.

How? Genuinely, how? There are elements of it, but you are not talking about it at all. You made some really base criticisms without actually addressing any of the issues.

Also why is work prioritised? Is it because worker protections are bullshit everywhere? Oh. Maybe. Is that the fault of advertising? Not inherently, but there are advertising companies working on propaganda (otherwise known as public relations) to decrease worker protections! But you didn't mention that, did you? Oops.

Almost half of the clothes in British wardrobes go unworn – this is around 2.4 billion items.

Question: How much of this is due to bad fit, online shopping, poor return policies that harm consumers, and poor quality of materials? I don't want this information without the context, and I can say as a fat person that a lot of the clothes I own go unworn for all of these reasons.

900 million items of clothing are sent to landfill each year

Whoever wrote this should've collaborated with someone discussing fast fashion (Ghana, Haiti and Bangladesh, etc). There have been a lot of times they could've addressed this, even in 2013.

We waste 500,000 tons of food per year; it is worth £400 million and disposal costs another £50 million – only a fraction is handed to charitable organisations that could use it.

Are there regulations related to how food waste can be used? Because a lot of places prohibit giving away food waste to homeless people and shelters. Perhaps that might be something to look into beyond advertising.

There are other waste facts listed, and I feel like they need to link up with others to really figure out some of the problems beyond advertising. There are too many interconnected things that they ignore.

Advertising, a profession that should be helping us, is acting to hinder us.

It was never meant to help us, what the whole entire fuck is your deal.

How can we counter the advertising effect?

Ban advertising in public spaces

And leave this decision to whom? Examples listed include the Clean City Law in Sao Paulo, which saw some initial positive impacts. However, it feels like it is encouraging advertisers to simultaneously buy space and co-opt art for their own benefits. They also started reintroducing advertisements in a more controlled manner, so... it's not really ad-free these days, either.

Which goes back to: Who gets to decide how to use that space? Because the State, in the form of small local governments, does not seem to be ideal and often seems to run counter to the needs of the people in that city. Where do the fines go if people break that law? What are they used for? Like. Lots of questions here about how things function, especially if someone is going to say that we should be modeled off of these systems.

Of course the advertising industry and its lobbyists will say that people should have the ‘freedom’ to experience such adverts and that they can choose to ignore them.

I find it ironic this report is going to fight this idea, since they also decided that we "consent" to advertisements by buying magazines or subscribing to services. Which... still isn't how it works.

We should choose as individuals what we want to consume and not have the decision made for us, without our consent.

I agree with this, but it's still funny considering they literally said we accept the advertisements for services we buy when that isn't true.

Control advertising on the Internet

I agree with this to an extent, but they also miss something that really should be discussed with the "unauthorised data collection." The problem is that it is, technically, authorised by our consenting to be on the service; no one reads those terms of services, which we probably should. We don't because they're so excruciatingly long and full of legalese, and most of us don't have the necessary background to really make use of that information.

And even if we did, there are loopholes. And even without loopholes, we've consented to changing rules. And we consent by remaining on those services.

It's a vicious cycle that really should be focused on more than what these superficial arguments do. And it's also worth recognising that they are doing research on us, which actually is unethical and is the direction we should be taking in order to start breaking this shit down. None of us consented to be experimented on, yet these companies have been doing so almost from day one. Why not discuss that?

End the commercialisation of childhood

Children, whose minds aren’t yet ready to know they are being sold something, should be protected from adverts and commercial messages.

I really hate this phrasing. If we, as adults, worked with children to help them learn and also learn from them, we could actually be doing something of value and use. If you, as an adult, sit with a child and discuss advertisements with them and talk through with them about why they want something? Maybe you might also instill some values that would help break this shit down. It's like talking about children as things to be acted upon and for doesn't help anyone at all.

It does, however, make you feel smarter and better about yourselves.

Anyway, I also know a lot of adults who are the same age as me who cannot tell the difference between an advertisement and entertainment. I know a lot of people who are easily scammed. I know a lot of people who think certain behaviours are real and not trolling or viral marketing campaigns. Adults also don't have the capacity you're claiming of children, especially if they aren't reading things critically or trained to ask questions about what they're reading.

Most children under the age of 12 cannot tell when they are being solicited; advertising encourages dissatisfaction, and encourages children to pester the life out of their parents every time they go to the shops. The purpose of advertising aimed at young children is to use them to influence how a proportion of parents’ income is spent. Although the government promises action nothing has yet been done, and it is time to end to the commercialisation of children.

If it is "designed to get kids to pester their parents," perhaps their parents should also be more willing to explain why they cannot or will not buy something. Maybe we should start looking at ways to help adults have more time to work with children, maybe we should stop segregating kids into kids-only spaces where they can only learn from each other (and a handful of adults who are busy with all of them at once).

It's like society's structures are designed to ensure this continues. Perhaps that's our issue, too. And this is addressing a symptom.

In the USA it is currently being argued by a team at the National Bureau of Economic Research that banning fast-food advertising on television in the USA could reduce the number of overweight children by as much as 18 per cent.

Fatness is not an indicator of health. How does this decrease help? Why will it happen? What does being "overweight" (a designation with frequently shifting and unclear boundaries) have to do with any of this? Other than as a scare tactic because people are fatphobic.

The young are awash with messages about drinking alcohol and about the increase in binge drinking and anti-social behaviour brought on by alcohol.

And rather than build a society around clear discussion and explanation of what things can do to people, how they can impact us, and so on? We continually push the regulation into silencing conversations. If children are "awash" in messaging about drinking, perhaps we need to consider broader social structures and how to work with those in order to provide them a healthier environment. Legislating it into a taboo does not do anything. (Also, who the hell is advertising alcohol during children's TV?)

Tax advertising

The polluter should pay – in this case the advertising industry is helping to pollute the planet through the unnecessary creation of wasteful consumer desires.

Questions: How would the money from such taxes be used? Where? For whom? Would companies be able to 'offset' this the way they do for carbon emissions? Where one company buys credits for an 'advertisement' cap from another company? What kind of external markets could this create and would those exacerbate the issue?

The same applies to fines. In some places, that would go to policing. I don't think that's very helpful.

Introduce a time and resources levy

The most persuasive minds in the land should be used occasionally for constructive social and public purposes, not just for commercial interests.

Who gets to define what any of this means? I find that highly suspect, especially considering...

We suggest that 5 per cent of advertising industries’ staff time should be deployed to encourage us to do the right thing rather than just buy the next thing. There would be no need to prescribe what good causes the agencies would work on, the staff and companies could pick for themselves. Then it would be easy to regulate and engender greater commitment for the work carried out. But the list of good causes the company worked for would be published and publicised each year and we are sure their clients would not pick advertising agencies that had not worked for the right people.

So here's a great scenario: An ad agency decides that working on a transphobic campaign is actually a very good thing (the "right thing," you might say) because that's the world they want to create. They want to legislate trans people back into the closet. So you tell them they have to advertise something about volunteering, donation, whatever... and they get to say "We're doing our part in the social landscape," and they're creating a more hostile environment. Using your rules against you.

Also... Out of 100% of a person's time, you want 5% on "doing good." So 95% of their time (very balanced) goes to normal ads as is. Cool.

Put the agencies’ mark on their work

I actually find this to be something that agencies should've been doing for ages. The fact they haven't should indicate their true purpose (which is not, as these people seem to think, informing us).

Introduce statutory regulation of the advertising industry

Who gets to make these choices? Because once again, this is not democratic in nature if it is the decisions of a hierarchical structure that are imposed upon a community. (Voting for representatives does not inherently make their decisions democratic because they do not inherently represent anyone beyond themselves, including the constituents who voted for them.)