Boycott Dangerous Words

A specter is haunting the anarchist movement. Appearing everywhere we least expect them, dangerous words threaten the stability, persistence and impotence of all the ideologies of traditional left anarchism. Anarchists unite! Rally with us to defeat this menace and to defend the rapidly vanishing integrity of leftism.

Beware the appearance of all publications questioning the necessity of work, technology, and industrial production.  In order to maintain society as we know it, these are all obviously essential instructions, and no serious left anarchist will ever question them.  Did Bakunin ever question the need for production?  Did Kropotkin ever advocate running naked and free?  Did Comrade Bookchin ever approve of communal pleasure or the realization of desire?   Of course not!  All serious left anarchists recognize that our first responsibility is to shoulder the burden of production:  to keep the factories churning out commodities, to keep people in their mandatory roles of worker, citizen, and consumer.  Only with the preservation of capitalist categories and institutions can we hope to seize the reigns of production and put them at the service of the proletariat, of free municipalities, and thus of the people itself.

Beware all notions of egoism, expansive individuality, radical subjectivity and the liberation of desire.   These notions are only promulgated in order to sap the will of devoted leftists and naive citizens alike, turning them away from the real struggles.  Our struggles are selfless.  They require self-discipline, reliance on the guidance of correct ideology, the fulfillment of our moral duties, and the suppression of any desires for immediate enjoyment or possession of our world. Real struggles require real organizations--organizations with bylaws, mandated delegates and artfully constructed self-images.  Real struggles help people fight back!  They help workers build unions to achieve higher wages and better working conditions.  They help municipalities take control of local public utilities and build sewage wetlands.  They support the glamour of desperate  people engaged in armed conflict in other lands.

But beware of all self-proclaimed anarchists who have encouraged open revolt or who have had the bad taste to take up arms in the U.S. itself.  Disavow any knowledge of Ted Kaczynski.  Belittle his sanity.   Distance true anarchism from anyone stupid enough to engage in attacks which might encourage repressive forces to target anarchists.  We must strive to live in peaceful coexistence with cops, journalists, judges, and academics.  And we certainly mustn't challenge any of the essential shibboleths of industrial civilization.

Remember that only with the leftist reformation of capitalism, only with the evolution of society to a higher stage of civilization will we at long last win the struggle and march into the promised land of Progress, Science for the People, and true ideological Enlightenment.  Notions of abandoning civilization, of going native, of refusing all compulsory roles, moralities, and civilized restraints are the most dangerous of all.  Those who criticize both left and right, and all those who refuse to identify with traditional factions must disappear.