We've Come For Your Trust Funds: Calls for Submissions for Vengeance #3

Sunday, April 05 2009 @ 09:18 PM CDT

Contributed by: Anonymous

Call for submissions for Vengeance #3, journal of 'revolutionary proletarian culture.' Anyone interested in submitting to the next issue is welcome to contribute to the next issue. A class conflict is coming – within what is often referred to as the 'anarchist movement.' Fuck that, it isn't coming, it's already here. The weight of the middle class and petite-bourgeois is dead to us. Despite the push of anarchism to remove us from it's ranks and like the wider culture – silence our voices from within it, we have managed to find ourselves across the country. Whether through the internet, at gatherings and conferences, and more importantly on the streets, workplaces, and communities where we live – we have come to learn one important one thing: being working class and a revolutionary anarchist is not a contradiction.

“...Teeth marks on my back from the K-9. Dark memories from when there was no sunshine...”
-Akon

A class conflict is coming – within what is often referred to as the 'anarchist movement.' Fuck that, it isn't coming, it's already here. The weight of the middle class and petite-bourgeois is dead to us. Despite the push of anarchism to remove us from it's ranks and like the wider culture – silence our voices from within it, we have managed to find ourselves across the country. Whether through the internet, at gatherings and conferences, and more importantly on the streets, workplaces, and communities where we live – we have come to learn one important one thing: being working class and a revolutionary anarchist is not a contradiction. Perhaps we found ourselves when we caught each other rolling our eyes during yet another idiotic meeting or found ourselves drinking ourselves into a stupor at the thought of having to spend another minute around such a collection of social rejects. We didn't join up to fix bikes and talk about vegan cooking. We're tired of being the weird ones for not looking like Huck Finn or not giving a fuck about the latest contra dance. Our violence against this system is a reflection of the violence that we have experienced based on our relationship to the commodity based form. Capital has imposed itself upon us our entire lives – often through its specialists from within the middle class. When we entered the revolutionary movement, we found it to be filled with them as well. We are tired of running and being quiet. We are tired of doing the work and putting in the hours and not having our voices and experiences represented. The de-facto image of the anarchist as a guilt ridden middle class white male does not interest us because it is not our reality. We will impose upon this pathetic excuse for a movement what we want. We desire to appropriate the resources from the middle class elements and make them our own. We desire to create an insurrectionary street based movement from within the working class. If this interests you – please take a part in Vengeance<.

Vengeance as a personal project has served it's purpose. I have no desire at this point to continue to create a zine about making stencils of people, writing bad poems, or more importantly, complaining about Food Not Bombs type projects. I think I have articulated my views on why one should “make the total destroy on middle class anarchism” probably as much as possible. The feedback and positive response to the magazine has lead me to wish to open up Vengeance to others that may be interested in articulating themselves in a similar way. Some points of affinity for the publication are:

1.) A commitment to an insurrectionary politic; be it anarchist, indigenous, communist, or autonomist. By insurrectionary, we mean action which seeks to maximize the power of the class through confrontational activity and refusal that seeks to maximize our worlds through becoming a social force that cannot be reasoned with by capital. We are the boa constrictor. We attack and we move forward. We then stand our ground, keeping the space we have seized. We attack again. We are interested in horizontal, affinity/crew based forms of organization that are centered around the streets (which includes our workplaces and communities) as the starting point for our activity.

2.) A commitment to working class voices within the revolutionary movement. Whether you identify as a poor person, working class, proletarian, wage slave, or whatever – we want to find you and what you have to say.

3.) A rejection of activism – or the specialization of social change as a vehicle for social revolution. Instead we desire class conflict and street based action. We believe in the power of refusal. Of confrontation with enemies. In collective action. In the glory of proletarian violence for the sake of attack against misery and creating space and power for ourselves.

If you are interested in submitting articles, analysis, or reviews to the next issue of <span style="font-style:italic;">Vengeance</span>, please email me by May 1st to let me know what your interest is. Send emails to: crudo_vengeance@hushmail.com.

Or, hit me up on my blog at: wewillhaveourvengeance.blogspot.com

I just got my 30 days,
crudo

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We've Come For Your Trust Funds: Calls for Submission

Authored by: alta fuoco on Monday, April 06 2009 @ 03:25 PM CDT

I'm excited to see the way that Vengeance takes shape. It's been very nice and, how you say, affirmative?, to have a journal that locates me, and caresses my proletarian body. I think others that feel the weight of miserable wages, rents, and irreversible capitalist time are held by this publication and perhaps experience flickers of less isolation, albeit, what did Crudo say?, bad poetry and and stencils.

I want to, however, face the problematic of "being" proletarian or working class--which is to say, being an identity. How do we reconcile the fiction of fixed identity with our other bodies, other desires, and the ways we are modified? Must I gloss over my other bodies, with their foolish desires, in order to be fully working class? And which working class are we speaking of? Some left-communists and anarchists alike, for example, will argue that although Unions and politics only serve the interests of the capital, the desire for more money and less work will always be with the working class, and thus they ought participate in these structures in order to dissolve them. Others suggest that only autonomous organizations can authentically confront capital--which can have an incredible multiplicity of meaning. And yet others will adhere to another fiction of the working class, that of the working class identity as a set moral imperative; where what is at stake is maintain workingclassness. This can be what Nietzsche's little ass calls a politics of resentment, where we measure our self(being) up to an enemy and be the opposite of that. We see this in some of the practices you critique as being "middle class," the politics of refusal, and abstention, but we could also see this in the ol' class war journal. While its cool to fucking really hate rich people and want their stuff, I think we risk enjoying the ways our power can be fixed and functional through fixed identity. To enjoy the pleasure of being this or that identity as fixed, is not a far step from eroticizing stasis--and thus the state-form. Seriously, no fucking dictatorship of the proletariat. To be a total fucking nerd: negating the negation is when felt when we can become something far worse than the working class, when we can become unrecognizable and incoherent; when our power is practiced in way that could make another state but at every moment feels its potentially for its impotency at reproducing the state-form.

A bit of shameful earnestness: Should we exclude our friends and potential friends who come from wealthy backgrounds? How do we occupy the position of embodied experiences of exploitation because of capital and the desire and need that is felt to destroy in a way that does not seek to include by excluding?

Someone said, "...one is proletarian, when one is acting against their own alienation." which is to say not only by one's relationship to the means of material production. How else is one proletarian?

Authored by: crudo on Monday, April 06 2009 @ 03:55 PM CDT

"I want to, however, face the problematic of "being" proletarian or working class--which is to say, being an identity. How do we reconcile the fiction of fixed identity with our other bodies, other desires, and the ways we are modified? Must I gloss over my other bodies, with their foolish desires, in order to be fully working class?" -

Sounds like an interesting topic to write about for V3.

"We see this in some of the practices you critique as being "middle class," the politics of refusal, and abstention, but we could also see this in the ol' class war journal." -

Care to expand upon this? I can't respond to the rest, I really have no idea what you're saying.

"A bit of shameful earnestness: Should we exclude our friends and potential friends who come from wealthy backgrounds?" -

I don't know. I really only see other anarchists from wealthy backgrounds when I go out of my geographical area. As I've always said, my writings are from a personal place and one of lived experiences. But no, I don't think we should 'push' them out, but then again, I don't think that they should be the majority either.

---
where the proles where the proles where the proles at?

Authored by: automatonsrevolt on Tuesday, April 07 2009 @ 02:49 AM CDT

That link to your blog didn't work for me.
Also in response to the question "where the proles where the proles where the proles at?" My answer is that they're in the IWW. The IWW isn't explicitly anarchist but in my experience the vast majority are class struggle anarchists. check it out: www.iww.org

Authored by: HPWombat on Tuesday, April 07 2009 @ 04:00 AM CDT

Hey IWW guy!
Have you read Vengeance #2 and seen how the magazine is approaching issues. Maybe you would have something to say in response to it? I'm sure individuals in the IWW could benefit from discussing Vengeance and how that might relate to their own lives, maybe even contribute to thoughts around the magazine? I would be interested in reading them.

---
embrace the dork side

Authored by: intifada-oner on Tuesday, April 07 2009 @ 02:59 PM CDT

The proletariat is not the working class but the class that negates work. The proletariat is the end of all classes and thus is the end of the present society (class society). The proletariat is the dissolution of fixed identity, including their own. Thus, the proletariat is the auto-destructive class. Any other definition of the proletariat is mystification.

I'll run the risk of some you kicking the shit out of me in person, or at least flaming me online, but this quote from Mr. Boils-on-my-skin-Beard-on-my-face gives us a hint on how to sniff out the middle class:
The petty bourgeoisie “believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided... What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically.“

And so infoshop debates have been going on for longer than a century and a half, with the interests of Oakland petty bourgeoisie store owners defended here in posts, sounds like a 2009 defence of Marx's description of shopkeepers dismantling insurgent barricades so that consumers could enter boutiques in The Class Struggle in France, 1848 to 1850. And then theres politics... disgusting politics and those that wallow in it; union bureaucrats, NGO execs, activists, and the “anarchists” who mimic any of the former are as petite-bourgeoisie as any self-employed artisan because their “progressive views,” usually about some form of “progressive” ownership, is the counter movement to proletariat self-negation. Comrades, are often caught up by the American IMAGE of the middle class, a smoke screen to end class struggle after WWII, try, and fail, to locate the little-bougie by their customs, culture, suburban location, or consumption habits, a mystification that neglects large chunks of the exploited. Using Leave it to Beaver for class analysis is as backwards as using the activist concept of “privilege.”

"A bit of shameful earnestness: Should we exclude our friends and potential friends who come from wealthy backgrounds?"

The concept of wealth is as troublesome as privilege. I can easily imagine a member of the ruling class in some village in some underdeveloped country, who acts like a big asshole and exploits the entire village, but makes far less than the American median income. The ruler may not be “wealthy,” but still, you gotta represent, and that ruler deserves a knife in the heart. At the same time, there are American wage laborers (exploited) who some stupid-ass-trash-eating-dumpster-anarcho-man would call a yuppie off the jump.

I think it's good to keep in mind that the bourgeoisie aren't bourgeoisie because they are rich. But they are rich because they are bourgeoisie. Because they control the economy, means of production, and people. A social relationship that we ought to blow up with dynamite, TNT, and other stuff that goes boom. In destroying capitalism, we destroy wealth, the other way is reform not revolution.

But, for real, for real, rich kids are annoying and you can usually smell them miles away. They are the anarchos who always complain about how they never have money when their parent send it to them. They suck, they never give their parent's money to projects and when it comes down to it they will probably snitch you out. They master activist speak, ie they talk like losers, they smell like shit, look like shit, fuck them again, fuckin bastids.

---
Who cares about the victim if the gesture is beautiful. - Laurent Tailhade

Authored by: beret on Tuesday, April 07 2009 @ 03:47 PM CDT

Some of my favorite writing by Crudo is in Vengeance #1 where he addresses the use of class divisions by the powers that be, and how everyone thinks of themselves as middle class. Like, just because you have an ipod or a house doesn't mean you're not working class.

Authored by: rechelon on Tuesday, April 07 2009 @ 04:54 PM CDT

Yeah it does.

Anyway for those of us forcibly excluded from and trampled under the feet of the "working class" -- social war has always meant them too. Maybe that's a bad thing, but it's also a fair thing. There are far more cultural and social affinities and similarities between the american working class and its nebulous middle class than there are between the truly poor and the working class. It's easy to see lines of "natural" solidarity when you're at the top looking down, it's much harder when you're at the bottom and the folks just above you despise you more than the folks above them.

/rant

Vengeance has always been a fun read and I much appreciate the brief explorations of class privilege and hostility within our movement. ...Even if I'm not an insurrectionist and even find market models the only mathematically feasible basis of economic relations after all those lasts are hung with the other lasts' guts.

Authored by: beret on Tuesday, April 07 2009 @ 05:42 PM CDT

Fair enough, in a sense. But my point was that possessing consumer items usually attributed to a certain class does not by definition make them a member of said class. For instance, there are plenty of people who are by any standards working class-They occupy menial positions at fast food joints and factories, and yet they still have an ipod or a fairly nice TV. They may even rent a house as opposed to an apartment. I didn't deny that there was such a thing as a middle class, just that the term is overused.

Authored by: nostalgia on Tuesday, April 07 2009 @ 05:17 PM CDT

"But, for real, for real, rich kids are annoying and you can usually smell them miles away. They are the anarchos who always complain about how they never have money when their parent send it to them. They suck, they never give their parent's money to projects and when it comes down to it they will probably snitch you out. They master activist speak, ie they talk like losers, they smell like shit, look like shit, fuck them again, fuckin bastids."

It's really not this simple. Rich kids are often the ones who talk at length about class struggle, fixate on "working-class" politics, and are obsessed with workplace organizing. This is likely due to the fact that they didn't grow up in an environment with their parents busting their asses for a wage or getting laid off, so they often mystify and exhalt the "working class" and pretend that workplace organizing around quantitative economic relations are really going to destroy capitalism.

It's funny, the language in Vengeance and this call reminds me a lot of a nu-metal man at the mall with a braided beard begging for attention. Like "look at me, please look at how shocking I am, I'm working class", like most of us aren't or something.

" We didn't join up to fix bikes and talk about vegan cooking. We're tired of being the weird ones for not looking like Huck Finn or not giving a fuck about the latest contra dance."

I see what you mean here, but you are running the dangerous risk of identifying subcultural characteristics with class affiliation, something we should all be beyond by this point. Seriously, this is just corny. In the first Vengeance it seemed that you understood class as a relationship to capital and a position in the economy, be careful not to fall into the traps you somewhat explained in that publication, ie, class as what one consumes.

Someone who is interested in different subcultural activities than you isn't necessarily less working class than you because of this. The fact that you pretend to be a thug on the internet doesn't change this.

Authored by: intifada-oner on Tuesday, April 07 2009 @ 06:48 PM CDT

I agree but I want to point out that the rich kid master activist, the rich kid working class fetishizer workplace organizer, and the vegan/ bike fix it kid (that is one who is hell bent on politicizing commodity selection and preaching a new green capitalism to the masses) all call for, in theory and practice, a more “progressive” continuation of capitalist exploitation. What all these identities have in common is their aim to reform work, not its negation, which leaves class social relations qualitatively unchanged. You're right, subcultural affiliation matters little in the scheme of things, that is, as long as the affiliate makes room in the day to also break things. But, the activity of the stereotypical folk punk kid that Crudo is making fun is actually central to the folk punk's politics, which is the management of capitalist misery, and hence that identity is not revolutionary. Again, you're right, the nu-metal man shouldn't be used as the anti-thesis of the anarcho-activist, this is kinda what the CP does when it hypes the factory worker. Instead, its better to be amped on the identity that destroys all identity, negating any working class category, and abolishes the state of things, from which will give birth to a new aesthetic.

---
Who cares about the victim if the gesture is beautiful. - Laurent Tailhade

Authored by: crudo on Wednesday, April 08 2009 @ 12:21 AM CDT

"It's funny, the language in Vengeance and this call reminds me a lot of a nu-metal man at the mall with a braided beard begging for attention. Like "look at me, please look at how shocking I am, I'm working class", like most of us aren't or something." -

Talking about class, race, and stratergy critically is shocking to a lot of people.

"I see what you mean here, but you are running the dangerous risk of identifying subcultural characteristics with class affiliation, something we should all be beyond by this point. Seriously, this is just corny. In the first Vengeance it seemed that you understood class as a relationship to capital and a position in the economy, be careful not to fall into the traps you somewhat explained in that publication, ie, class as what one consumes." -

Good point. But at the same time I think a lot of us are tired of the subcultural and hippy bullshit. Why can't we just say it out loud?

"Someone who is interested in different subcultural activities than you isn't necessarily less working class than you because of this. The fact that you pretend to be a thug on the internet doesn't change this." -

I'm not trying to be a thug on the internet, I just enjoy writing this way.

What you say about other interests is true, and I've also written similar sentiments in both Vengeance's, but I think that the totality of such subcultures while in anarchist spaces sometimes can be deafening.

---
where the proles where the proles where the proles at?

Authored by: nostalgia on Wednesday, April 08 2009 @ 01:37 AM CDT

"But, the activity of the stereotypical folk punk kid that Crudo is making fun is actually central to the folk punk's politics, which is the management of capitalist misery, and hence that identity is not revolutionary."

This isn't what Crudo stated in this call. Moreover, imposing an ideology on someone because of their appearance is problematic. Also, the fact that certain behavior is part of someone's politics doesn't mean that their aspirations end there. Someone fixing bikes for kids in their neighborhood doesn't necessitate that they don't desire to see an end to the relationships of the economy, nor does it mean that this is all they do.

At any rate, a lot of anarchists fall into this trap of pretending that breaking windows and knocking shit over doesn't fall into the same problematic tendency of falling far short of being revolutionary and, with certain exceptions, largely becoming the realm of specialists (sort of like activism). The economy has a way of largely recuperating these activities as well as those of subcultural behavior.

"Talking about class, race, and stratergy critically is shocking to a lot of people."

People in general, yes. In regards to these discussions with anarchists, I'm not sure that this is true. I've been involved in anarchist actions and groups across the country and have generally experienced the opposite, a sort of obsession with talking about race and class. Sort of like the thing you were saying about being sick of hearing guilty white men talk about racial privilege all the time.

"But at the same time I think a lot of us are tired of the subcultural and hippy bullshit. Why can't we just say it out loud?"

Obviously you can say whatever you want. That's clearly not the issue. However, it's appropriate to critique a tirade that seems to demonstrate a lack of understanding of class composition, particularly when this rant is focused on class.

Authored by: crudo on Wednesday, April 08 2009 @ 01:00 PM CDT

"This isn't what Crudo stated in this call. Moreover, imposing an ideology on someone because of their appearance is problematic." -

I meant more that I'd like to see people who come from working class backgrounds to start to become more viable within the movement.

"Also, the fact that certain behavior is part of someone's politics doesn't mean that their aspirations end there. Someone fixing bikes for kids in their neighborhood doesn't necessitate that they don't desire to see an end to the relationships of the economy, nor does it mean that this is all they do." -

Agreed. My attack has been on the culture that is based around the fetishizing of certain things.

"People in general, yes. In regards to these discussions with anarchists, I'm not sure that this is true. I've been involved in anarchist actions and groups across the country and have generally experienced the opposite, a sort of obsession with talking about race and class. Sort of like the thing you were saying about being sick of hearing guilty white men talk about racial privilege all the time." -

Hmmm...I guess I agree and disagree. I guess there is a large quantity, but perhaps poor quality?

"Obviously you can say whatever you want. That's clearly not the issue. However, it's appropriate to critique a tirade that seems to demonstrate a lack of understanding of class composition, particularly when this rant is focused on class." -

I am contradicting myself. As I've written, certain aspects of subcultures have nothing to do with class, I just think that when viewed as a totality within anarchism, or to the degree of importance that certain things hold within the movement, the point to a certain class composition. Anyway, all good points as always nostalgia. I'd love to read more of what you have to say on other stuff.

---
where the proles where the proles where the proles at?

Authored by: butternut on Wednesday, April 08 2009 @ 05:43 AM CDT

awesome, I remember reading one of your comments after V2 about how you were becoming a celebrity and I thought you should open it up. I'm interested in writing something, I'm not exactly insurrectionary, and I'm struggling with the working class/prole identity but also struggling to make ends meet, anyways I'll email you later this week when I have time to hash out ideas.

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We've Come For Your Trust Funds: Calls for Submissions for Vengeance #3

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