Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 24 2002 @ 12:01 AM CST

\"well mr wombat, you are clearly a poor thinker. you quote me as saying that replacing the state with something you and other ahistorically and erroneously refer to as \"dual power\" proves that i am against organization. you, sir, are an idiot.\"

Good job, I\'m an idiot. Now let me continue to trash your argument, stupid is as stupid does. You are quoted as rejecting \"self-government\" though you reject it by saying they aren\'t anarchists, as if you are the king of anarchy...whatever. \"self-government\", if by self-government it is ment to be a form of direct democracy, is the democracy of libertarian socialism. What are you suggesting instead of this? Or perhaps you ment something else by \"self-government\"?

\"you have not proved your point at all; in fact all you have shown that you cannot engage in meaningful dialog with someone who has the audacity to disagree with you\"

audacity...good word, sounds very....smart. Too bad that your first paragraph is nothing but rhetoric. How am I showing that I cannot engage in meaningful dialog?

\"the concept of dual power is used to describe a revolutionary situation in which people\'s allegiance to the current state/government is undermined by the creation and maintenance of alternative institutions of economic and political decision making and execution--not by some punks and hippies hanging out and feeding each other.\"

pick and choose, pick and choose. First, in order to create a revolutionary situation, you need to have these alternative institutions, this is called movement building. Such organizations are a part of the dual power relationship and they are a part of the infastructure that develops resistance to capitalism.

\"switches from the u.s. government to food not bombs. your use of the term dual power is unintentionally hilarious.\"

yes, my method simply includes only infoshops and IMC\'s (*sarcasm*)...oh....I didn\'t seem to mention fnb, but you musta needed that to make your argument sound cool with the hippies feeding each other bit, your use of rhetoric will someday make you a mushroom, a very apt one at that.

\"the power to make decisions isn\'t the \"power\" in dual power. i\'m pretty tired of suggesting to you that you read a book, but once again: shut up and read a book!\"

no, its fighting capitalism and developing the structure that will replace it at the same time.

Is there a reason you are so rude? You are tired of suggesting that I read a book...which book...and if I read this book, what would it tell me? Could you give an outline of what I need to learn, perhaps the underlying logic of it all? I am a seeker of knowledge and healthy discussion, the need for this polemical is unnecessary and uncalled for.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 05 2002 @ 03:04 AM CST

excellent article, Cindy is going to be the new face of municipalism.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 07 2002 @ 10:11 AM CST

dual power is a bolshevik analysis and strategy (more specifically it was trotsky who examined the situation in russia during both the 1905 and 1917 revolutions when the councils [soviets]competed with the state for the allegiance and loyalty of \"the masses\"). this is not to say that all ideas from anti-anarchists must automatically be discarded, but come on--anarchists are supposed to want to abolish power, not set up some alternative power. any discussion of power should make anarchists suspicious and nervous. the infusion of this dual power nonsense into anarchist politics needs to be exposed as the dishonest leninist bullshit left over from the love & rage debacle and its current reruns (nefac, onward, ruckus, etc). when i hear the word power, i reach for my crowbar.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 07 2002 @ 04:04 PM CST

PAZ\'s are dual power, I don\'t know where you are coming up with the dual power relationship being an authoritarian conception, when anarchists have always struggled for such things. Otherwise, rollback and commodification will erase the \'wins\' of the anarchist movement.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 07 2002 @ 06:16 PM CST

where i\'m coming up with the concept of dual power being an authoritarian program is this nifty thing called HISTORY. one needs to look at the origins of terms that one uses, don\'t you think? this is the mark of good communication and clear thinking. it is similar to liberals and leftists using the term direct action to describe protests that are meant to generate media attention in the hopes that some scumbag politician will alter some policy. this is just an extreme form of lobbying, not direct action. another example is the use of the term affinity group; how many fluffy liberals know that this term and practice originated with the forerunners of the FAI? ahistoricism among anarchists is really annoying and offensive. know your history; know your enemy\'s history--this is how anarchists can find the vulnerable parts of our own ideas and practices as well as those of statists. go to a library and read a book.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 07 2002 @ 08:12 PM CST

i heard lenin also used the words : the, if, and but...i will accordingly remove these words from my vocabulary. not to mention the slave holder jefferson using words like liberty, freedom, etc.

thanks for showing me the way

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 07 2002 @ 10:36 PM CST

\"where i\'m coming up with the concept of dual power being an authoritarian program is this nifty thing called HISTORY. one needs to look at the origins of terms that one uses, don\'t you think?\"

But is it exclusively anarchistic? \'fraid not, anarchists, since proudon, have struggled for PAZ\'s. Perhaps you should read some theory as well as history?

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 05 2002 @ 11:11 PM CST

The only thing worse then a global conspiracy is a global conspiracy that everyone knows about but doesn\'t care, which is why it\'s good to see that some people are standing up to this new threat.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, March 06 2002 @ 02:48 AM CST

What does \"Dual Power\" mean?

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, March 06 2002 @ 07:51 AM CST

Dual Power means creating the revolution in the \"here-and-now\" instead of waiting after some mythical revolution; \'building the new society in the shell of the old\'. The idea behind the dual power stategy is to discredit and ultimately do away with authoritarian social institutions by creating grassroots, liberatory alternatives to them. For example, the Black Panther Party set up free breakfast programs for school children in the 1960s and 70s that fed up to 10,000 children a day, they set up community medical clinics, etc. A good introduction to Dual Power Strategy can be found here: http://messmedia.rootmedia.org/dualpower/dpintro.htm

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, March 06 2002 @ 08:30 PM CST

Honest concern (i.e. not a troll),

As heartened as I was by the NYC demos that showed that the movement isn\'t dead, I\'m not sure what to make of David Graber\'s remarks about anarchists proving they could do what the NGOs do, but better.

The relative size of the NYC demos as compared to previous demonstrations (Genoa, Seattle, et al) tends to make me harken back to the days when our movement enjoyed heterogeneity, running the gamut from liberal NGOs to anarchists.

I\'m just as pissed as anybody else by the cowardice displayed by the reformists in the post-S11 environment, and I place the blame of the de facto splitting of the movement entirely on their shoulders, but what I crave is a movement of movements, not simply a platform for revolutionary politics. While it\'s our job to uphold revolutionary politics within the movement, I think without the social weight of workers, students, environmentalists, direct action network folks, anti-frankenfood types, etc., the demonstrations will continue to get smaller and smaller and serve to merely act as a showcase for the political fringe.

My heart sinks to look at the globalizethis.org website and see that 50 Years is Enough won\'t get itself involved in an anti-IMF protest in its own fucking hometown..

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 15 2002 @ 03:37 PM CST

Yes, it\'s true that the term \"dual power\" was originally used by Lenin, and also the Trotskyists. Does this mean that anarchists cannot use this term? \"Dual power\" in the anarchist sense means something totally different from \"dual power\" in the Bolshevik sense. Lenin\'s version of \"dual power\" was just a means to enforce the implementation of the party control of the revolution. The anarchist version refers to transforming power relations, so that all power is conferred to the people and the popular, grassroots organizations (soviets, councils, assemblies, etc.)

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 15 2002 @ 03:43 PM CST

Let me quote from Brian A. Dominick\'s \"Introduction to a Dual Power Strategy\":

\"The dual power consists of alternative
institutions which provide for the needs of the community, both material and social, including food, clothing, housing, health care, communication, energy, transportation, educational opportunities and political organization. The dual power is necessarily autonomous from, and competitive with, the dominant system, seeking to encroach upon the latter\'s domain, and, eventually, to replace it.\"

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 15 2002 @ 08:33 PM CST

exactly my point. dual power is a strategy for replacing the capitalist state with a \"people\'s state.\" it is a strategy for *attaining* power, not abolishing it. you fucking fake anarchists can\'t even understand the basic principle of anarchism: anarchists are opposed to government and the state. dual power means replacing the state with some reformed state or \"self\" government. ergo, those who propose dual power cannot be anarchists. unless \"anarchism\" only means what you want it to mean, depending on who you\'re talking to. ridiculous.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 15 2002 @ 11:07 PM CST

giuseppe: I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying. Anarchists are against the state, but they are not against power. Power will exist no matter what, the question is how it should be distributed - should it be held by a centralized bureaucratic institution with a monopoly on violence (the state) or should it be decentralized and held by everyone equally? How could the popular assemblies in Argentina exist without power? How could a local FNB chapter exist without power? Do you think the peasant communes in the Ukraine, or the rural anarchist collectives during the Spanish Civil War existed without some kind of power? Decisions about energy, food, economics, political organization all have to be made - in any kind of social system. Unless you are arguing against any kind of social structure whatsoever? I don\'t see how dual power is in conflict with anarchist principles - it explicitly opposes the state, and all forms of domination and hierarchy, and carves out new ways to interact based on libertarian principles. Unless this is just a semantic debate...?

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, March 16 2002 @ 09:32 AM CST

giuseppe, when did you start speaking for anarchists? Who made you king? Perhaps you should attempt to understand why anarchist history has been a duo power struggle since the beginning of its acknowledged existance. To say this is anarchist and that isn\'t anarchist is to misunderstand anarchism. Anarchism, is a method of achieving anarchy, calling yourself an anarchist doesn\'t mean anything, even not calling yourself an anarchist. It is an ethical method of organizing that enables popular empowerment.

riddle me this: If there is no organization, how can you oppose that which oppresses?

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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 18 2002 @ 10:33 AM CST

first to wombat,
you are stupid if you think that i am advocating a total lack of organization. where did i say that? i am opposed to the organization of power in the form of the state and the principle of government. throughout anarchist history i interpret various attempts at instituting anarchist projects as reflecting (to varying degrees) the very structures that anarchists are supposed to oppose. since you are so hot on this dual power analysis, riddle me this: what are the examples of anarchists doing dual power, and what happened to them?

i am not declaring what anarchism is or isn\'t; i am following the lead of all the anarchists who\'ve come before us. all anarchists, regardless of the various sects they\'ve been in, have agreed that government and the state are the main obstacles to freedom (however loosely defined). after that things get goofy. i insist that strategies of dual power are a return of the principle of government in another form--prettified for popular consumption perhaps, but it looks and sounds like government to me. prove me wrong, but please use examples not rhetoric.

nabat,
i don\'t know what anarchist theory you\'ve been exposed to, but you need to cite at least one source that shows how anarchists are in favor of the restructuring of power. perhaps this is semantic, but something significant is going on with any discussion of anarchists and power in the same sentence. i\'ll give you the benifit of the doubt, since at least you have come up with some historical examples. now to answer them...

FNB has no power. but if they did, it would be the power to do what exactly? they do not compete with the state for allegiance or legitimacy. what are you talking about here? the ukrainian and spanish collectives made and carried out decisions based on either majority rule or consensus and ideally their members followed the decisions voluntarily. and those decisions hardly ever affected anyone who wasn\'t already part of the collective. so what was the power here? these formations did challenge the legitimacy of the state and government because they showed that people could self-organize outside the framework of statecraft and the relationships of order-givers and order-takers (as well as other coercive relationships). but they did not promote themselves as the new organizers of wider social, economic, and *especially* political control or even guidance.

dual power this is not, if we agree with my historical analysis of dual power. if you\'re just interested in changing the definitions of terms to suit your particular agenda, then you are being dishonest and manipulative.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 19 2002 @ 03:02 PM CST

\"you are stupid if you think that i am advocating a total lack of organization. where did i say that?\"

A good line of logic(*cough* *cough*). Here is where you said it.
\"anarchists are opposed to government and the state. dual power means replacing the state with some reformed state or \"self\" government. ergo, those who propose dual power cannot be anarchists.\"

\"what are the examples of anarchists doing dual power, and what happened to them?\"

Here\'s two:

Autonomous Zone of Chicago, an infoshop, been around for about 10 years, and they are still around. They have helped build and maintain the Chicago Anarchist movement and \"Arsenal\" Magazine sprang from this dual power, not to mention other groups.

Independent Media Center (many anarchists are members and it has an anarchist methodology), they helped spread the word of many many a protest, they have suffered some repression in resent years, but because of the decentralized nature of IMC, they are still florishing.

\"i insist that strategies of dual power are a return of the principle of government in another form--prettified for popular consumption perhaps, but it looks and sounds like government to me. prove me wrong, but please use examples not rhetoric.\"

Well \"prettified\" sounds like rhetoric, but I\'ll try, once I understand your argument.

Well, bottom-up and democractic decision-making, along with involving themselves in a resistance to the state and capitalism, to be general, concidering vagueness of the question, would make it not a state.

\"FNB has no power. but if they did, it would be the power to do what exactly?\"

make decisions and learn to rely more on the self and others\' mutually rather than on authority, this is empowerment.

\"dual power this is not, if we agree with my historical analysis of dual power.\"

And I don\'t, can\'t speak for Nabat though.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 21 2002 @ 06:32 PM CST

>Anarchism, is a method of achieving anarchy, >calling yourself an anarchist doesn\'t mean >anything, even not calling yourself an anarchist

That\'s good to know...

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 21 2002 @ 08:45 PM CST

well mr wombat, you are clearly a poor thinker. you quote me as saying that replacing the state with something you and other ahistorically and erroneously refer to as \"dual power\" proves that i am against organization. you, sir, are an idiot. the bit you quoted has *nothing* to do with organization, but everyting to do with how i understand what the state is and what dual power is. you have not proved your point at all; in fact all you have shown that you cannot engage in meaningful dialog with someone who has the audacity to disagree with you.

as for your examples of the a-zone and fnb, these are not examples of dual power, sorry to say. these are examples of self-organized alternatives to cafes and soup kitchens. they are useful and important as part of creating an infrustructure for anti-authoritarian culture, but they are no threat to the status quo. the concept of dual power is used to describe a revolutionary situation in which people\'s allegiance to the current state/government is undermined by the creation and maintenance of alternative institutions of economic and political decision making and execution--not by some punks and hippies hanging out and feeding each other. these things may be empowering on a shallow and superficial level, but they won\'t ever be able to create a situation where the loyalty of the general population of a given area (where fnb chapters or infoshops exist) switches from the u.s. government to food not bombs. your use of the term dual power is unintentionally hilarious.

the power to make decisions isn\'t the \"power\" in dual power. i\'m pretty tired of suggesting to you that you read a book, but once again: shut up and read a book!

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 03 2002 @ 06:39 PM CDT

oh, and Dual Power has nothing to do with Marxism..neither do NEFAC, Sabate, or Ruckus..but perhpas you never read any of their statements..tghe idea of alternative institutions is EXTREMELY important in anarchist theory, and was discussed extensively by Emma Goldman, Proudhon, Kropotkin, and numerous others..it is what anarchists did in the past, and what they continue to do today..it is building the framework of a new society rather than summit hopping and whining..

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 03 2002 @ 06:18 PM CDT

Cindy Milstein is right..and she\'s not a Bookchin clone..I mean I like some of what Murray has to say but unfortunately there\'s not enough of that Dual Power stuff being discussed.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 06 2002 @ 12:20 PM CDT

Excuse me, but very few of us engage in \"summit-hopping.\" That is mostly done by liberal NGO types with expense accounts. In any case, the summit protests are very important to our ongoing work locally. The big protests have shown people that resistance is happening and that they aren\'t isolated. This has caused many people to join local groups where they\'ve gotten involved in local stuggles and alternative institutions.

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