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Submitted by ramblini on Thu, 05/08/2008 - 2:23pm.

Below is an excellent essay examining leftist and anarchists relations to violence which has powerful connections to the events of May Day.

Against the Corpse Machine: Defining a Post-Leftist Anarchist Critique of Violence
by Ashen Ruins

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

Sometimes anarchists are slow learners. Disregarding the famous, definitive and prognostic Marx-Bakunin split in the First International near the end of the 19th century, anarchists overall have continued to cling to the obsolete notion that anarchy is best situated within the otherwise statist Leftist milieu, despite the bourgeois democratic origins of the Left-Right spectrum. Since then communists and Marxists, liberals and conservatives alike have had us right where they want us - and it's shown in our history. In continuing to view ourselves as Leftists, despite the glaring contradictions in such a stance, we have naturally relegated ourselves to the role of critic within larger movements, and often found ourselves either marching towards goals which stand in direct opposition to our own interests or suckered by counter-revolutionary appeals to anti-fascist or anti-capitalist unity.

Read more.

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i doubt anyone took time to read this essay

"who cares if the middle and upper classes are alienated by violence? They already had their violent revolution and we're living in it right now. It churns on every day. Further, the whole notion that the middle and upper classes are alienated by violence is completely false. As mentioned above, they support violence all the time, whether it is strikebreaking, police brutality, prisons, war, sanctions or capital punishment. What they really oppose is violence directed at dislodging them and their privileges." well said although i think a problem with the may day actions isn't that they alienated the middle class so much as they made individual immigrants afraid to affiliate with the activist community, for obvious reasons, they want to avoid encounters with the police,
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what i meant was...

that i think it's a good essay and people ought to read it, i realized that the title of my earlier comment could be interpreted to mean that posting the essay was a dumb idea or something, which it was not. thanks for putting it up.
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