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Aral Balkan

Against the Logic of the Guillotine: Why the Paris Commune Burned the Guillotine – and We Should Too

crimethinc.com/2019/04/08/agai

Every word in this article speaks directly to my soul. I have no desire to burn down the world we live in yet every desire to try and help bring about the kind of world I want to live in: a kinder, fairer, more equal and – to steal a phrase from the piece – more joyous one for us all.

The worst punishment anyone could inflict on those who govern and police us today would be to compel them to live in a society in which everything they've done is regarded as embarrassing-for them to have to sit in assemblies in which no one listens to them, to go on living among us without any special privileges in full awareness of the harm they have done. If we fantasize about anything, let us fantasize about making our movements so strong that we will hardly have to kill anyone to overthrow the state and abolish capitalism. This is more becoming of our dignity as partisans of liberation.
So we repudiate the logic of the guillotine. We don't want to exterminate our enemies. We don't think the way to create harmony is to subtract everyone who does not share our ideology from the world. Our vision is a world in which many worlds fit, as Subcomandante Marcos put it—a world in which the only thing that is impossible is to dominate and oppress.
Anarchism is a proposal for everyone regarding how we might go about improving our lives-workers and unemployed people, people of all ethnicities and genders and nationalities or lack thereof. The anarchist proposal is not in the interests of one currently existing group against another: it is not a way to enrich the poor at the expense of the rich, or to empower one ethnicity, nationality, or religion at others' expense. That entire way of thinking is part of what we are trying to escape. All of the "interests" that supposedly characterize different categories of people are products of the prevailing order and must be transformed along with it, not preserved or pandered to.
From our perspective, even the topmost positions of wealth and power that are available in the existing order are worthless. Nothing that capitalism and the state have to offer are of any value to us. We propose anarchist revolution on the grounds that it could finally fulfill longings that the prevailing social order will never satisfy: the desire to be able to provide for oneself and one's loved ones without doing so at anyone else's expense, the wish to be valued for one's creativity and character rather than for how much profit one can generate, the longing to structure one's life around what is profoundly joyous rather than according to the imperatives of competition.
#anarchism#SmallTech#SmallWeb
Sep 14, 2023, 01:12 PM·Public·Mona for iPhone
87boosts·183favorites
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Witold Kowalik

@aral
Edit: something went wrong here and just the [at] posted... :]

On the matter, be sure to also follow them on here at:
@CrimethInc

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Michael T. Bacon, Ph.D.

@aral

Absolutely. I detest the guillotine chic that's taken hold of the left lately.

As Latour says, "total revolution is poison, not counter-poison." Capitalism enjoys being overthrown when it's attacked this way.

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LPS

That's beautiful!

And thanks @aral for your contribution to a new world by creating tools with which we can eventually free ourselves and simply disregard these tyrants:)

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freediverx

@aral
I don't know… guillotines sound pretty good.

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📷 🖋 Hyde

@aral lovely post ! Thanks for sharing !

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bs2

@aral Great article! It reminded me of Eduardo Galeano's pages about the Guillotine, and how the doctor and his family could not get their name removed from it. Galeano mentions the last words of Sophie Scholl on the spring day the Nazis chopped her in half. And the last French victim was from Morocco in the 70s? Paul Goodman's line, like "Someone with the sensitivity of Camus can see the guillotine feel the visceral aversion that it is Not Us" sent me to "Reflections on the Guillotine."

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Ben from CDS

@aral Revolutionary violence has historically served to place the revolution in the hands of those most willing to do violence.

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vruz

@aral Fairness implies the concept of the guillotine for some edge cases. However, in matters of practice, I'm leaning more towards the application of the Napoleon treatment in Saint Helena. Mostly because that method wisely avoided the creation of a martyr whilst effectively decapitating power, and leaving the heirs of the dictator in an impossible situation.

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vruz

@aral Although that would be impossible today, because it's not unthinkable that another comparable dictator would invade any remote island to rescue and liberate their kin. I'm afraid that our options are narrowing, and keeping the dictator indefinitely asleep, and on display at a prominent museum in a major world city would be the better option.

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vruz

@billseitz @aral

Like I said, our options are narrowing all the time 🙂

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