Hello everyone!
Feeling somewhat disconcerted - I occasionally drop in on Libcom but it seems that this once vibrant place is very quiet, and most worryingly seems to no longer have discussions taking place below the articles recently published. For me this was what Libcom was all about and for myself at least, where the real learning happened. I guess one solution could be to start commenting myself, though I doubt that would work.
Anyways, could somebody break the trend and reply to this? Am I missing something and being a technology div? Someone? Anyone???!!!!!!!!!!
I used to enjoy many of the…
I used to enjoy many of the conversations as well. That said, I still appreciate many of the postings/publications.
My take on this is that the…
My take on this is that the nature of online conversation has changed radically in the last 10 years or so and that forum are no longer a main way for this to happen.
There was less conversation here prior to the new site being launched but I think that did accelerate this process. It does seem harder now to find old conversation threads via search fwiw. But also there have been interesting threads on the Ukraine war recently:
https://libcom.org/article/british-anarchism-succumbs-war-fever
I miss the old days too and they were also a good education for me. I don't think much can be done to go back there though unfortunately...
I think social media mostly…
I think social media mostly killed that side of things, Noah... which was a bit of a bugger for those of us who have no desire to use social media. Also, shutting down the old libcommunity forums meant there was a fair bit of people dropping off here. Sure, libcommunity type forums had their shite moments but there were some great conversations on there too.
I also think the move to make this site into more like an (almost academic) archive of libertarian communist/anarchist etc documents and ideas has tended to make those sort of friendly discussions dwindle.
Oh, just to add, there doesn…
Oh, just to add, there doesn't seem to be any way to message other users on here, which will also contribute to the decline in the 'interactive experience' on here.
Thanks everyone. Yeah, I…
Thanks everyone.
Yeah, I noticed that my DMs have all gone which is very upsetting. In particular my conversations with our passed comrade, Pikel, held great meaning for me. Also, I was pretty tight with Hieronymous and now have no way of checking on his wellbeing. With others, in particular Ultraviolet are now well established friends and comrades in real life. From the point of view of education and connection Libcom has been an incredibly important influence in my life and my god, spats and the bad behaviour of myself and others aside, it was so much fun!!! Guess I’m feeling nostalgic.
Comments have been on a…
Comments have been on a downward trajectory for the past fifteen years and especially in the past ten, I grabbed the past five years just now, we can then join them up to the 2017 traffic analysis post which includes 2017 all the way back to 2004:
Comments:
2022: 1469
2021: 2166
2020: 3956
2019: 4735
2018: 8386
The 2017 post says we had 98942 comments in 2007 (the most ever for one year) vs. 11187 in 2017.
On the other hand articles and image galleries are creeping back up again after hitting the lowest point since 2008:
2022: 1149
2021: 1050
2020: 1679
2019: 1296
2018: 1970
Private messages we removed as part of the migration for two reasons:
1. They weren't encrypted, so if the site ever got hacked it could put users at risk (this is also true for twitter dms and etc., encrypting stuff that's stored on a website for multiple different users is not easy).
2. While we were able to migrate all the visible content on the site successfully (after a lot of work) migrating old dms on top of that would have meant even more work on top of everything else. We did announce this as long in advance as we could.
I think social media is the main reason that discussion has gone quiet, new users just don't sign up to forums much if at all any more and they're dwindling everywhere. It's also the case that we never had a good moderation system for the forums either at their peak or when they've been quiet.
For articles there is a surprising amount of new content every year given the quantity of stuff on the site already. However our news section is moribund - we've tried to revive it in different ways at different times, and each effort failed after a few months. Also blogs are quiet which I mostly blame on social media again, but the people who do maintain blogs put them on medium/substack/patreon, which I don't like but we can't fully compete with for features.
Hey, nice to see you again!…
Hey, nice to see you again!
But yes this is something which has definitely changed over the years.
While the number of people visiting libcom keeps going up, the number of people commenting has collapsed.
This has been the trend since 2007, when we had nearly 100,000 comments, which had gone down to around 40,000 by 2012, which halved in 2013 and continued to go down to only around 2,000 by 2021, the year before the upgrade. (By contrast, the number of new articles posted is pretty much the same now as in 2007, around 1,000-1,300 per year.)
As Fozzie says, we think this is because the nature of the Internet has changed. With the rise of social media, people much more were having discussions on there, rather than on Internet forums. And this wasn't something we could combat. Even though in many ways I think this is a real shame. Because while discussions in public forums are open, so they can be read by anyone – and plenty of our discussions were read by tens of thousands of people – who can then learn from them. On social media, discussions are much more siloed, and often just happen in the comments below private Facebook posts or in private Facebook groups, or in relatively closed Twitter exchanges.
Partly though as well we think the decline in comments would also be due to the completely broken nature of the old site. Where it was almost impossible for new users to register accounts, and existing users who forgot their passwords couldn't do password resets. So this probably helped kill off discussion as well, and we were only able to fix this stuff with the major upgrade last year.
So the redesign of the site, deprioritising the forums, was more just recognising what had happened anyway.
Of course, we do welcome constructive comments, so it would be great if you felt like contributing more, however, replies are definitely harder to come by these days.
With private messages, unfortunately these were unsecure, so TBH it wasn't great for security reasons that we ever had them. And they were very much abused by spam accounts which was difficult to deal with. So we couldn't really keep these. However, we did warn users multiple times and give many months notice, advising people to backup private messages they wanted to keep and exchange contact information with anyone they wanted to (e.g.: https://libcom.org/article/libcom-site-upgrade).
On a personal level, I could try to connect you with Hieronymous if you like, and see if he would be okay to share his email address with you?
I am sometimes nostalgic for the old days as well, however it is also worth remembering there was a lot of poor quality nonsense as well, as well as downright offensive, thoughtless and rude stuff in the comments!
As every new article posted…
As every new article posted appears in discussions actual discussions get lost in a sea of Situationist scans.
Hey Steven, nice to see you…
Hey Steven, nice to see you too!
Yes, please let Hieronymous know I asked after him and either give him my email or get his for me. Much appreciated.
Maybe I’ll try posting a little? And yes, I appreciate that you tried to warn us about loss of private stuff on here - I don’t know how I missed it coz I only stopped checking in for a short while. Maybe it’s coz I didn’t sign in or maybe because my visits were very brief.
I completely abandoned social media a couple of years ago which was a very positive move. The quality of discussions I saw never even approached the quality I used to experience on here.
I do know that a close friend of mine has a pretty big folder of screenshots of some of the most amusing or interesting Libcom threads - I’m visiting her across the pond in July and one of our planned endeavours is to go through them and see what useful stuff we can turn up.
Anyways, maybe we’ll get that pizza one day? Be good to meet you. Gonna be living in London for a few months later in the year so maybe I’ll see you then.
nastyned wrote: As every new…
Yeah, I noticed that. Not much of a ‘spectacle’ is it really!🤦♂️
nastyned wrote: As every new…
Fair comment. I do try to limit the ones I post to a couple a day! And it is reasonably easy to spot which things have been commented on.
(Also I think the end is in sight with the situ stuff for me so that will probably be a relief 😂)
Noah, that would be great…
Noah, that would be great but I'm afraid I no longer live there!
I will drop Hieronymus a line. Would you give me permission to get your email address by looking at your libcom profile?
In terms of discussions including new articles as well, Fozzie, definitely don't feel bad about your contributions!
We are working on building a user navigation dashboard, which will enable people to browse different types of content more easily. So hopefully this can include some way of perhaps either only browsing Discussions, or only browsing content which has comments. We will have a think about the best way to do this.
But we want as many contributions to the archive as possible, so we never want anyone to feel they need to limit their contributions!
At the moment, if you go to the very front page you can go to the recent comments section to see where the most recent comments have been posted.
Steven. wrote: In terms of…
I still enjoy it tbf. A man can have too much situationism in his life though, so it will be good to move onto something else. 👍🏼
Fozzie wrote: Fair comment…
Don't be put off posting stuff, the site's just not geared up for being a discussion forum anymore.
nastyned wrote: As every new…
I think you can still use the "tracker" thing which shows what articles/discussions have new comments and which ones are just the articles, but then there doesn't seem to be any visible link to it anywhere, I've just been accessing it cos my browser remembers the url.
Yeah, but you still get all…
Yeah, but you still get all the articles which often drowns out the discussions.
Yes Steven, please let him…
Yes Steven, please let him have my email. I’m not entirely sure what one I use on here. Does it have noahfence in it?
No, it looks like it has a…
No, it looks like it has a real name in it…
I just wanted to say that,…
I just wanted to say that, as a longtime (mostly) lurker, I also miss the days when the libcom forums were really active. I probably learned more about politics from libcom threads than all of the books and articles that I've read. This is not the only forum that I used to belong to that has become moribund, in fact, I don't think any of the forums that I used to read are active at all anymore. Unfortunately, there isn't anything that has managed to replaced them; good luck finding 20 pages of informed debate about the last 30 years of global anarcho-syndicalist history or 1000+ post threads of updates and discussion about various global social movements (the threads about Tahrir Square, 2010 uk student movement, Occupy, etc were incredible) on instagram or reddit.
I joined libcom at a particular inflection point in my life when I could have fallen away from revolutionary politics; the group in which I had come up as an organizer had fallen apart and I had moved to a small town without many like minded people. The forums provided a place for me to feel like the movements that I was aligned with had a real vitality and introduced me to a whole slew of thinkers which helped me develop a more focused and well-rounded set of politics. Over the past decade and change, I have not fallen away from revolutionary politics, but have remained active (sometimes more, sometimes less) in revolutionary organizations and in my workplace. If asked, I'd still identify myself first as a libertarian communist. I think I have the libcom forums to thank for much of that.
Steven. wrote: No, it looks…
Ok, that’s fine then - I’ll definitely get that.
Thanks Steven
Red Disease, sounds like you…
Red Disease, sounds like you’ve had a pretty similar experience to me and like you(I think?) I feel Libcom has had a very significant affect on my life as well as my politics. Once I’d read and participated in the forums and listened to some of the particularly patient posters who cut me a load of slack and kept on explaining things to me I broke out of the trap of the nebulous and somewhat nihilistic anarchism that I’d had with me since my youth and began to see that there were ideas and possibilities out there that had real meaning and just might one day gain traction and make the world a decent place to live. It was incredibly exciting and transformative! Honestly, if I’d never found Libcom my worldview and my life would be very different. For example, I changed the way I earned a living once I understood properly what class really means. I’m extremely grateful to the site and the people on it, including those I had unfortunate fall outs with when things got heated on here.
I really like libcom and owe…
I really like libcom and owe a lot to it too, and feel strange we're sort of talking in the past sense about the community aspect. While I appreciate the redesign, I feel the decision to not even have a proper archive of all the old forum posts was a misplaced one.
There was a lot of good things in there, like very smart people explaining very complicated things, reports about events, people sharing experiences with actions, other groups etc... it's a step backwards to have that go and replace it with a non-stop feed of every post on the website that is impossible to follow.
Thanks for the feedback,…
Thanks for the feedback, really interesting and nice to read, redsdisease.
Sherbu, really not sure what you mean here though. The old forum posts are still mostly here, and now we actually have a functioning site search, so you can search the site for them. On the old site, which was completely broken, we had a situation where we had over 600,000 comments, with no way of searching them. All you could try to do would be to try to remember which sub- forum they were in, then manually look through hundreds or even thousands of pages of threads looking for the right one.
That said, as I have said above, and as we have said many times, this upgrade is an ongoing process. And we are working on an improved user dashboard with better ways of navigating active discussions.
Steven. wrote: The old forum…
I'm not sure you can though? If you type "What Happened To Libcom" (the title of this discussion) into the search box you get zero results. If you do it without quote marks you get lots of results but they are all articles and not this discussion....
Fozzie wrote: Steven. wrote:…
Good spot. We will look into this and get back to everyone
You can find this thread by…
You can find this thread by putting the title into Google. That was how I used to find things I was looking for on the old site
Would also be pretty nice to…
Would also be pretty nice to have a comment-history page for users (the old site had a tracker or page for this I believe). It's pretty useful to be able to look up your comments on something from a couple months or years ago, especially if you don't remember the article/thread name
adri wrote: Would also be…
Yeah that's on the to-do list!
Hey Noah (and all you other…
Hey Noah (and all you other esteemed comrades),
Thanks for starting this thread. Yes, I too miss the fun and engaged discussions we used to have here.
Sorry for the brevity of this. As the former Governator once said, "I'll be back!"
Noah, thanks again for drawing some of back to libcom,
Hieronymous
If it's any comfort, this…
If it's any comfort, this isn't unique to libcom, it seems to be a general trend. Practically all of the forums and chats similar to this place I've been involved with or know about has also slipped into severe decline. Or much worse see for some examples (https://reddebreksbowl.blogspot.com/2023/04/notes-on-lefty-pol.html)
One thing thats a barrier to using this site is that there doesn't appear to be anyway to search for discussion threads alone even though they're still a feature of the site. This can make some threads essentially buried under library entries that have similar key words. I used to use the threads as prompts for reading quite regularly and that's now impossible.
Some good suggestions here…
Some good suggestions here. Thanks all for engaging with my OP.
I notice also that the voting facility has gone. Honestly, I think all that upvoting shit is pretty stupid but I must say I enjoyed accumulating downvotes when it was possible!
On Monday an old family…
On Monday an old family friend, who was in his 80s and had Parkinson's for the last several years, passed away. So getting an e-mail from Steven. on Tuesday, mentioning that Noah was trying to get in touch with me, really improved my spirits as I was dealing with grief.
15 years ago, during the heyday of vibrant discussion forums here on libcom, I know I could be a real dick. During heated debates, insults cascaded back and forth. I gave as well as I got. Yet I made several friends on libcom, some of whom I even met in-person, from as far away as New York City and London (I live in San Francisco). Some continue to be friends to this day. Conversely, a few former friends participated in the libcom forums and it was sad to see how acrimony continued to fester in cyberspace.
Yet what makes me relieved to see this thread is that it is a reminder of the real mutual aid and compassion some of us bonded over, ironically on the internet. In 2016 I had major surgery, then almost a year later I had another operation for a less serious hernia. I can't remember the exact chronology, but Noah went under the knife back then too -- and there were times when we got updates on threads which made us fear we were going to lose him. Thankfully, he recovered and he and I connected, then had wonderful private chats here on libcom.
History doesn't move in reverse, but perhaps we could carve out a little space on libcom and use it to continue communicating among ourselves. Thanks Noah, seeing you on this thread -- and several others -- really made my week! Let's keep in touch.
This is still the best…
This is still the best website on the internet. I can't think of any other website that comes close.
When you use google to…
When you use google to search libcom, use the following if you want to bring up only past forum discussions: "site:libcom.org/discussion [whatever your looking for]"
Edit to add: I just tried it myself and it doesn't seem to be working properly. Like I tried "site:libcom.org/discussion mutualism" and not a lot of threads appeared. I expected a lot more than what showed up in the results.
Hieronymous wrote: On Monday…
Haha, funnily enough, just before checking in here I sent you an email and one of the things I asked was if you thought it was worth trying to reignite Libcom as a place for discussion.. Looks like I got my answer! How about the rest of you - do you think that with the right type of posts we could make Libcom more casually interactive?
Obviously the site is an incredible resource but for me it was always the discussions that taught me most and excited me most. Such broad ranging discussions too, from detailed descriptions of political philosophy, to disgust and derision of Jamie Oliver, from the existence of free will to whether it was right to gloat about the death of fascists, even whether or not you are sporting a socialist beard or if the ownership of a garlic press makes you middle class! All fascinating and entertaining stuff! Obviously times have changed and there are many new subjects and situations to look at and as Hieronymous says, we can’t turn back time, but I think that Libcom could definitely become more dynamic and participatory if enough people are up for it. What do you all think?
Hieronymous wrote: Noah,…
Good to hear from you!
I also greatly miss the old…
I also greatly miss the old Libcom discussions; the whole reason I ended up becoming an Anarchist at all was because someone gave me a Libcom flyer on some TUC A-to-B Hyde Park march when I was unemployed after graduating university.
Multiple times over the past few years I've thought or experienced something that has left me wondering what Libcom would have thought about it: only to find there's no discussion on the topic. A perfect example has been the massive increase in Strikes across Europe but especially the UK. When I was back in Britain over the winter it was wall-to-wall strikes across multiple sectors and what's more they seemed to command general public support. Old Libcom would have had a field day discussing those kinds of current issues.
Now I agree it's an obvious fact that social media killed a lot of forums, but I do find myself thinking that maybe it's ground we ceded too easily. It's true that most of my old forum-going friends use social media these days , but it's equally true that pretty much all of them fucking hate it. Like a lot of capitalist ventures, social media suckered people in with a better version of what the previous competition offered, and then once they had a captive (and sometimes addicted) audience, they started to degrade the product for profit.
In other words, while social media killed forums, I think it's still the case that people still want what forums offered: a sense of community around shared goals and interests.
As someone who only quite…
As someone who only quite recently gave in and started using Discord, I wonder if Discord replicates the "forum experience" better than any other social media platform? Although their servers are closed and non-public by default, which have their pros and cons.
R Totale wrote: Hieronymous…
Same here, feels good seeing all of you again too!
R Totale wrote: As someone…
Just a quick word of warning to others who are new to discord, it is technically private, but its very easy to copy all the information that goes on in those groups, I would urge caution when discussing things that are sensitive, and to give as little personal information as possible.
Discord is definitely more…
Discord is definitely more where younger people are to be found having these conversations I think, though groups like Signal/WhatsApp and comments on social media also play a fairly significant role. People have gotten used to a fairly "live" approach, which make static forum structures appeal relatively staid. I like forums but I'm also in my 40s ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Rob Ray wrote: Discord is…
Messaging apps are not conducive to the kind of detailed, long-form discussion required by communist theory in order to develop, and the great thing about libcom is that it's all publicly accessible, not hidden away.
Discord is not end-to-end encrypted, so users should not treat it as private.
You're probably best off…
You're probably best off telling them that, rather than me. Though I'll note that "publicly accessible" isn't always in and of itself a selling point for young people. Encryption doesn't mean very much if anyone curious can just publicly link your handle to years of comments.
Thanks for all of these…
Thanks for all of these comments. We were definitely be up for people having a go at trying to resurrect discussion on here. I think before we try this in a concerted way, we want to make a couple of changes to help, and we will try to do these shortly.
What we plan on doing is:
- Building a new index which shows everything which has the latest comments on it, in the Recent section
- Building a new index just to show items posted with the content type Discussions.
These should help people keep up-to-date and monitor discussions as they happen.
Steven. wrote: Thanks for…
This is great Steven!
Thanks Noah, for starting…
Thanks Noah, for starting this discussion, and for reminding me that a Google search is one means of finding what you're looking for here, which I have utilised. Steven, that is a good plan to highlight discussions on the site, which I am keen to see reinvigorated and rejoin.
It's been great being back…
It's been great being back in touch. Yesterday, Noah and I talked by video chat for a couple hours and it was great catching up, talking about everything from anarchist politics, hiking and nature, to books and music. It was so nice to talk with a kindred soul!
A lot of forum threads seem…
A lot of forum threads seem to be missing. What happened? Did these threads fail to make it to the new site? Every time I search something, it's the same set of threads that keeps popping up.
Last Wednesday (7 June) my…
Last Wednesday (7 June) my comrades here in the San Francisco Bay Area lost a militant to cancer at the much too young age of 62. He was an Uber/Lyft driver and was instrumental in creating the driver-led Rideshare Drivers United to struggle against the independent-contractor scam and to fight the bosses. Thankfully, I had friends like Noah to turn to in my time of grief. I'm so thankful for reconnecting with him and others. It's great to back in touch!
So sorry for your loss
So sorry for your loss
By the way, you can threads…
By the way, you can look for threads under site:libcom.org/forums and site:libcom.org/discussion. I'm not sure why it's like that. But still, searching the former way, there are still a lot of threads missing. I hope they aren't lost forever.
Steven. wrote: So sorry for…
Thank you
There are three problems, I…
There are three problems, I guess.
1 - Anarchism is not formulated yet and is suffering from faults of historical materialism. This let Marxian reactionaries to take advantage of young people. We need to fight Marxism, specially its inclination to create cult of personality.
2 - Libcom web doesn't use a web page efficiently. Its pages are too large and have too much blank spaces. Images are large too. Title/Content ratio is high.
3 - Social media is a problem, yes. Social media is a very wrong and dangerous media for anti authoritarian movement (anarchist movement). We have just let people use it without criticism. So many have been arrested, tortured, imprisoned, assassinated and executed using social media for revolutionary activities - just check what Iranian government did to the people who revolted against the fascist regime last year. People relied too much on social media and web sites. New tech, cameras and hacking, are also works well against revolutionaries. Criminals will go to jail for few years, revolutionaries will be monitored for life long. We need to basically rely on traditional method of communication. Just use social media for non political reason.
I miss forums. I think the…
I miss forums.
I think the massive drop in comments was as the "social" side moved to social media, but when you stop the social side you tend to log on a lot less often so the overtly political stuff dries up too.
It makes me think of the pub, most of the time we talked shite, but there were some good conversations that made a difference.
The other thing is access. I used to use my computer on evening shifts at work. I wrote loads of the CPE blog and news articles there, I wouldn't do that now.
There was a lot of good on libcom back in the day, but those days are gone, now it is more of a library.
I wish I had archived some messages, but there were thousands on there and I didn't know how to do that, so I dithered and did nothing. It was a shame, but then I had a long time to look at that stuff and never did.
It is a shame that those discussions are not visible easily, because like many here, I learnt a lot from the discussions.
I was thinking about the news section before I saw this thread. It has been dead for a long time. It takes a fair amount of work and you need a fair few contributors.
Noah, if you click on a username you can send someone an email through the contact form.
Assuming they still use the address.
jef costello wrote:if you…
Actually, if I click on a username all I can see is the length of time they've been subscribed. I can't see any 'contact' option.
darren p wrote: jef costello…
Yes, same here. I see the exactly the same as darren p does. Being able to message a fellow user was one of the benefits of the old site. If it is indeed possible now, how?
I think it's just because…
I think it's just because people with admin privileges see more info... so you better be nice to jef, or else they'll subscribe you to a whole bunch of Trotskyist mailing lists
The contact page doesn"t…
The contact page doesn"t show you the other person's email address.
Also Trotskyists pay very poorly for leads.
Do you mind if I ask what…
Do you mind if I ask what you're talking about then? You're not talking about the libcom contact button are you? (I also wasn't implying that you're a Trotskyist; I just meant subscribing people to Trotskyist mailing lists as a form of punishment.)
Noah, if you click on a…
FYI, getting rid of the contact form was something we did with the upgrade. This was massively abused by spammers on the old site. We had several million spam accounts on the old site, and they sent huge amounts of spam through this form. This resulted in us losing the ability to send user emails. This is why many new users could no longer register accounts, and no one could do password resets for several years. This was one of the really significant things which was massively broken on our site for a very long time, but which regular users didn't really notice because they already had their accounts.
Private messaging through the site was also unencrypted and insecure, and so is not safe for us to keep on the site. It could be potentially accessed by people involved in hosting companies, and law enforcement agencies could get access using search warrants. Also they would be vulnerable in the event of a hack.
jef can see the contact tab in the new site because he has been an administrator for years, and so can see functionality which other users cannot. jef, let us know if you would like to keep these permissions by the way, if you still occasionally help admin content/spammers etc.
I've always like the forums…
I've always like the forums. I understand that with the diminution of discussions, some shitty flame out and some morons, participation basically trickled out. Miss 'em, but understand why they disappeared.
Steven. wrote: Noah, if you…
Yes I'd like to help out a bit more. I need to get the hang of the new site.
Steven. wrote:FYI, getting…
So if we wanted to contact a user, for example to republish an article or something like that, would it only be possible to do that via contacting an admin and getting them to pass a message on?
Regarding site improvements,…
Regarding site improvements, I've noticed that the font changes every so often when I load/re-load a page. I'm not sure why it does that, but it would be nice if there was just one font.
May I suggest libcom get on…
May I suggest libcom get on bluesky? Its value-proposition is that:
- it’s not the fascist bird app, run by erratic, right-wing billionaire
- it’s not a Meta app (threads)
- it’s more scalable than ActivityPub/Mastodon
- it will support decentralisation and account portability (thus avoiding being at the mercy of erratic billionaires)
- it’s still early days, therefore good opportunity to stake a claim
It's a good idea, we just…
It's a good idea, we just don't have the capacity to run another social channel at the moment
Thanks for the continued…
Thanks for the continued responses to my post.
It really has been great reconnecting with Hieronymous.
Does anyone feel there is really anything positive to say about the anarchist scene(I say scene coz I think the word ‘movement’ would be an exaggeration) in the UK. Is there anything going on at all? I’m aware of groups that publish articles etc. I’m aware of split after split with accusations(unfortunately justified by the look of it) of transphobia, but is there anything actually being built? I know that I’m doing pretty much nothing apart from helping out with the Lucky Black Cat channel, which whilst I think is of value, it’s not UK oriented and it’s not actually ‘doing’ anything.
I’m kind of isolated in rural East Anglia but if there’s anyone in my neck of the woods who’s interested in meeting up and knocking some ideas around please let me know.
Noah Fence wrote: Thanks for…
Big question, I would sadly find it hard to answer with anything too positive though. I've been pretty busy over the last year or so with the strike wave and other things, which has been very worthwhile, but I don't know if the anarchist scene has had anything much to contribute to this moment.
Steven. wrote: It's a good…
I get the strain, but I'd recommend claiming an account to start with, you can leave it dormant until you have more time, or it's needed. I set up a Mastodon account several years ago, barely used for ages, and now I use it on a weekly basis. So far I think Blue Sky won't amount to a twitter/Xit killer for awhile, but that service is extremely frustrating and seems to be getting worse. I have some invite codes if you want.
Well, the East Anglia AFed was active last time I looked, which was awhile a go. The IWW has been active in the strike wave and in some smaller scale disputes that were finished quickly. There's been some more stuff going on with delivery and fast food couriers, but I'm out of the loop on that. Also some expansion in the education and tech and comms departments.
I've seen some Solfed material about some workplace disputes, too. I've ended up essentially in charge of the Audible Anarchist group, so if anyone wants to record audio, let me know at [email protected] and we'll walk you through the steps.
Thanks Reddebrek. I actually…
Thanks Reddebrek. I actually contacted Afed maybe six months ago expressing an interest in getting involved but never heard back. Gave my details to some Solfed guys in Norwich who said they would be in touch but never heard from them either. Pretty disappointing really. Honestly though, I was pretty sceptical with Afed because of the stuff I’ve heard about them becoming less class oriented and more identity oriented in their interests but was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and find out first hand if the rumours were true. Still, it hardly matters either way if they’re not going to engage with interested parties. Maybe I’m being too harsh though? Are then any Afed members reading this thread?
From what I remember, I…
From what I remember, I think East Anglia AFed are an autonomous group not actually affiliated with national AFed: https://eastangliaafed.noblogs.org/about-us/
Although, as you say, it doesn't makes a huge amount of difference one way or another if they don't answer their emails.
The way you are going it …
The way you are going it may take only a few thousand years to get any where significant on the industrial front. I don't think you have that time.
Check out per google search Rebel Worker Review of "A Beautiful Idea: A history of Freedom Press Anarchists" for a critique and a way forward
asn wrote: The way you are…
One weird trick to get somewhere on the industrial front in under a thousand years (capitalists hate it!)
Noah Fence wrote: Thanks…
I sympathise with the frustrations but admin work is very difficult especially for groups on a voluntary basis. I've just received an e-mail for Disabled People Against Cuts apologising for the lack of response as the membership person was unavailable. I had applied so long ago, I had forgotten I had done so. I recommend sending follow-up emails to anyone who hasn't heard back for a while.
fwiw there's now a new …
fwiw there's now a new 'comments' tab in recent, showing any post with one or more comments
https://libcom.org/recent/comments
And the discussions tab only shows discussions now.
Still feels a bit like the…
Still feels a bit like the Negev here Mike.
Noah Fence wrote:
"New articles" is not quite the right term as the majority of articles are rehashed old articles gleaned from other sources on the World Wide Web.
As to comments reducing to a trickle, perhaps this has something to do with the purge of users that were banned, or perhaps the tendency of veterans to resort to personal jibes and sectarian positions?
Friends that we have invited to look at the site state that they are baffled by the sheer amount of content.
One further possible explanation for the exodus from discussions/forums that hasn't been mentioned above could be the photoshopping of the Aufheben Gate affair:
Absolutely spot on. I'm sure…
Absolutely spot on. I'm sure the change in direction this site has taken is largely down to a decade old scandal, involving a small group of British academics and a tiny circulation journal almost nobody has ever heard of, and not at all to do with most of the world having moved away from shit posting in forums. I expect this place was a nightmare to moderate and everyone is now shouting at each other on discord.
Hi folks, I still lurk.
I missed you Fleur, like a…
Missed you Fleur, like a hole in the head. ;-)
Seriously though, Aufheben might appear as a minor academic journal from afar but within the anarchist milieu in the UK it was captivating. The revelations regarding one of its key academics sent shockwaves quite out of proportion. It formed a rupture between the once homogenous, cross classist body of anarchism.
westartfromhere wrote:…
The above is uninformed nonsense;
Aufheben had one academic member.
The controversy had a minor long term influence on this site, the main influence on forum decline was the shift away to social media.
Aufhebengate didn't cause any ruptures of the kind you claim.
A journal that appeared once a year didn't have the kind of influence you claim.
Aufheben had one academic…
Not sure what you mean? Its whole output was academic, in both senses of the word.
Is libcom.org not Social Media?
Are you sure?
Some copies were more threadbare than a Zane Grey paperback. There is no doubt it captivated the anarchist milieu for a decade.
This was just one reason for the decline. Other reasons, already cited above, were the banning of large numbers of users, understandable on a commercial website, but strange on an avowedly "libertarian" one; the disparaging attitude of certain users; the volume of trite content...
What nonsense. Captivated…
What nonsense. Captivated the anarchist milieu? I don't think so.
The above is uninformed…
Unfortunately, this seems to be a recurring pattern in posts from this user.
Foolish dogs bark at the…
Foolish dogs bark at the moon. Better to keep stúmm.
You said; westartfromhere…
You said;
- which most sane people would understand as meaning Aufheben had more than one academic professional member. Which is untrue.
That you apparently don't understand that the rise of Facebook, Twitter etc was obviously being referred to shows, yet again, how little you really know of the subjects you claim to talk of with such authority. On the other farmer protests thread you're still peddling your nonsense claiming - in the name of Marx! - that peasants and small businesses are part of your mythical "rural proletariat".
Take your own advice: stop littering this site with your nonsensical ignorant crap.
[b]Red Marriot[/]: "Take…
Red Marriot: "Take your own advice: stop littering this site with your nonsensical ignorant crap": "At least in the UK... the rural proletariat is small..."
It can get a bit quiet…
It can get a bit quiet around here, though I think the site's still useful for archivig purposes, and there are some interesting discussions every now and then. Are people still mostly using Twitter/X these days? It doesn't seem like that many people have really left it for Mastodon. Also, what Discords are people referring to in this thread (like invite-only-type groups or groups that are open to anyone)?
Not sure if you mean people…
Not sure if you mean people that used to use Libcom or people who engage in discussions in general. I've always given Twitter a wide berth and not signed up for Mastodon or anything like that. I was in some quite busy Facebook anarchist groups probably about five years ago, but they rapidly degraded into a cesspool of Maoism and identitarian politics.
For me, the era of naive optimism about social media and Facebook discussions has passed. The best discussions I now have are via invite-only Zoom reading groups, or face-to-face if I'm lucky.
I don't know how good Reddit is for this kind of thing? Some YouTube comments sections can seem quite busy too.
Reddit is fucking terrible…
Reddit is fucking terrible for discussions. 99% of the commenters/participants will not read or watch the thing that started the thread, I don't mean they disagree so they couldn't have, I mean they will not bother looking at the thing at all. YouTube is about the worst online platform for discussion, comments only still exist purely to drive algorithms.
In 2022, the urban…
What I wrote, which was in regard to discussing the farmer protests;
Thanks for proving my point; as you show, only around 20% of the UK population is rural. And many aren't proletarians, so yes, relatively small. The total size of a rural population tells you little about the size of "the rural proletariat"; unless you use the ridiculous lump definition that you do; ie, including small businesses/farmers, peasants, large landowners etc - all supposedly being "proletarians" (as well as anyone who clashes with cops on Countryside Alliance demos), as seen in comments in link above.
Most people understand the difference between forums like these and social media like Facebook, Twitter etc. But apparently that's beyond you.
Aufheben had an academic approach in many respects but they weren't, with one exception, academics; they were politically active without academic professional roles.
If you try to insist on conformity with dictionary definitions - regardless of commonly understood meanings within particular contexts - maybe that's one reason why you don't understand what you're talking about; be it Aufheben, Marx, farmers, proletarians or whatever.
Reddit hasn't been that bad…
Reddit hasn't been that bad in my experience (I was on r/marxism_101 a few years back), though I'm sure other people's experiences may have varied. I'm not sure if popular subreddits like r/antiwork, which is a wonderful new development in my opinion, are really the places for serious discussions though; it's mostly just people writing about how much they dislike (capitalist) work. (Just for reference r/antiwork currently has over 2.8 million members; other subreddits like, say r/anarchism, have around 267,000.) I wouldn't mind giving Discord a try, but I'm not aware of any groups. I'm also kind of put off by how the platform seems geared more towards gamers/younger people. Mastodon also seems quite empty still. Oh well
Red Marriot, the millions…
Red Marriot, the millions that compose the rural proletariat are not "small", relative or otherwise. Why you chose to mention employment in tourism and retail in this context perhaps says more about your interaction with the countryside of England than anything else? As a typical rural proletarian myself, I have been employed in many agricultural roles, as trussmaker, chicken hatcher, drayman, car part manufacturer, pallet maker, passenger assistant, cleaner, stadium seating constructer, bottle plant operative, surplus labourer...
The long and the short of it is the comments have dropped from 10,000 in 2007—by, I would estimate, commenters in the thousands—to a trickle—now predominantly by Members who have invested more than 10 years service to the site.
A perusal of this thread (partially deleted by the administrators) will give readers further insight as to why there is a reluctance to pass through here.
westartfromhere wrote: A…
I don't think it will at all - a poster quickly banned for anti-Semitic remarks in a 7-yr old thread buried among thousands on this site, so what? Or do you mean the ramblings of schmoopie, who sounds quite like you? If it's central to your point why don't you just say what you think is wrong with that thread?
I've lived in rural areas and know people who still do so am not as uninformed as you like to think.
Out of a total English working population of 27.4 million in 2020 the rural working population was 4.8 million, 25% of which were home workers (so not farmers or agri-workers). The total agricultural workforce is only 1% of the total workforce, under 300,000 - so a small proportion even of the rural workforce. According to Gov.uk rural tourism employs 0.6 million - as I previously said, more than agriculture. Forestry is the biggest rural employer. The total English rural population being around 10 million, of whom many will not be proletarians (wealthy retirees etc) and only around half of whom work; of those working 10% are self-employed (higher than in urban areas), many others are small businesses plus small, medium to large farmers and landowners.
If one is to gauge size, it’s generally in relation to something else, in this case sensibly the wider nationwide workforce; so yes, as I initially said, a relatively small rural proletariat. 4.8 million rural workers against 27.4 million urban workers – yes, small. What proportion of that 4.8 million are proles? A half, two thirds? Whatever, still definitely small in comparison.
"Instaban" was the first…
"Instaban" was the first thing that struck me as strange. Then, the fact that a portion of the discussion has disappeared into the ether. The fact that many of the contributers' accounts are no longer live—there does not appear to be any way of unenrolling from the site. What's poor Schmoopie done to offend you? This does not read as rambling but common sense:
Have been reading this from your former co-writer and friend, Red. Yo man, it's a good yarn.
The proletariat form the majority of both the rural and urban population. We are not small.
This is the context in which rural proletariat was used in the Farmers' Movement thread.
This has nothing to do with the relative size of the rural proletariat to the urban. Besides, in discussing the proletariat, why concentrate on the "working population". In bourgie terms, the working population excludes those in full time education, those invalidated from working, those economically inactive. These at least equal quantitively the number of the "working population".
westartfromhere wrote: Have…
It was submitted by Samotnaf, not written by them.
Same old wrong definition of farmers & peasants as proles, go read and understand the Marx you quote/copy & paste so often. If you still can't get that right, not much point discussing anything else about proles.
We know that "Sam" wrote it…
We know that "Sam" wrote it. He told us you used to write with him. Who are "them"?
We haven't discussed anything. You have simply berated.
FWIW Samotnaf has asked for…
FWIW Samotnaf has asked for all the material written solely by them to be removed from Libcom. (I found this out because I inadvertently posted something by them here.) As far as I know they have not asked for that piece to be removed.
I'm not entirely sure what is meant by "The fact that many of the contributers' accounts are no longer live—there does not appear to be any way of unenrolling from the site." but it appears to me that most of the user accounts on the thread referred to are still "live" - i.e. that those people can still post here if they wish to do so.
As several others have said, there appears to have been a general decline in the use of internet forums similar to Libcom over the last ten years.
Perhaps some people are put off posting here for other reasons. I am sure we could speculate about that indefinitely.
It appears that the wildly pedantic discussion above has not encouraged other people to flock to Libcom to participate - with the welcome exception of Fleur. Perhaps that is not the intention or perhaps the discusison is just not yet pedantic enough - one more effort!
Most, the majority, of the…
Most, the majority, of the Members' accounts are live on this thread, i.e. when one clicks on the name this is displayed on the screen, e.g. westartfromhere, Member for 10 months 2 weeks. The accounts that are not live count as follows: Sleeper, fidel gastro, Schmoopie, S. Artesian, Zeronowhere, factvalue. As an adminstrator of the site and Member for 20 years 3 months, Fozzie, you will possibly know how these Members' accounts became dead.
One Member, factvalue, appears to have been banned by the arbitrators of life and death of Members' accounts for writing material such as this:
As Samotnaf has documented, we now know that collusion between the National Socialist regime of Germany and representatives of the nascent Zionist state did occur, so why the banning?
Noah posed the question. We have done our best to answer it.
As an adminstrator of the…
I've not been involved (and do not wish to be involved) with banning or blocking users from Libcom, with the exception of obvious spam accounts. I don't recall any of those people being banned, although perhaps they have - that is hardly an unusual occurence on internet forums.
I vaguely recall that people had to reactivate their accounts when the site was upgraded, so conceivably it relates to that. Possibly it doesn't.
westartfromhere wrote: We…
Wrong again. He had no involvement at all in writing it and I don't believe he would tell you otherwise. That we on occasion wrote together doesn't refute that. So much that you think you know is wrong.
Sam means name. We know the…
'Ever since I touch down in England, everything I do is "wrong".'
On the exodus of active…
On the exodus of active Members from Forums/Discussions of libcom.org
1. Hosting of a known White supremacist, Michael Schmidt
2. Purge of Members and deletion of their comments
3. Support for a Police collaborator (site rules prohibit the naming of this individual)
4. Removal of posted material deemed politically incorrect. For example, Dead Cities, by The Exploited
4. Removal of posted…
But wait! There is good news for fans of the cartoon nihilism of Wattie Buchan. Dead Cities, by The Exploited already features on Libcom as part of Like a summer with a thousand Julys …and other seasons… by the always politically correct BM Blob.
I would personally argue that this was the highpoint of the Scottish spiky-tops' relevance and that it has been downhill for them since then. But like most people I have not really been paying attention.
4. Removal of posted…
I doubt it would have been removed for political incorrectness, especially when libcom mods have stood by (on Twitter) other groups like Killdren in the past, along with their hit song "Kill Tory Scum."
Incidentally, I was also right in that stupid thread about that Crimethinc article, in which the author was trying to argue that violent imagery among the left and in socialist propaganda (e.g. guillotine imagery, songs like the Coup's "We Got the Guillotine" etc.) should be done away with since it supposedly promotes actual violence. Boots Riley is shite for other reasons, but I still doubt most people who listen to "We Got the Guillotine," or DK's "Let's Lynch the Landlord," then want to go out and behead billionaires or lynch landlords. It was also quite the irony that, around the same time, some libcom mod then proceeded to defend the group who (metaphorically) sang in favor of "Tory genocide"! In any case, I'm open to apologies from certain people within this thread whenever they're ready to admit that they and the article were wrong.
Joe Meek killed his landlord.
Sorry for derailing the…
Sorry for derailing the above argument, which is a derailment of this thread anyway. (I just really dislike Crimethinc.) Carry on derailing!
well! it looks like things…
well! it looks like things are heating up again, at least on this thread.
though i will forever miss the mess that was libcom c. 2010.
is devrim about?
Instead of advocating the…
Instead of advocating the taking of human life, "the kinds of hands-on, spontaneous, insurrectional violence" that libertarian communists should be promoting is the stripping naked of an entire squadron of Police in south-east Asia that occured in recent years of the proletarian revolution.
Joe Meek was a British music engineer that pioneered the use of the recording studio as an instrument in its own right to produce music. Despite the huge amount of labour he carried out producing music, Joe ended up indebted to the capital. He ended his days and the days of his landlady with a shotgun.
Devrim is still flirting around the skirts of the Left wing of the Borg.
So, since the site is still…
So, since the site is still being tweaked and this thread served as a something of bug report in the past, I'm finding it difficult distinguishing in threads and comments where one person ends and another begins, perhaps a more noticeable border where the username and time posted could help with that.
In addition, I think the loss of messages was a detriment to the site, I understand most users didn't use them, but members who did use them used them for a reason, I used to stay in contact with several users, co-ordinate archiving and report issues to the admins, not sure what we're supposed to do now, make a thread or contact the libcom social media accounts? This could cut down on the "is ____ still around?" posts that are cropping up.
Absolutely fascinated by the…
Absolutely fascinated by the suggestion that the reason not as many people post on libcom anymore is because you can't post Exploited songs.
Happy to say that I'd give…
Also kind of ignoring how the Chinese Communist Party and Viet Minh/North Vietnamese (as just two examples) killed thousands of landlords before and after coming to power, so it's not like there's anything "intrinsically anti-state or anarchist" about lynching landlords, if that's what's being suggested. What you're saying is even more gruesome considering how you weren't even talking about agricultural landlords in, say, pre-industrial China or Vietnam (where conditions were far worse and landlords far more despotic), but presumably just modern-day landlords in industrialized countries. It's difficult to imagine any modern revolutionary situation where "lynching landlords" would actually play a part (especially if they posed no threat, and even then there would likely be other ways of dealing with them), but it's nice to know that you're ready and waiting.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Is that the last face a…
Is that the last face a landlord will see before you clobber him to death with what seems to be sticks? Sickening. *ok that's all*
R Totale wrote: Absolutely…
Not songs, just this one:
I'm filled up with aggression
Want to smash your television
Saturday night you watch TV
Saturday night does nothing for me
Dead cities dead cities
Dead cities dead cities
See the man in the electric chair
They beat him up and shave his hair
There is no future to behold
In the city of dead you'll be there
Dead cities dead cities
Dead cities dead cities
I'm getting wasted in this city
Those council houses are getting me down
Go up town see who's there
There's nothing to do its getting me down
Dead cities dead cities
Dead cities dead cities
Snarling and gobbing and falling around
I really enjoy the freedom I've found
My mate's besides me lying on the ground
His ears are bursting with the volume of sound
It's not W. B. Yeats but it is an expression of our class experience. And perhaps more enthralling than a western German economist rubbishing Marx to sell a lie?
Reddebrek wrote: So, since…
Could you maybe do a little mockup of what you're suggesting? Not really clear what you are trying to say exactly.
Yeah it was a shame to remove this feature, however we didn't remove it because it wasn't used. Basically we had to remove it for multiple reasons. Primarily it was a security issue: all these private messages were unencrypted and insecure.
Another huge problem with it was that spam accounts abused it. Over the years, we had several million spam accounts register, and they were using the contact options, which caused us problems, including getting all emails sent from our site, including password resets, blocked as spam.
So unfortunately there wasn't a way we could keep messaging, while adequately protecting users' privacy, and protecting users, and our site, from spam.
Fleur, so great to "see" you! Hope you are doing well.
I still often think of that thread where you completely demolished the 9/11 denier.
Steven. wrote: you…
It is unimaginable that any communist would either refute or affirm the machinations of the bourgeois states (Saudi Arabia, USA...) in the destruction of the World Trade Center and the partial destruction of the Pentagon.
Perhaps this remark above has more to do with Steven's unfounded accusations levelled against the modest group of revolutionaries of the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste and the misrepresentation of this article?
Hi Steven! I'm good,…
Hi Steven! I'm good, surviving, which I'm lead to believe is better than the alternative :) Hope you're happy and well.
I remember that thread. Doesn't that feel like a hundred years and several lifetimes ago? We live in interesting times....
"Could you maybe do a little…
"Could you maybe do a little mockup of what you're suggesting? Not really clear what you are trying to say exactly."
Well let's start with what we have now, we have user name in small font size, the date time in faint font colour and a red box that says new if the comment is new, and the rest is empty space. And at the bottom of the comment, there's a thin line separating comments.
If I'm trying to find a specific comment to reply to or re-read that part blends into the body of the text. It doesn't stand out very well to me. Perhaps increase font size and change the background colour and extend the background to the width of the comment since the space is empty. Divide the space between the user and the message.
"Also kind of ignoring how the Chinese Communist Party and Viet Minh/North Vietnamese (as just two examples) killed thousands of landlords before and after coming to power, so it's not like there's anything "intrinsically anti-state or anarchist" about lynching landlords, if that's what's being suggested."
In both those examples, it wasn't landlords as a group but those who opposed them that were targetted for repression, they both defended landlords from their tenants if those landlords co-operated with them. That was the distinction between patriotic/democratic/progressive bourgeoisie and reactionary bourgeoisie was for.
In China, the Mao approved war on all landlords was during the Cultural Revolution and targetted people who hadn't been landlords since 1952 when the state took ownership of all land and housing making it the sole landlord, their relatives (except for Mao whose father had exploited rents and loans against his poor neighbours, that son of the landlords was exempt for some reason) and people who had no connection to owning land but accusing them of that was a convenient justification.
Okay thanks, Reddebrek, we…
Okay thanks, Reddebrek, we will have a think and see if there is anything we can do.
Yes, I'm all good thanks! And it does feel a long time ago now, as does the whole libcom forum culture TBH. A medium from a different era…
westartfromhere wrote: Joe…
well okay, but
"February 3rd 1967. On that day Joe got into one of his regular arguments with his long suffering landlady Violet Shenton, concerning the noise levels coming from upstairs.
They also argued about the amount of back rent Joe still owed. His anger getting the better of him Joe picked up his shotgun and killed Mrs Shenton before turning the gun on himself."
as an apartment dweller i have sympathy with those oppressed by noise levels. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/12511423/violet-ethel-shenton
anyway. good to see personages still active here.
In both those examples, it…
The CCP never viewed agricultural landlords as being part of the (“progressive”) bourgeoisie! The CCP mostly regarded them as “feudal elements” who were holding back China’s development towards capitalism. Additionally, the fact that the CCP were much less harsh in their treatment of certain landlords, particularly those who supported the CCP and were apologetic about their past exploitation of peasants, does not refute the fact that the CCP essentially won the Chinese Civil War by appealing to the peasantry and targeting the landlord class.[1]
Sticking with the CCP during the Civil War, their fraternization with the upper classes was actually more true for the much smaller capitalist class in China (i.e. capitalists who allied themselves with the CCP) than it was for landlords, who the CCP more often viewed as entirely reactionary. The CCP wanted “communist”-sympathizing capitalists to stick around seeing as how they regarded them as “historically progressive” and thought that they could assist the CCP in industrializing China. These people were the so-called “progressive bourgeoisie” who you seem to be referring to, and by definition they had very little to do with landlords who primarily built their wealth by exploiting peasants. The Shanghai manufacturer Liu Hongsheng would be just one example of such a CCP-sympathizing capitalist who the CCP had persuaded to stay following their victory against the GMD in the Civil War.
We can also start another thread if you want to continue this discussion about China and Vietnam; I don’t think this is really the place for it.
1. Although some CCP members, notably Peng Pai in Haifeng, had successfully organized among peasants prior to the 1927 Shanghai Massacre (i.e. the GMD’s betrayal of the CCP, who had been cooperating with the GMD against warlords during the Warlord Period), the CCP only really began to focus on the peasantry after this date, particularly as the GMD then drove the CCP out of the cities. Previously the CCP, following instructions from the Soviet Union, had appealed to the much smaller Chinese working class/proletariat, which the Soviet Union would continue to insist that the CCP do following the GMD betrayal.
as an apartment dweller i…
He did produce some quite loud (but good) music...
edit, what is a "crawdaddy" though and why were people in the '60s going around saying it? surely they're not singing about a crayfish?
"The CCP never viewed…
"The CCP never viewed agricultural landlords as being part of the (“progressive”) bourgeoisie!"
That's certainly not true if we take the CCP at their word, both the New Democratic Revolution and the Alliance of the Four Revolutionary classes (Prole, Pes, Petite-B, and National-B) made room for landlords willing to work with them in the latter 2 categories just as peasants were divided into lower, middle and upper, with the upper peasants often overlapping with lesser landlords and often lumped in as targets during the anti-landlord agitation, especially during the cultural revolution when landlords had ceased to exist.
"But if there is to be a proper representation for each revolutionary class according to its status in the state, a proper expression of the people's will, a proper direction for revolutionary struggles and a proper manifestation of the spirit of New Democracy, then a system of really universal and equal suffrage, irrespective of sex, creed, property or education, must be introduced. "
Mao maintained support for this strategy upto his death. In 1974 he advised Sihanouk to build a similar broad coalition including landlords and capitalist if he were to re-take power.
The CCP attitude to landlords was never as simplistic or unyielding as your suggesting. The periods of strong hostility to the landlords followed action by the peasantry. Mao endorses their actions in 1927 in the Hunan peasant report but others in the party disagree.
Then in 45-52 there is the land reform movement where the party comes out against landlords. Again this movement follows the mass resistance by peasants due to the collapse of the GMD and the party does not take a consistent approach. In some areas they actively take part in killings and repression in others they intervene and in other areas stay out of it. The deciding factor seems to be the balance of power in the area, there is also widespread resistance to CCP from the peasantry over its attempts to control land and its grain taxes in the same time.
You're correct that the party appealed to the peasantry but it did not do it exclusively nor always sucessfully. The peasants were their own people and actors. And of course the party itself became the sole landlord extracting rent and deciding how land should be divided and used.
The Maoists were pragmatic and opportunistic and they made mistakes and lagged behind. You only find consistent anti landlord sentiments (which included urban landlords FYI) in their agitprop during campaigns with that objective. Usefulness to the party at that time was what counted the most.
In both those examples, it…
What words? Landlords are not capitalists, even though many industrialists might have had landlord backgrounds in the past or come from gentry families. Mao specifically talked about the "enlightened gentry" (i.e. landlords who sided with the CCP and allowed the redistribution of their landholdings), if that's what you're referring to, but such exceptions do not really change the fact that the CCP targeted the landlord class as I said. We're really splitting hairs here.
"if that's what you're…
"if that's what you're referring to, but such exceptions do not really change the fact that the CCP targeted the landlord class as I said."
Except it did not. During the land reform struggle the two categories for reprisal were dizhu and eba these were not class designations dizhu meant exploiter of the masses and eba meant tyrant and on paper they were reflections of actions past and present of individuals and families in the countryside. A landlord targeted for punishment was officially declared a Eba Dizhu. Eba was frequently applied to anyone in the village if they opposed the CPC.
Tens of thousands of peasants were killed during the land reform campaigns. To write these people off as landlords is to lie about there deaths and the context of it. The land reform campaign was not about eliminating landlords it was about controlling the land, many peasants resisted the CPC and many landlords collaborated with it.
Dizhu seems like it has a class distinction as it was applied to landlords and wealthy peasants but on paper it should also apply equally to those who were loyal to CPC who were spared and in some cases lead the land reform campaign. The crime of exploitation of the masses also applied to the rural and industrial capitalists and yet the CPC worked extremely hard to win these two groups over including offers of positions and guaranteed pensions and dividends in state enterprises. So the dreaded Dizhu label was not applied in an objective manner but arbitrarily as a tool for division and repression.
During the land reform years villages that had no landlords or rich peasants of any kind suddenly had reports of eba dizhu and other reactionary elements. In other parts of China the CPC work teams are aided in their work by the families of landlords and village gentry (this included the wealthiest families, skilled artisans, officials etc.) And target peasants who are resistant to the PLA taxes in kind and land redistribution.
We aren't splitting hairs, you're perpetuating a simplistic propaganda line that obscures the reality of Maoist rule. I don't know why you're so invested in preserving this popular western misconception and so resistant to further information, but nevertheless here we are.
adri wrote:Mao specifically…
The CCP didn't target landlords during the Chinese Civil War, huh? This is like conspiracy-level arguing. Please inform all the scholars/historians of Chinese history—who correctly acknowledge the glaringly obvious fact that the CCP targeted landlords—and whose works I'm basically just repeating, about your incredible insights! Then again, you can maybe just point them to wikipedia, since that's probably what you're reading from again (like you did previously on my Howard Zinn article, which got you all worked up for whatever reason). You're acting like I'm a Maoist here when I'm really just saying basic stuff that everyone knows.
Like I said, you're splitting hairs here. The fact that the CCP also killed many rich peasants and others doesn't change the fact that they targeted the landlord class as I said. Nobody is denying that the CCP killed peasants and other non-landlords!
The Viet Minh/North Vietnamese similarly killed a number of peasants and other "misclassified people" during their land reform from 1953 to 1956, which they actually publicly apologized for (describing them as "excesses") and then attempted to rectify. As with the CCP, the Viet Minh's killing of peasants does not change the fact that they mainly targeted the landlord class during their land reform. In fact, their targeting of landlords, and particularly their redistribution of land, was part of what made them so popular with the Vietnamese peasantry. President Diem was hated by many South Vietnamese peasants because one of his first land-related policies following the end of the First Indochina War was to return lands that the Viet Minh had given to peasants back to landlords, in addition to requiring that peasants pay back-rent. American officials had also been deeply interested in land reform across Asia, seeing as how they were well aware of the revolutionary potential of an unruly and dissatisfied peasantry. The later American-led "Land to the Tiller Program" in South Vietnam, for example, was explicitly designed to win over the South Vietnamese peasantry and acknowledged how the North's anti-landlord policies had led to countless peasants sympathizing with them. Here's Roy Prosterman, the American agricultural specialist behind the reform, saying just that in an article published around the time:
We aren't splitting hairs,…
Could you name a single serious/scholarly source—anything—that denies how the CCP targeted the landlord class? How is simply pointing out that the CCP targeted landlords, which is all I really said, "perpetuating a simplistic propaganda line"? I never denied that there was more nuance to the CCP's land reform (as there is to virtually everything), but it was irrelevant to what I was saying. I'm not sure why you're trying to portray me as a "Maoist" when I was only pointing out some basic historical facts about the Chinese Civil War and early years of the People's Republic.
Is Chuang, for example, also spreading Maoist propaganda when they write (my emphasis),
(The answer is no.)
"Could you name a single…
"Could you name a single serious/scholarly source—anything—that denies how the CCP targeted the landlord class? "
Land Wars the Story of China's Agrarian Revolution for one.
"Is Chuang, for example, also spreading Maoist propaganda when they write (my emphasis),"
Your quotation of Chuang does not support the claims you've made in this thread, rather it supports what I've been saying
" The progress of land reform—entailing a series of campaigns and grassroots movements for the redistribution of land—ebbed and flowed with the politics of the Party. In northern areas under Party control before 1949, land reform began in 1946 as the Civil War with the GMD was reignited. Initially the Party only gave “approval” for peasants who took land from landlords, but by 1947 it turned the “egalitarian redistribution of land” into “a guiding principle.”[37] This initial process was ended in 1948 when the Party decided it had been carried out in too radical a fashion. A more radical land reform process that eliminated the rural gentry only restarted after the CCP took power nationally, leading to a large-scale redistribution of land.
Though often growing out of repeated peasant rebellions that had occurred independent of the Party, the process itself involved Party cadre identifying key active elements among the poor peasantry to lead the struggle against the landlord and rich peasant classes. This aimed to eliminate the rural exploiting classes while at the same time cultivating an active group of local supporters."
Emphasis mine.
The very passage you quote confirms that the peasantry were the initiators of struggles over land with the party playing a reactive and inconsistent role and that the party directed campaign was general against enemies in the countryside, wealthy peasants and gentry weren't usually landlords and there were tens of thousands of poor peasants killed in the same campaigns to account for.
Maybe read the whole passage before doing a keyword search next time.
Your quotation of Chuang…
What claims are those? Please quote them, as I've only ever said that the CCP targeted the landlord class—which they did and which the Chuang text (and every other serious/scholarly text on the history of modern China) also correctly notes. The Chuang text also mentions how the CCP made exceptions for members of the upper classes who sided with the CCP, and if I were writing a series of texts on the history of post-imperial China—which I wasn't—then I would have included such details.
Why do you want to keep digging this hole deeper? The book doesn't deny how the CCP targeted the landlord class, and in fact argues the exact opposite:
I actually take notes, and there is also a huge difference between relying exclusively on Wikipedia for your information (like you) and doing a keyword search for a passage that you remember having read in a scholarly/serious text. If you're researching something, or want to find particular information, it also helps to use keyword searches as opposed to wasting time reading an entire text only to find out that it doesn't actually contain the information you're interested in; that's just researching 101. Only once you know a text is worth your time do you read through it in its entirety.
For those just tuning in,…
For those just tuning in, here's a recap of some of the main arguments (if you want to call them that) made by Reddebrek in this incredibly interesting discussion:
1) landlords in China were apparently all members of the bourgeoisie
2) the CCP (and Viet Minh/North Vietnamese) never actually targeted the landlord class at all; they supposedly only just killed peasants
3) if you disagree with point 2, then you're spreading Maoist propaganda