Revolutionaries in Coffee Shops

All too often one hears from conservatives the boring cliche about privileged revolutionaries who sit around in coffee shops doing nothing. How could they ever organize a revolution? Those incompetent idiots who sit around talking ideas all day! Their pie-in-the-sky Utopian whining will go nowhere!

I say: never underestimate what creative and liberated chaff can do. When Victor Adler objected to Berchtold, foreign minister of Austria-Hungary, that war would provoke revolution in Russia, even if not in the Habsburg monarchy, he replied: "And who will lead this revolution? Perhaps Mr. Bronstein [Trotsky] sitting over there at the Cafe Central?" Can you imagine the look on his face when 1917 broke out?

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The concept of cultural appropriation – a critique of racism on its own foundations

Original here: https://gegen-kapital-und-nation.org/das-konzept-der-kulturellen-aneignung-eine-kritik-des-rassismus-auf-seinen-eigenen-grundlagen/ In recent years, a new form of racism, cultural appropriation, has been criticized in some anti-racist circles . They always discover this where members of a group adopt cultural productions (e.g. certain cultural customs, hairstyles, items of clothing,...) that, according to advocates of the concept of cultural appropriation, come from other groups, namely those who have less power over the acquiring group due to racial discrimination. When criticizing cultural appropriation, respect for these cultures is demanded. This respect should then contribute to combating racial discrimination. There was criticism that a non-indigenous artist in Canada integrated elements of indigenous art into her artwork. 1 Even when “white” 2 people wear dreadlocks or throw colored powder at each other (a practice inspired by th...

Democracy and True Democracy

“... I think that we agree on our criticism of the ruling democratic system. Except that this system doesn’t have anything to do with true popular government. Somehow, I think your criticism is misguided, if you want to say something against democracy.” I doubt that we really agree. But first things first: on the one hand, it could be irrelevant what you want to call that form of government which ensures that the citizens elect a government that they regularly entrust their affairs to, despite being constantly at odds with those who are elected and their policies for good reasons. Put “parliamentary system” or “ruling political system” or democracy in quotation marks or whatever. One thing, however, is clear: this political system has governed the citizens here for decades and, for all the complaining by the citizens about what the administrations are doing to them, it has at the same time established itself as a political system that is always appreciated by voters, making it un...

The Absurdity Known As The Right to Resist or Overthrow

Everyone is familiar with the refrain that there is a right to resist tyranny. If a government is tyrannical, then the people have the right to resist it or overthrow it. The doctrine of the "right to resistance/overthrow" contains a contradiction that is worth thinking about. The rights that people are never squeamish about praising as "natural" actually have to be conferred upon the people by the sanction of a public law granted by a state. However, if the state then turns around and says, "well, this is really tentative upon the whims of the people we rule over", then this completely undermines the basis of law. In other words, the most authoritative legislation (a constitution) would contain within itself a denial of its own supremacy and sovereignty if the right to resistance were actually enshrined and taken seriously, not just as a sop to popular stupidity. It's a basic tenet of liberalism -- and doubtlessly many other ideologies -- that...

Overthrow

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