raluca’s Reviews > Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism, and Radical History > Status Update

"What are you doing? With what ordinary people do you discuss your ideas before you publish them? (...) Exactly how, in light of what you have written, do you see your theoretical work leading to another world? Or would it be more accurate to suggest that the practical effect of what you write is to rationalize your comfortable position doing full-time theorizing in a college or university?"

"If humanitarian imperialism promotes democracy, then humanitarian activism, in a similarly paternalistic fashion, promotes an internationalism of guilt."

Not only that the old divisions between anarchism and Marxism are being eroded, but Zapatismo is an active process of disarticulation of inherited historical dilemmas (revolution/reform, identity/interest, violence/nonviolence, spontaneity/organization, among many others). When I first encountered Zapatismo, my impression was that it offered the most coherent contemporary manifestation of what I call anarchism.

"But if organizing is personal expression alone, more often than not it will fail to give rise to mass action. (...) Anti-war demonstrations that consist largely of speeches and become routine will ultimately turn people off, and do not really build a movement no matter how large at any given time."