Shocking Developments

Attention, all readers.

Laurie Penny, she of the uneven mind, is no longer an anarcho-communist. 

Now she’s an anarcha-feminist. Which is, like, totally different. 

Please update your files accordingly.

Comments

[Clam]

"You idiot"

[David]

Now, now. We mustn’t impede Laurie’s urge to define herself, repeatedly.

[Jen]

Did 'anarcho-communism' go out of fashion? :-)

[David]

Did ‘anarcho-communism’ go out of fashion? :-)

How dare you imply unserious motives.

You see, Laurie used to be an anti-capitalist who wants to smash the family and expects free stuff. Now she’s an anti-capitalist who expects free stuff and wants to smash the family.

Do keep up.

[David]

For some reason, Laurie’s endless self-outing comes to mind.

[Captain Nemo]

Look at meeeeeee! I'm still relevant! Pay attention to meeeeeee!

Just rinse and repeat.

[Joan]

Wasn't Laurie's slogan "full communism now"?

[Dr Evil]

Penny Dreadful. No real change there.

[Niels R]

Anarcha-feminist?

OK, so that's quotas and all other 'positive' discrimination strategies no longer ideologically valid. Also no-platforming and other centralised banning strategies are presumably inpalatable now, as patriarchical/hierarchical.

Or will darling Penny happily arm herself with the tools of oppression while pretending to defeat it?

[Jonathan]

Now she’s an anarcha-feminist.

Splitter!

[Damian]

Related.

[David]

Wasn’t Laurie’s slogan “full communism now”?

She has mouthed it, though I believe she currently prefers the phrase “fully automated luxury communism now.”

I suppose by now we shouldn’t expect even minimal coherence. As we’ve seen so many times, very little of what Laurie says bears any relation to reality.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...very little of what Laurie says bears any relation to reality.

That whole thread, even the people arguing against her, has no relation to reality.

First, communism is anti censorship...

Neither the NKVD nor Stasi were available for comment.

[David]

Neither the NKVD nor Stasi were available for comment.

I have no idea whether this thing here is sarcasm or not:

[ Added: ]

But if he’s serious - and having now poked through his tweets, I suspect he is - then we aren’t allowed to think of anything at all as communism unless it somehow instantly and spontaneously achieves a theoretical fantasy end-state, in which kittens have wings and smell of candy floss. I.e., if it doesn’t work and in fact ends in disaster and colossal human suffering, which it does dramatically tend towards, then it can’t ever be communism. Because kittens and candy floss.

Or, “If it didn’t result in an earthly paradise, then it wasn’t communism.”

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...and having now poked through his tweets...

Poking through tweets, that way lies madness..

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Miss Penny and introspection, some assembly required.

Exhibit C

Miss Penny and reality, two blacked out ships passing in the night.

[Flubber]

Look at her pprofile picture and all becomes clear - she's rushing towards sexless middle age cathood.

[Governor Squid]

If anyone is interested in my well-constructed arguments against Neo-nationalism and how white male entitlement is killing the world, my next book is available for pre-order.

One can't help noticing that the light of Penny's wisdom is not distributed for free to the ignorant masses crying out in the darkness. Funny, that.

I'd be really interested to see how many copies the publisher had printed. I'm sure that the subsequent printings will be massive.

[R. Sherman]

Now she’s an anarcha-feminist.

Glad we've got that sorted. I was beginning to worry.

[David]

my well-constructed arguments

It’s scary, isn’t it? The obliviousness, I mean.

[Sporkatus]

stateless, moneyless economy of communism

It takes a special sort of fool not to realize that a "moneyless" economy is the most cutthroat of all, as the peripheral concerns, favor-trading, formation of bunds and cliques, and jockeying for power that all play second fiddle in a healthy milieu fester and necrotize.

Of course, it also takes a special sort of fool to describe the notional "perfect distribution" under socialism allegedly perfected as an "economy". A dolt, really. The fantasy of state-managed each-according-to-ability-each-according-to-needs is by definition not transactional.

[David]

It takes a special sort of fool...

The analogue that comes to mind is the Flat Earth Society.

[Spiny Norman]

I strongly suspect that our new-found special kind of fool Gordon has never actually read The Communist Manifesto, or anything else by the sadistic founders of Communism.

[Governor Squid]

So, trees will be planted and harvested by people who have a deep, abiding love of growing and cutting down trees, so much so that they do it for free. And those trees will be taken to the paper mill by people who love loading and hauling and unloading trees. And toilet paper will be manufactured by people with a deep, abiding love of paper-making, perforating, rolling, cutting, and packaging. And that toilet paper will be loaded on to trucks by people who love carrying things, and driven by people who love long-distance driving to the Revolutionary People's Bathroom Supply Dispensary, where it will be unloaded and placed on shelves by people who love stacking toilet paper on shelves, so much so that they do it out of love, for free.

That's a hell of a lot of weirdly-specific vocational love, lemme tellya.

Or is today's argument that all of the above will be done by robots (designed and manufactured and maintained for free, by people who live for such things)?

[Sporkatus]

Also, I'm fairly certain that feminism qua feminism has here abandoned the trappings of being a political movement or system, and admitted that it is an economic system by which women not only get all the money from men as previously agreed, but now get their jobs as well any time they ask.

Core feminist system economy might be more workable than communism as such, now that I think about it.

[Philip]

we aren’t allowed to think of anything at all as communism unless it somehow instantly and spontaneously achieves a theoretical fantasy end-state

I had thought of calling the next sort of superficial people the Idealists; but I think this implies a humility towards impersonal good they hardly show; so I call them the Autocrats. They are those who give us generally to understand that every modern reform will "work" all right, because they will be there to see ... If you ask them how this or that will work, they will answer, "Oh, I would certainly insist on this"; or "I would never go so far as that"; as if they could return to this earth and do what no ghost has ever done quite successfully—force men to forsake their sins. Of these it is enough to say that they do not understand the nature of a law any more than the nature of a dog. If you let loose a law, it will do as a dog does. It will obey its own nature, not yours. Such sense as you have put into the law (or the dog) will be fulfilled. But you will not be able to fulfil a fragment of anything you have forgotten to put into it.

Along with such idealists should go the strange people who seem to think that you can consecrate and purify any campaign for ever by repeating the names of the abstract virtues that its better advocates had in mind. ... To this kind of thing perhaps the shortest answer is this. Many of those who speak thus are agnostic or generally unsympathetic to official religion. Suppose one of them said "The Church of England is full of hypocrisy." What would he think of me if I answered, "I assure you that hypocrisy is condemned by every form of Christianity; and is particularly repudiated in the Prayer Book"? Suppose he said that the Church of Rome had been guilty of great cruelties. What would he think of me if I answered, "The Church is expressly bound to meekness and charity; and therefore cannot be cruel"? This kind of people need not detain us long...

Perhaps the weakest of all are those helpless persons whom I have called the Endeavourers. The prize specimen of them was another M.P. who defended the same Bill as "an honest attempt" to deal with a great evil: as if one had a right to dragoon and enslave one's fellow citizens as a kind of chemical experiment; in a state of reverent agnosticism about what would come of it. But with this fatuous notion that one can deliberately establish the Inquisition or the Terror, and then faintly trust the larger hope, I shall have to deal more seriously in a subsequent chapter. It is enough to say here that the best thing the honest Endeavourer could do would be to make an honest attempt to know what he is doing. And not to do anything else until he has found out.

GK Chesterton

[Sporkatus]

That's a hell of a lot of weirdly-specific vocational love, lemme tellya.

I think their usual claim is that even if it doesn't fill them with a specific joy, they'll be doing it out of love for non-specific fellow man, the Party, etc. Which has only been even close to workable in ethnostates when fellow man was easy to identify and identity tied to State was ingrained and habitual.

Both which qualities they are absolutely convinced can be duplicated to something less identifiable, so let's uproot all that nation and group nonsense in the mean time to make room.

Oops.

Funny that the fascists with their oddly specific enemy groups and dabbling in the occult were the more grounded ones - not trying to change human nature by a wave of the hand and actual magic.

[Adam]

Meanwhile her poor mother still hopes that she'll find a nice young man, settle down, and raise a family. You know, the way it's supposed to be.

[Monty James]

Using the data from the tweets, anarcho-communist to anarcho-feminist took about 27 and a half months, May 23 2016 to September 5 2018. Now we have a rough idea of the half-life of this particular arsetope. I'll say a smidgen over two and a quarter years.

anarcho-communist → anarcho-feminist

anarcho-feminist → anarcho-ecosexual

anarcho-ecosexual → anarcho-vegan

anarcho-vegan → anarcho-wiccan

anarcho-wiccan → anarcho-transgender

anarcho-transgender → anarcho-Muslim

We can predict that Laurie Penny will transform into perhaps as many as 14 or 15 other states during this process before she can be safely handled and deposited in a secure disposal facility, using currently known technology. To save time and space, it is my guess that, at this rate of decay, she will become an inert blob of protoplasm in about 70 to 75 years.

Laurie Penny--a warning to the future, a dreadful legacy for our descendants.

[Adam]

Anarcho-Muslim is an unstable compound. It decays into Muslim and water vapor in 50 msec.

[Hal]

Laurie Penny, she of the uneven mind, is no longer an anarcho-communist.

Now she’s an anarcha-feminist. Which is, like, totally different.

Please update your files accordingly.

[R. Sherman]

Anarcho-Muslim is an unstable compound. It decays into Muslim and water vapor in 50 msec.

David Thompson: Come for the socio-political commentary; stay for the physics analogies.

[David]

And that toilet paper will be loaded on to trucks by people who love carrying things, and driven by people who love long-distance driving to the Revolutionary People’s Bathroom Supply Dispensary, where it will be unloaded and placed on shelves by people who love stacking toilet paper on shelves... That’s a hell of a lot of weirdly-specific vocational love, lemme tellya.

Indeed, and yet this bizarre assumption crops up again and again and again. As if it were somehow self-evident, and not in fact fucking ludicrous.

[Sporkatus]

arsetope

Stolen, without attribution going forward.

[Spiny Norman]

yet this bizarre assumption crops up again and again and again.

Ah, the "Sandwichman" thread (3rd "again" link). Probably the most aggressively arrogant purveyor of pseudo-academic logorrhea that's ever tried to "get our minds right".

[David]

Probably the most aggressively arrogant purveyor of pseudo-academic logorrhea that's ever tried to “get our minds right”.

Ah, Sandwichman. Aka Tom Walker, an educator in Vancouver who “teaches Labour Studies at Simon Fraser University.” He is, apparently, an expert in “the history of economic thought.” Given his flatulence in that thread, and his intolerance of factual correction, you do have to wonder what his classes must be like.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...purveyor of pseudo-academic logorrhea that's ever tried to "get our minds right"

You rang ?

[WTP]

This has puzzled me ever since I first encountered an "anarcho-whateverism". How the hell does that even happen? Anarchy would be anarchy. Hell, that's its only appeal. How do you have a no-rules based philosophy? If you have a kind of anarchy HTH do you keep it within the boarders of whatever that thing is? It makes no sense. It's an absolutely meaningless qualifier. Sure, I'm being literal but it's ANARCHY that we're talking about here. It doesn't get more extreme than that. I blame the Sex Pistols. Do any of them have any money left? Why don't we just go take it?

[Darleen Click]

This has puzzled me ever since I first encountered an "anarcho-whateverism". How the hell does that even happen?

Years ago I decided to read a bunch of stuff on anarcho-syndicalism -- scrape away all the shrieking at capitalism and platitudes of the awaiting utopia, and what one comes away from this "property is theft" crowd is that it is all a lie. An in-your-face confidence game. It won't work, it isn't intended to work.

As with all anti-individual-rights schemes, it is to deliver power to the politically connected and subjugation to the herd.

Slap whatever label du jour on it, it's still the same totalitarian impulse that gives the future Stalins, Maos and Pennys orgasmic dreams of being the one to hold the whip.

[Hopp Singg]

Shouldn't she be an anarchx-feminist by now?

She's not even really trying to keep up anymore, is she?

[Spiny Norman]

Pennys orgasmic dreams

Wut? (o_O)

being the one to hold the whip

Oh. Yes, I imagine she'd like that oh so very much.

[lotocoti]

I blame the Sex Pistols.

Steady on, old bean.

[Richard Cranium]

Careful, Farnsworth; two more mentions and then...looks nervously around

[Daniel Ream]

you do have to wonder what his classes must be like.

Ask Lindsey Shepherd. That's her alma mater.

[Hal]

This has puzzled me ever since I first encountered an "anarcho-whateverism". How the hell does that even happen? Anarchy would be anarchy.

You Non-Conformists Are All Alike.

[Darleen Click]

Well, yes, it is, after all, Code Pink, Men's Auxiliary,

[David]

Ask Lindsey Shepherd. That’s her alma mater.

As an illustration of the comical vanities often found among leftist educators, and of the corresponding inability to cope with push-back from people who aren’t credulous teenagers, Dr Walker is almost perfect.

[Adam]

Anarcho-Lemmings

[Damian]

She has mouthed it, though I believe she currently prefers the phrase “fully automated luxury communism now.”

I suppose by now we shouldn’t expect even minimal coherence.

You poor fellow! You just need to let your imagination slip the surly bonds of coherence and entertain the notion of "caviar communism" and "luxury leftism":

But the fundamental principle must be this: things ought to be nice, and if they are not nice, then they are not leftist.

The left frequently seems to embrace an unappealing and Spartan set of aesthetic values. It stands for minimalism, sobriety, and self-abnegation. The left is Swedish, i.e. boring. This is no good. Our values must be toward joy, indulgence, and a pleasant time to be had by all. We will build cathedrals, we will wear incredible jewels, we will throw delightful parties and everyone will be invited.

Consider this a call, then, for a truly luxurious leftism. One that does not deprive itself of the good things in life, but which shares them abundantly with all. When we say let them eat cake, we are serious: there must be cake, it must be good cake, and it must be had by all. The reason Marie Antoinette needed beheading was not that she wished cake on the poor, but that she never actually gave them any.

The international proletarian class deserves the very best.

[Monty James]

The subtitle from the article Damian linked says:

"If socialism isn’t about giving people nice things and good times, what on earth is it about?"

Based on the history to date, I'd say socialism is about shame, jealousy, envy, and getting together a mob to run a country based on the major headings found in the criminal code.

[WTP]

...slip the surly bonds of coherence

Heh, that article is dated January of last year. How did I miss this? Surely there's been some Twitter about it, not that I follow Twitter myself mind you. And it's not like Current Affairs is some underground rag. Some of that article is so over the top it could have been written by P.J. O'Rourke, were he still in good humor and not NeverTrumping himself to sleep every night.

[Jeff Guinn]

Monty James | September 05, 2018 at 16:27

[Sporkatus]

The international proletarian class deserves the very best.

We *clearly* are not spending *enough* of Other People's Money. Yes, that must be it. Must also not give up the pretense that piety and not sour grapes is what is separating the current state of envy from one of envy *and* unchecked greed...

What do they teach them at these schools? - Professor Kirke

[Squires]

Based on the history to date, I'd say socialism is about shame, jealousy, envy, and getting together a mob to run a country based on the major headings found in the criminal code.

In a manipulative relationship the manipulator can be very giving, when that suits them as a means towards keeping their target clinging to their orbit. It isn’t about being giving, it is about being perceived as giving in order to keep minds where they want them to stay.

“Luxury socialism” has failed to manifest itself on not only on account of its material and economic impossibility, but its impossibility of character. Socialism is about what those who achieve power through it can take.

If people can just have what they want, then where is the control?

[Damian]

What do they teach them at these schools?

Ahem! The author of that exercise in wishful thinking is working toward a Ph.D. in Harvard's sociology department, so he'll be doing the teaching, thank you very much.

[Daniel Ream]

In a manipulative relationship the manipulator can be very giving, when that suits them as a means towards keeping their target clinging to their orbit. It isn’t about being giving, it is about being perceived as giving in order to keep minds where they want them to stay.

Back to BPD again - I know a number of women who do a lot of "charity work", but upon closer inspection it becomes apparent that what they do doesn't actually benefit the intended recipients so much as make it highly visible how terribly noble and giving these women are.

[Squires]

...upon closer inspection it becomes apparent that what they do doesn't actually benefit the intended recipients so much as make it highly visible how terribly noble and giving these women are.

I’ve written elsewhere:

Gene Wolfe once posited that there were two types of gods who loved: those whose love was so great that they wanted us to find our own liberty, and those whose love was so great that they wanted us to never escape the realm they controlled. But what is truly then the object of the latter gods’ love, if this is so? What is their realm?

The reference was to Wolfe’s Book of the Long Sun cycle, for the curious.

[Sporkatus]

@Squires: Don't have that series yet, but I do read Wolfe. I've got New Sun and Short Sun.

[Hal]

I know a number of women who do a lot of "charity work", but upon closer inspection it becomes apparent that what they do doesn't actually benefit the intended recipients so much as make it highly visible how terribly noble and giving these women are.

“In-deed! Mrs Jellyby,” said Mr Kenge, standing with his back to the fire, and casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it were Mrs Jellyby’s biography, “is a lady of very remarkable strength of character who devotes herself entirely to the public. She has devoted herself to an extensive variety of public subjects, at various times, and is at present (until something else attracts her) devoted to the subject of Africa; with a view to the general cultivation of the coffee berry — and the natives — and the happy settlement, on the banks of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population. Mr Jarndyce, who is desirous to aid any work that is considered likely to be a good work, and who is much sought after by philanthropists, has, I believe, a very high opinion of Mrs Jellyby.”

. . . .

“I shall then have finished for the present,” proceeded Mrs Jellyby with a sweet smile, “though my work is never done. Where are you, Caddy?”

‘“Presents her compliments to Mr Swallow, and begs—”’ said Caddy.

“‘—And begs,’” said Mrs Jellyby, dictating, “‘to inform him, in reference to his letter of inquiry on the African project’ — No, Peepy! Not on my account!”

Peepy (so self-named) was the unfortunate child who had fallen downstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting himself, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his wounded knees, in which Ada and I did not know which to pity most — the bruises or the dirt. Mrs Jellyby merely added, with the serene composure with which she said everything, “Go along, you naughty Peepy!” and fixed her fine eyes on Africa again.

---Charles Dickens, Bleak House

[jones]

Presumably all this anarcho stuff also requires a finely-tuned, centrally administered (generous) welfare system (?).

I might not be understanding it's finer tenets mind so apologies.