Two Dogs Gaze Out The Window
Silas Soule
Live Sharp Look Smart
Two Dogs Gaze Out Window
The Socialist Freedom Party (join us!!) is a multiplicity of ever-changing players and practices comprising it. Any attempt to represent it necessarily restricts, judges and negates it, reducing its potential to already given terms and expectations of the dominant e-social paradigm. But to proceed otherwise abandons the field to those default hierarchies which the e-global anarcho-syndicalist movement works to dismantle.
Verticalized representations do emerge from within the Party and its Revolutionary Committee. And the SFP now fully participates in representational politics. In fact, they have the largest bloc in the current Congress, though not a majority. Given these axes of representation, some well-intentioned friends -- or clever critics -- will no doubt claim that an e-politics of horizontalized autonomy is therefore a pipe dream.
From The Constitution of the Socialist Freedom Party:
But treatments of the SFP as purely representational or anti-representational are misplaced. They disavow division and thereby disavow the new forms of political representation that the SFP is inventing. The fact is that political subjects, which is to say individual players, are divided and not fully conscious of the desires and drives that motivate them.
Furthermore, to the extent that they position the individual as the primary site and ground of political decisions, arguments against representation fail to acknowledge how subjects are configured under e-capitalism. Employing an ultra-libertarian language of autonomy and a capitalist lexicon of choices, it neglects the biases, misconceptions and attachments structuring individual structures.
The processes of exclusivity and hierarchicalization within the mechanisms of representation occur within and between persons as well. Those who insist on an unrepresentational SFP also disavow division between persons, embracing instead a populist presumption of organic social totality.
The fact of hierarchy -- born of skills, privilege, diligence or contingency -- unavoidably collides with claims of horizontality. To put a finer point on it: the SFP is not actually the "tip of the spear" for the working-class masses and citizen-soldiers of eRepublikan players. It is a community that mobilizes in the name of eRepublik's "99%".
From the Program of the Socialist Freedom Party:
The SFP rejects the nested and closed hierarchies that conventionally organize political associations. But this fact does not eliminate representation. Rather it highlights a rejection of the current political and economic system because of its failure to represent adequately the people's will, a will that is itself divided and can only be represented divisively.
No one really knows what the SFP will accomplish now that it is in the top 5, has a sizable bloc in Congress, and is providing a Chief of Staff to Country President. But the comrades, friends and allies of the SFP can remain confident that the socialist freedom movement is the form that incites our community's courage and confidence in taking such steps.
It is not necessary to retreat either to the political weakness of dispersed individuals against the forces of oligarchy and the state or warm ourselves by the campfire of an ideological imaginary of unique, strong, and complete individuals autonomously creating their own destinies utterly divorced from the e-global revolutionary impulse.
In summary, in a world that does not allow for it, let us trust in the confidence that a truly revolutionary process will bring about new constellations, arrangements, skills, and convictions, and that through it we will together make something else -- something we haven't yet imagined.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO,
PQ
Comments
Beautiful article. o7
Perhaps the underlying desire is for a Party that convinces us to do what we secretly want.
Love it PQ! As always!
Great article!
o7
PQ does it again!
hm. i will think on this.
Great read. Amazing writing as usual. I often ponder these things in the few moments I have and wonder if we are not in the midst of creating something we cannot imagine, but by acting and doing we create something we only ever hoped we could dream of.
Creativity is often limited by imagination. This has been, imo, the failure of the "New World". Players have failed to imagine something different from the world they knew. Perhaps anarchy overcomes this, allowing serendipitous creation, but it is also frightening to many people to give up real or imagined control and let whatever will happen come to pass.
\o/
I always learn at the master's knee....
Thanks for sharing with the mortals.
Phooey!
I came here 'cause I thought you wrote an article about Maggie and Buddy, my dogs. I mowed the yard yesterday as they laid on my bed and watched me out of the window. Every time I went by I heard "WOOF WOOF WOOF!". lol
Well, my intention was to write about my dogs, Pearl and Olive, who love to watch "Squirrel TV", but then I changed my mind and decided to philosopherize the on the socialist freedom horizon.... Next time I will try to stick to canine perspectives. 🙂
Quick story...
When Maggie (dachshund) was young she did not pay attention to TV. She loved to lay on the bed and look out the window. Every night at 10pm she'd start barking, I couldn't make her quit. At 10:15 she'd stop, then start again at 10:20 and finish at 1😇0. I mean the times were precise.
As I new she didn't own a watch I figured something was up. One night at 10pm I went in the bedroom to see what caused all this. She started growling, then barking like crazy. There was no one outside, I even went out to look. Finally I lay on the bed to see from her perspective. Looked directly across the street. The new neighbors TV was centered in their widow. They were tuned to the same channel and the news was on. Whenever the camera was on the speaker with a bust shot Maggie barked. When the camera pulled back to show the Weatherman and map she stopped. Bust shot of the Sports guy she started barking again. When the news went off she went in the living room and lay on the couch for the rest of the evening.
I didn't have the heart to pull the blinds down so she couldn't see the neighbors TV. Dogs have so little entertainment. If she wanted to bark at the news people so be it. Lord know I barked at them too! lol