User Profile

erin

kvuzet@wyrmsign.org

Joined 11 months, 2 weeks ago

she/they - queer anarchist tech weirdo - mastodon: @kvuzet@kolektiva.social - web: kvuzet.net

This link opens in a pop-up window

erin's books

Currently Reading (View all 7)

2024 Reading Goal

25% complete! erin has read 13 of 52 books.

Marie Kondo: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up) (2014, Ten Speed Press) 3 stars

Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if …

Finished the audiobook last week. Somehow both incredibly helpful and kind of stupid at the same time. I'm someone who needs a "system" and this one seems as good as any.

I'll need to see the words in print to really try to apply it though. An audiobook while I'm running isn't the best way to fully absorb something.

Andrew Zonneveld, Nani Ferreira-Mathews, Mikhail Bakunin: Why Anarchists Don't Vote (2022, On Our Own Authority! Publishing) No rating

Whatever we hear from all quarters we are very apt to believe, whether it requires some effort to believe, whether it is true or not, especially if it requires some effort to examine it. Of all the modern delusions, the ballot has certainly been the greatest. Yet most of the people believe in it.

Why Anarchists Don't Vote by , , (Page 59)

After Bakunin and Kropotkin, Lucy Parsons is a breath of fresh air. The next piece in this collection is The Ballot Humbug by Lucy Parsons. It's a short essay attempting to show simply that a legislature operates not based on the will of the voter, but through party lines, vote trading, and lobbying. In doing so, Parsons attempts to show that the voter has no real sway on what happens in a legislature, and the passed laws themselves are at best hollow shells of the principle they were based on, but more likely something that benefits only capitalists.

"Can you blame an Anarchist who declares that man-made laws are not sacred?"

Rudy Simone: Aspergirls (2010, Kingsley Publishers, Jessica) 2 stars

Very cis, very het, with some pseudoscience for good measure

2 stars

I picked up this book because it was about women with "Aspergers." It's an older book, from when aspergers was still a diagnosis. I forgave that and continued on.

First the good. I related to several of the women quoted throughout the book. Some of the experiences mentioned were so common and so relatable that I had to add yet another experience to the autism column of my life. I'm grateful to have more to think about in many of these categories.

But now I must bring up the bad. The first was a pet peeve. The author coined the term "Aspergirls" as the title of the book, but also as a word she uses repeatedly throughout the book. It irritated me every time it came up.

Second, though the interviews were with adult women, every chapter ends with two advice sections: advice to aspergirls, and advice to parents. The …

Andrew Zonneveld, Nani Ferreira-Mathews, Mikhail Bakunin: Why Anarchists Don't Vote (2022, On Our Own Authority! Publishing) No rating

But among these prejudices there is one that especially merits our attention, not only because it is the basis of all our modern political institutions, but also because we find its influence at work on almost all the social theories advanced by the reformers. It is that which consists in putting one's faith in representative government, which is government by proxy.

Why Anarchists Don't Vote by , , (Page 32)

The second essay in this book is actually the entirety of chapter 13 from Words of a Rebel by Peter Kropotkin, Representative Government.

In this chapter, Kropotkin introduces several ideas, too many in fact to really go over here. Instead, I'll focus on one which really stuck out to me.

"When we observe human societies in terms of their essential characteristics ... we realize that the political regime to which they submit is always an expression of the economic regime which exists at the heart of the society."

The idea that the political organization of a society is always subservient to the economic system of that society. No matter how hard a legislature tries, it cannot change the political system in a country to something that does not compliment its economic system. But also as an economic system changes within a society its political system must also change. Applying …

Andrew Zonneveld, Nani Ferreira-Mathews, Mikhail Bakunin: Why Anarchists Don't Vote (2022, On Our Own Authority! Publishing) No rating

That is why, as Spencer has already remarked, parliaments are generally so badly composed. The members of parliament, he says in his Introduction, are always inferior to the average people in the country, not only in terms of morality but also in terms of intelligence. An intelligent people always seems to demean itself in its choice of representatives, and betrays itself by choosing nobody better than the boobies who are supposed to act on its behalf.

Why Anarchists Don't Vote by , , (Page 48)

As I slog through Kropotkin, the longest segment of this book, I came across this little part, where Kropotkin uses the word "boobies." And since I am 12 years old at heart, I had to post about it on the internet.

Andrew Zonneveld, Nani Ferreira-Mathews, Mikhail Bakunin: Why Anarchists Don't Vote (2022, On Our Own Authority! Publishing) No rating

Does this mean that we, the revolutionary socialists, do not want universal suffrage — that we prefer limited suffrage, or a single despot? Not at all. What we maintain is that universal suffrage, considered in itself and applied in a society based on economic and social inequality, will be nothing but a swindle and snare for the people; nothing but an odious lie of the bourgeois-democrats, the surest way to consolidate under the mantle of liberalism and justice the permanent domination of the people by the owning classes, to the detriment of popular liberty. We deny that universal suffrage could be used by the people for the conquest of economic and social equality. It must always and necessarily be an instrument hostile to the people, on which supports the de facto dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

Why Anarchists Don't Vote by , , (Page 28 - 29)

The first essay in this collection is On Representative Government and Universal Suffrage by Mikhail Bakunin. I chose this quote because it came closest to a conclusion, as it was the final paragraph.

I will admit that I find Bakunin exhausting and rather prefer to avoid him when I can. Nevertheless his work heavily influenced many thinkers I do like to read, so it's hard to ignore him in the history of the anarchist argument against voting.

In this essay Bakunin argues that the holders of political office by virtue of that office are members of a separate class, whose interests are inherently opposed to the interests of working people. Even if they were working people before the election, upon being elected they become "the most determined aristocrats, open or secret worshipers of the principle of authority, exploiters and oppressors." One doesn't have to look far in the house or …

Andrew Zonneveld, Nani Ferreira-Mathews, Mikhail Bakunin: Why Anarchists Don't Vote (2022, On Our Own Authority! Publishing) No rating

It's never clear how less harm is actually calculated. Do we compare how many millions of undocumented Indigenous Peoples have been deported? Do we add up what political party conducted more drone strikes? Or who had the highest military budget? Do we factor in pipelines, mines, dams, sacred sites desecration? Do we balance incarceration rates? Do we compare sexual violence statistics? Is it the massive budgets of politicians who spend hundreds of millions of dollars competing for votes?

Why Anarchists Don't Vote by , , (Page 20)

I found this quote used in the introduction quite salient. It was taken from Voting is Not Harm Reduction – An Indigenous Perspective