Ben Debney || The other month I wrote a screed entitled Platform vs. Syndicalism. Someone using the handle Black Freighter wrote A Response to ‘Platformism vs. Syndicalism’: Why the Distinction Still Matters.
The news came as something of a surprise for me personally, in all honesty, as a Spanish-language site pinged Class Autonomy with a translation. I republished the translation, but later discovered the text on libcom.
I guess my first question was, why not send it to Class Autonomy? My second one was, why not use your real name?
In any event, and for all their unmistakable academic acumen, Black Freighter does not once quote anything I actually said in the piece.
For the record, I started by saying this:
Apparently back in the day there was a comradely dialogue between Errico Maltesta, the Italian platformist anarchist, and Pierre Monatte, the French syndicalist anarchist. I haven’t read it personally, I should.
The dialogue I was referring to was this one:
Black Freighter seems to want me to be referring to this debate:
The rest of the piece seems to be about my lack of competence in addressing the Makhno-Malatesta debate, which I didn’t even refer to. I did already cop to not having taken the time with the Malatesta-Monatte debate. I focused on practical history, that was literally the frame for the entire piece.
I literally admitted to not knowing things at the start of the piece, and the while tone of the response is like y r u such a basic.
Black Freighter whoever they are seems to be connected to Anarchist Communists Meanjin:
Not dabbling in a spot of naughty sectarian pointscoring but. Is competitiveness counterhegemonic? Who knew.
I guess we need strawmen when the reality is more the opposite, when the cleverness of the mind fails to subdue the intelligence of the heart. I guess when the latter has too much free rent in our heads, we start confusing entire debates in our haste to embody everything we claim to oppose.
Cool story.
Try reading the article.
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