As much as I enjoy people who think outside the box, I stumbled upon a site called ChrimethInc today, who supports/proposes April 15 as Steal From Work Day.

EDIT: I heard back from CrimethInc. The guy who runs it ‘deleted’ my comment (which was essentially this post). Following the original post is a transcription of the email exchange.

Some anarchists. I suppose that our numbed minds can’t always come up with ways to work outside the pervasive conditioning of capitalism and manufactured desire. It is quite hard, after all — economic principles have saturated society so deeply that we can barely think in terms of … in terms of… well shit, I forgot what I was going to say.

While I can sympathize with the general resentment that we are being stolen from by the ‘rich’ and ‘powerful’, I also question the fundamental desire (should we say addiction) to material crap that would require us to ’steal’ it back from them.

Look, their soulless fucking empires of materialism are based on greed. The physical manifestation of their way of life, capital greed, is apparent. But to steal it back requires the same capital greed. It can only lead to you following in their dehumanized footsteps. It is a system of greed. Opt out. Don’t steal. Don’t work. Don’t buy their shit. Learn about your mind confront your brainwashing and de-program yourself.

Equating anarchism with theft is inaccurate. Theft is greed. Capitalism is greed. If A = C, and B = C, then A = B. To state that we are being stolen from and that we should steal back, or else remain naive sleep-walkers presents an unexamined false dichotomy. Whether you steal or you buy or you work, you are participating in capitalism. Stealing = consumerism. Don’t you get it?

You don’t NEED their shit!

Find… another… way.

EMAILS:
From: pfm@crimethinc.com
Subject: deleted comment
Date: Sat, 8 May 2010 09:38:28 -0700
To: poeticterrorist@live.com

it would appear that you didn’t bother to read even a decent portion of our text about steal something from work day, especially where we list what people can steal and how they can use it (hint: all are things that you can acquire to help out your community and other in need–it has nothing to do with acquiring personal ’stuff’). as such your comment is totally, embarrassingly, off the mark, and it has been deleted. it’s tempting in a headline culture to just go off on something based on minimal understanding or research, but I encourage you to go deeper. it appears you didn’t even read the entirety of the text you commented directly under, not to mention stuff like this: http://stealfromwork.crimethinc.com/faq.html

thanks!

p

———-

paul f. maul, coordinator

CrimethInc. Workers’ Collective

www.crimethinc.com

Crimethinc. Far East

PO Box 13998

Salem OR 97309

The Poetic Terrorist response:

My suggestion would be to close down all comments on your blog post if you can’t moderate in a fashion that’s respectful to your readership. You talk about ‘community’. Just whose ‘community’ do you think I’m a part of when I take the time to post a response on your blog?

I read a great deal about your ideas. But here’s the thing. My comment was not spam, it was a valid criticism that should have been addressed in the spirit it was given, which was publicly, on a relevant post. You might consider me a representative voice among your readership, as without any doubt, a portion of your audience may share similar concerns as to my own. In fact, I know that they do, because not all anarchists believe theft is justified: I have spoken with many.

You honestly have the utter cowardice to delete a comment, and then to send a message to this email address, rather than to leave the comment up and respond to it with the medium that was selected by the person who made it?

What is totally, embarrassingly off the mark is that you deleted a user comment that was neither offensive nor spam. Furthermore, you think I’ll want anything more to do with you when you behave precisely like a corporate entity might: promoting the value of greed and/or theft, and now, clearly doing its utmost to filter out any dissenting voices, or any alternate viewpoints what-so-ever… referring me to a generic FAQ that you can only arrogantly assume I haven’t read.

If I continue to read or support you or your organization, how can I be certain that my comments won’t be deleted unfairly in the future? How can I know that I am getting a fair sample of what OTHER users/readers of your content contribute as comment or feedback?

I think it’s reasonable to conclude that you’re as untrustworthy as any of the people you regularly denounce.

You can correct this by republishing my comment and addressing it properly. Either way, every word of our correspondence will appear on my own blog, linked to CrimethInc as extensively as I can possibly make it. Hey, maybe we’ll get lucky and end up neighbors on google.

Sincerely,

The Poetic Terrorist

—

Then, I promptly went back to the original post and simply commented again:

Peter decided to delete my comment. It was not spam, nor was it particularly threatening to your little theft-project.

My point was to bring up that thieving from thieves still bought into the capitalist mentality and suggest we find another way.

I have included a link to the original comment and added the email exchange between us here: http://www.poeticterrorist.com/steal-from-work-day-bullshit

As a reader of crimethinc, I believe I am entitled to my opinion.

Don’t delete or censor out critical voices from within your own movement. Respond with your arguments, and take the time to respect that there are real, live individuals out there, not just collectives of Us vs Them.

If you don’t want the comments on your site, disable comments on your blog. Many blogs do this.

To delete a comment that is intended to stimulate a deeper discussion is counter productive, and if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be posting one. Well, two, actually, as the first is ‘unapproved’ now, as is the trackback to my blog article.

Thanks.

http://www.poeticterrorist.com/steal-from-work-day-bullshit

—

I’m not pissed off or anything. But I felt that it would be useful to share, seeing as I was out to argue that Steal From Work Day was ‘Bullshit’… now it seems like ‘paul f. maul, coordinator of CrimethInc. Workers’ Collective’ is just as full of shit. Naturally, I’m open to him demonstrating otherwise.

Wednesday:

Hi James.

Firstly, I want to apologize if I’ve hurt your feelings by deleting your blog comment. In fact, I thought I was being more than courteous by emailing you about the deletion personally–rereading my email, I agree that I treated you in a manner lacking in respect. I apologize, and I regret the strong and negative effect it appears to have had on you.

To be clear, your comment was deleted because it did not further intelligent discussion of the issue at hand, which I thought I had explained in my initial email, but now I must be clear: Your sole point, a rather simple andnpedestrian declaration that theft, in general, was materialism and greed, was totally irrelevant to the blog post it was directly replying to: the explicit idea of stealing from ones workplace to re-route resources from corporations to the community.

Perhaps you disagree with this assessment, but we run this blog and it is our opinion that matters. We aren’t interested in censoring you and there are many places on internet that will be happy to post anyone’s thoughts whether they be intelligent criticism, the incoherent rants of a fringe wingnut, or anywhere in between–but on our blog we feel we are responsible for the content and therefore edit at our discretion. If you look through our blog comments, you’ll see we are not afraid of controversy or people disagreeing with us in an intelligent, relevant manner–in fact, we encourage it.

We won’t be reposting your comment, and we won’t be addressing it publicly–I can’t really see that benefitting anyone else besides you. Also, I’d prefer not to continue this dialog over email; being accused of cowardice and threatened with some kind of ridiculous public expose is the end of any conversation I’m to be involved in. Feel free to post my replies on your website–we have nothing to hide.

Best of luck in your endeavors,

pfm

I reply:

That’s alright. I was only engaging in rhetoric.

As, of course, stated at the bottom of your FAQ (though the grey font may be hard to read) “This website is intended as a rhetorical device only; in simple terms, it aims to uncover the already prevalent phenomenon of workplace theft, not to encourage those who otherwise would not commit such illegal acts. Neither the host, nor the developers, are responsible for people navigating to it, or what they do afterwards.”

“We have nothing to hide.”

Except for your bullshit disclaimers.

I sincerely hope your hobby-anarchism remains isolated to collectives of hipsters with internet access.

PFM replies:

I can only hope one day you engage in enough activity to appreciate a good legal disclaimer when you see one.

Take care,

pfm

The Revolutionary Pleasure of
Thinking for Yourself

by various anonymous authors

Those who assume (often unconsciously) that it is impossible to achieve their life’s desires-and, thus, that it is futile to fight for themselves–usually end up fighting for an ideal or cause instead. They may appear to engage in self-directed activity, but in reality they have accepted alienation from their desires as a way of life. All subjugations of personal desires to the dictates of a cause or ideology are reactionary no matter how “revolutionary” the actions arising from such subjugations may appear.

Yet, one of the great secrets of our miserable, yet potentially marvelous time, is that thinking can be a pleasure. Despite the suffocating effect of the dominant religious and political ideologies, many individuals do learn to think for themselves; and by doing so–by actively, critically thinking for themselves, rather than by passively accepting pre-digested opinions–they reclaim their minds as their own.

Read the rest of this entry »

“I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions,” Chomsky said when asked about his goals. “Don’t take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can’t. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself. There is plenty of information. You have got to learn how to judge, evaluate and compare it with other things. You have to take some things on trust or you can’t survive. But if there is something significant and important don’t take it on trust. As soon as you read anything that is anonymous you should immediately distrust it. If you read in the newspapers that Iran is defying the international community, ask who is the international community? India is opposed to sanctions. China is opposed to sanctions. Brazil is opposed to sanctions. The Non-Aligned Movement is vigorously opposed to sanctions and has been for years. Who is the international community? It is Washington and anyone who happens to agree with it. You can figure that out, but you have to do work. It is the same on issue after issue.”

Of course it was stupid. Of course it wasnʼt commercial. Of course it wasnʼt going to go anywhere. Of course it was a complete and utter waste of time. But in retrospect, it was this built-in futility that gave it its edge. Because it was the exact opposite of all the “Big Plans” my peers and I were used to making. It was so liberating not to have to be thinking about all that, for a change.

It was so liberating to be doing something that didnʼt have to impress anybody, for a change.

It was so liberating to have something that belonged just to me and no one else, for a change.

It was so liberating to feel complete sovereignty, for a change. To feel complete freedom, for a change.

And of course, it was then, and only then, that the outside world started paying attention.

– How to be Creative

“It seems that the taste for books grows with intelligence, a little below it but on the same stem, as every passion is accomplished by a predilection for that which surrounds its object, which has an affinity for it, which in its absence still speaks of it. So, the great writers, during those hours when they are not in direct communication with their thought, delight in the society of books. Besides, is it not chiefly for them that they have been written; do they not disclose to them a thousand beauties, which remain hidden to the masses?”

—(Proust in Reading in Bed, selected and edited by Steven Gilbar, 1995)

There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea
A little shy
And sad of eye
But very wise
Was he

And then one day
A magic day he passed my way
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
“The greatest thing
You’ll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return”

Speech, originally, was the device whereby Man learned, imperfectly, to transmit the thoughts and emotions of his mind. By setting up arbitrary sounds and combinations of sounds to represent certain mental nuances, he developed a method of communication — but one which in its clumsiness and thick-thumbed inadequacy degenerated all the delicacy of the mind into gross and guttural signaling.

Down–down–the results can be followed; and all the suffering that humanity ever knew can be traced to the one fact that no one in the history of the Galaxy could really understand one another. Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. Occasionally there were the dim signals from deep within the cavern in which another man was located — so that each might grope toward the other. Yet because they did not know one another, and could not understand one another, and dared not trust one another, and felt from infancy the terrors and insecurity of that ultimate isolation — there was the hunted fear of man for man, the savage rapacity of man toward man…

…Grimly, Man had instinctively sought to circumvent the prison bars of ordinary speech. Semantics, symbolic logic, psychoanalysis — they had all been devices whereby speech could either be refined or bypassed………….

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”

–Jim Jarmusch

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These noble spirits, throughout history, have spoken only truth. You had but to listen.