Comments Elsewhere

Dear Platformist and/or Syndicalist: Signing your polemical note advancing your own strongly-held view against insurrectionary anarchists with, “Love, Platformists, Syndicalists, and the entire rest of the Working Class.” . . . is a rhetorical act of astonishing arrogance, and an immensely patronizing bit of rev-oh-loooshunerry ventriloquism in the name of a narrowly sectarian point. Even if your narrowly sectarian point is absolutely right-on (maybe it is; there’s plenty of cases where this has been true); even if you’ve correctly foreseen something that a lot of other working-class people will believe or want to say, your view is yours, and if you think your exact sentiments are guaranteed to be shared by the vast, monolithic and unanimous hive-mind of The Working Class as a whole, you’re probably wrong. Even if you were right that really everybody really thinks this, not just your political compas, then everybody ought to be allowed the chance to say so in their own voice. Have the courage, please, to speak only for yourself. Love, Charles W. Johnson A Solitary Individual