Before Waymo can launch its driverless taxis, it needs to map the streets using human drivers. These drivers are often spotted wearing neon vests, presumably to deter would-be vandals from doing the right thing.

A poster for cities being mapped by Waymo:

Anonymous submission

“Just as we arm our hands to strengthen our blows, we must also fortify our minds. Our imagination, nourished by memories of resistance that has come before, bolstered by a precise projectuality, sharpened by critical thinking and corrosive insight, proves to be an arsenal of choice. […] Obviously there is no shortage of military and political campaigns against existing powers to inspire those who don’t concern themselves with ethical and practical coherence, dismissed as an excess of purism, but there is also no scarcity of revolts against the long conquest of domination over life. And while the tension towards freedom transcends all “isms,” for anarchists, the two-fold challenge is to both grasp the particularities of our contexts with realism and draw on historical experiences that resonate with our uncompromising ideals.”
–History Drowned in Lethe

There was a world in which I was tempted to be charitable to the author of “Good Night Eurocentric Pride“. The article in Tinderbox #9 which it is criticizing certainly had a limitation. On the one hand, it calls us towards a profoundly difficult task: to separate ourselves from the heavy legacy of organized confusion in which revolt has been conflated with its enemies. As “History Drowned in Lethe” astutely analyzes, this confusion was an industry perpetuated by the commissars of the Soviet Union’s departments of propaganda and the ethically and intellectually bankrupt armchair academics who penned various marxist cultural theories that continue to go in and out of fashion. The article suggests, instead and against all this, a project of permanent research, interwoven with all other avenues of struggle, to recover the memory of the rebellions which, wherever and whenever they erupted, left the political charades and armed party cliches behind. On the other hand, the references of “History Drowned in Lethe” itself were thin, and centered — out of a well warranted but perhaps naive enthusiasm — on the intransigent italian anarchist minority in the United States in the early part of the 20th century. There is certainly an incoherence here. Many, many, realities of struggle have contained an incalculable libertarian and informal fringe whether they have taken on the name of anarchism or not, and the article says little to demonstrate in practice how to go about making these inquiries that it argues are completely necessary. In opting for a single example furnished to us in a widely distributed book, Plain Words, the article contravenes the effort which it (rightly) invites all of us to begin making.
Continue reading “The Leeches that Steal its Soul”: A Response to “Goodnight Eurocentric Pride” →

Contents

1. The Tip of the Iceberg
2. A Building Full of Computers
3. A Nuclear Renaissance
4. The Ring of Fire
5. For a Self-Organized and Diffuse Project of Struggle

Preamble

Capitalism is always restructuring itself. We all know this, and it is why analyzing and creating proposals for struggle is an ongoing process, never something that can be fully concluded. So in a sense, change is the only constant: a comforting story for a world that is often disorienting. And yet, capitalism, as simultaneously an economic and technological system, goes through phases that might last more or less long and that create a sense of stability within them: the more things change, the more they stay the same (again, as we are told).

In this moment, Summer 2026, it seems we are on the cusp of a new technological and economic phase. The economic and political systems have thrown their weight into developing a specific technology even more dramatically than for the expansion of the internet around the turn of the millenium. And unlike the early internet, this technology is highly centralized in the hands of billionaires, with no liberatory potential to speak of (although time has not been on the side of those who saw the internet as a force for freedom thirty years ago). And like all high technologies, it comes with a whole web of industrial, extractive, and financial projects, because, if you will allow us one more tired proverb, misery loves company.

That technology is of course artificial intelligence, or AI, and we surely won’t be the first to tell you that it is poised to change everything. Ever since the first AI-powered chat bots appeared a few years ago, the models have been steadily improving and increasing the number of tasks they can perform, from making memes to piloting killer drones. But the actual uses of the technology are in some ways secondary to what’s going on behind the scenes, which is a frantic race to build as many data centres as possible, to produce the chips and electricity those centres need, to control and mine the minerals used in the chips, and, of course, to mobilize the vast sums of capital needed to do all of the above.

Some people say there is a financial bubble in the AI sector right now. We hear that this is a problem and will lead to more infrastructure being produced than will be useful long term. Or we hear this is no problem because bubbles are normal and don’t typically stop the underlying technology — after all, the dot-com bubble didn’t sink the internet, and even the Panama Canal, the great grandmother of all bubbles, still ended up being built. Probably both of those things are true. But this is not a text about bubbles, because the risk is real that, regardless, AI will actually deliver on its promise, transform society, and prove all the billionaires right.

Continue reading Against the AI Hell World: A Proposal for Self-Organized Struggle →