From Wikipedia: "A collection of political, social and philosophical essays written and published by anarchist collective CrimethInc. Most essays advocate the fight for personal freedom, alternate choices and lifestyles. Some of the book is devoted to the criticism of capitalism, statism, and mass-consumerism, arguing that these things dehumanize the individual and decrease the general quality of life."
I'm listening to Vivan Strange's reading of this. I find her commentary expanding upon the book to be more interesting and emotionally resonant than the book itself. Not to say it's a bad book (it's not) but it sometimes feels both incomplete & simplistic in its romanticism/lifestylism.
Sure, Vivan Strange's additions are also idealistic. But I find something more valuable in a critique of how we view selfishness & altruism as a binary rather than just presenting the "lover" as a completely honest & anti-consumerist ideal. Ironically the former feels more honest to me.
Although the book made me understand the idea of shoplifting as a form of protest a bit more. I also wonder if pokemon go offered that new outdoor game the author wanted, just worsened the issue or perhaps a bit of both (probably both).
A short, fun read but surprisingly informative. It's a bit like reading a collection of zines. If someone is looking for an easy way to dip one's toe into anarchist theory, this is it.
Review of 'Days of War, Nights of Love' on 'GoodReads'
3 stars
To say I "read" this is a misnomer: I listened to the version that was recorded by whoever is behind "Audio Anarchy," a podcast I stumbled upon while poking around iTunes. To that end, it was a fairly enjoyable experience--nice to have on in your headphones while you work.
CrimethInc seems to be a polarizing group. I'm not active enough in radical political circles these days to know if they're "in" or "out" right now, or if some readers/listeners have a "love/hate" relationship with their messaging and tactics. I know that, for myself, a book like Evasion provided inspiration for me at a time when inspiration was all I was looking for. Even then, I took it with a grain of salt. Dipping into Days of War, Nights of Love ten years later was a bit like going back to hear that third album from a poppunk band you used …
To say I "read" this is a misnomer: I listened to the version that was recorded by whoever is behind "Audio Anarchy," a podcast I stumbled upon while poking around iTunes. To that end, it was a fairly enjoyable experience--nice to have on in your headphones while you work.
CrimethInc seems to be a polarizing group. I'm not active enough in radical political circles these days to know if they're "in" or "out" right now, or if some readers/listeners have a "love/hate" relationship with their messaging and tactics. I know that, for myself, a book like Evasion provided inspiration for me at a time when inspiration was all I was looking for. Even then, I took it with a grain of salt. Dipping into Days of War, Nights of Love ten years later was a bit like going back to hear that third album from a poppunk band you used to see every weekend in your late teens: you grin at a few points, and you cringe at others, glad you checked it out, but not expecting it to get multiple spins.
A lot of both the praise and the vitriol I've seen aimed at CrimethInc over the book seems, to me, hyperbolic or even willfully ignorant. It may be deemed a cop-out by some, but the fact that the collective actually addresses the issue of hypocrisy in the pursuit of individual liberty seems like a self-aware nod to potential haters and supporters alike. It was actually a surprise to me, coming from CrimethInc, as anyone who has listened to their Ex-Worker podcast knows they can tend toward vehement and unequivocal scorn of anything they deem counterrevolutionary-in-theory.
This is CrimethInc for beginners, not anarchism for beginners. Books like The Revolution of Everyday Life (which I'm currently finishing at the moment) seem to be source material for some of the best ideas highlighted in Days of War (which is not to say Raoul Veneigem's book doesn't have glaring flaws), while books like Anarchism Today by Randall Amster give a better overview of various lines of contemporary anarchist thought. Throw in an Emma Goldman collection, some Proudhon, Bookchin, and Bakunin, and a copy of the collected V for Vendetta, and you'll start to get an idea of how variously serious, goofy, common-sense, impractical, self-righteous, amoral, vanguardist, lifestylist, obsessive, laissez faire, anti-civilization, and pro-technology anarchism can appear and/or be.
Whether you're a fan or detractor of CrimethInc specifically, or gravitate toward or avoid reading anarchist theory generally, at least one chapter of this book will leave you with something to consider and debate. For that, I'll give it three stars.
Review of 'Days of love, nights of war' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
A lot of people love Crimethinc, I'm not one of them. The book is cute and has got some inspirational mini-histories tucked in throughout. But overall, I do think the lifestylism, drop-out, wannabe situationist perspective Crimethinc puts forward is not at all a useful one.
