What is an "Anarchist"?
MrGoodSalt
philosophy, the purpose, the different factions, etc.?
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." JOHN 8:32
Good Christian books listed and described at:
http://www.hometown.aol.com/mrgoodsalt/index.htm
Yann Le Du
> Question for anarchist population: What is an "Anarchist"? What is the
> philosophy, the purpose, the different factions, etc.?
> "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." JOHN 8:32
> Good Christian books listed and described at:
> http://www.hometown.aol.com/mrgoodsalt/index.htm
Read Tolstoy.
Yann
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yann Le Du E-mail: ya...@thphys.ox.ac.uk
Theoretical Physics Web : http://cdfinfo.in2p3.fr/~ledu/
1, Keble Road
University of Oxford
Oxford, OX1 3NP Phone : (44) (0)1865 273 989
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mikel evins
20001115043502...@ng-fr1.aol.com, "MrGoodSalt"
<mrgoo...@aol.com> wrote:
> Question for anarchist population: What is an "Anarchist"? What is the
> philosophy, the purpose, the different factions, etc.?
An anarchist is a person who holds that government (in a certain sense) is
evil and ought to be abolished.
'Government' in the sense meant is not the broadest possible sense -- for
example, it does not mean 'self-government'. Anarchism does not mean
advocating that everyone run amok.
'Government' in the sense that anarchists oppose is any institution that
claims the sole legitimate right to determine how one set of people will use
force against another. A government is an institution that claims a
legitimate monopoly on the use of force.
Anarchists advocate the position that the only legitimate social
institutions are those formed by voluntary agreement. Any social institution
imposed by force is illegitimate.
The chief factions in anarchism are the faction that defends and advocates
several (or private) property, most often called anarcho-capitalists, and
the faction that opposes and denigrates several property, most ooften called
anarcho-socialists. Most of the argument on alt.anarchism is between these
two factions over issues having to do with several property.
--
mikel evins
mi...@reactivity.com
Chris Wilson
mikel evins <mi...@reactivity.com> wrote in message
news:B6396F1E.4421%mi...@reactivity.com...
> On 11/15/00 1:35 AM, in article
> 20001115043502...@ng-fr1.aol.com, "MrGoodSalt"
> <mrgoo...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > Question for anarchist population: What is an "Anarchist"? What is the
> > philosophy, the purpose, the different factions, etc.?
>
> An anarchist is a person who holds that government (in a certain sense) is
> evil and ought to be abolished.
Too narrow. An anarchist is a person who holds that all forms of
involuntary servitude and domination is evil and ought to be abolished. The
state, government, capitalism, family patriarchy, and even mass production
falls under these categories.
> 'Government' in the sense that anarchists oppose is any institution that
> claims the sole legitimate right to determine how one set of people will
use
> force against another. A government is an institution that claims a
> legitimate monopoly on the use of force.
Consistent anarchists oppose *any* institution that seeks to control
peoples' behavior through coercive manipulation, whether monopolistic or
otherwise.
> Anarchists advocate the position that the only legitimate social
> institutions are those formed by voluntary agreement. Any social
institution
> imposed by force is illegitimate.
Most anarchists today realize that the majority of all economic agreements
are not really made "voluntarily", but under threat of having to undergo one
of many negative alternatives created by landlords, capitalists, and
governments. The "agreement" to work 40-60 hrs a week for minimum wage and
no benefits (i.e., compensation and economic power that's in no way
proportional to one's contribution to the productive process) is not
voluntary. A person's "agreement" to work in a factory after being forcibly
evicted from one's native lands that previously allowed for a
self-sufficient lifestyle is not voluntary. These are forms of slavery, and
it's an obscenity to refer to them as anything else.
> The chief factions in anarchism are the faction that defends and advocates
> several (or private) property, most often called anarcho-capitalists, and
> the faction that opposes and denigrates several property, most ooften
called
> anarcho-socialists.
Incorrect: "anarcho-capitalists" are not anarchists at all. They advocate
an economic system in which the majority of people are forced to succumb to
the domination of landlords and bosses. Anarchists are opposed to rulers,
period -- not just one particular sort of rulers.
The term "anarcho-capitalist" didn't even exist until the 1970's when a
neoclassical (i.e., pro-capitalist) economist decided to use the term to
refer to a hypothetical and completely fictional society based upon absolute
property rights in land and capital. The term "anarcho-socialist" didn't
exist until fans of this economist's favored society started debating people
who have classically been referred to as "anarchists". Historically,
anarchists have always opposed capitalism as an economic system that
enslaves people to injurious and monotonous toil and to the hegemonic rule
of others. Many anarchists favor a socialist society in which the means of
production are controlled by the workers themselves. Other anarchists hold
that mass production wouldn't exist if the local self-sufficiency of
indigenous peoples wasn't systematically destroyed in the first place, and
hence there's no way that it would be freely chosen. These anarchists hold
that in absence of widespread coercion, people would eschew the hierarchy of
mass organization by securing their needs in direct relationship with the
land just as people did throughout 99% of human history. Most anarchists
fall somewhere in between these two positions.
One thing we know for certain however is that anarchists do not support
capitalism -- they never have and they never will. Check out the following
website for more info on anarchism: http://www.anarchistfaq.org/
Of course Mikel will respond by providing a link to another FAQ written by a
pro-capitalist economist who thinks he has a clue about anarchism. Such is
an insult to the millions who have struggled in work places, neighborhoods,
and communities against the imprisonment and terrorism of wage slavery,
forced tenancy, eviction, rape, and every other violent act under the sun.
Constantinople
>
>
>mikel evins <mi...@reactivity.com> wrote in message
>news:B6396F1E.4421%mi...@reactivity.com...
>> On 11/15/00 1:35 AM, in article
>> 20001115043502...@ng-fr1.aol.com, "MrGoodSalt"
>> <mrgoo...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Question for anarchist population: What is an "Anarchist"? What is the
>> > philosophy, the purpose, the different factions, etc.?
>>
>> An anarchist is a person who holds that government (in a certain sense) is
>> evil and ought to be abolished.
>
>Too narrow. An anarchist is a person who holds that all forms of
>involuntary servitude and domination is evil and ought to be abolished.
Wrong. A lot of people believe that. But they do not all believe that the
state is a form of involuntary servitude. They may for example have
theories in which the state serves the people. What makes someone an
anarchist is his identification of the state as an unnecessary evil
that therefore ought to be abolished.
>The
>state, government, capitalism, family patriarchy, and even mass production
>falls under these categories.
No, they do not, you only think they do. Your belief that mass production
falls under involuntary servitude might make you a socialist, but it does
not make you an anarchist.
--
"The principle that exposure to economics should convey is that
of the spontaneous coordination which the market achieves."
- James M. Buchanan, _What Should Economists Do?_, p. 81
mikel evins
>
> mikel evins <mi...@reactivity.com> wrote in message
> news:B6396F1E.4421%mi...@reactivity.com...
>> On 11/15/00 1:35 AM, in article
>> 20001115043502...@ng-fr1.aol.com, "MrGoodSalt"
>> <mrgoo...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Question for anarchist population: What is an "Anarchist"? What is
> the
>> > philosophy, the purpose, the different factions, etc.?
>>
>> An anarchist is a person who holds that government (in a certain
> sense) is
>> evil and ought to be abolished.
>
> Too narrow. An anarchist is a person who holds that all forms of
> involuntary servitude and domination is evil and ought to be
> state, government, capitalism, family patriarchy, and even mass
> production
> falls under these categories.
If my definition were too naroow then it would include too few people.
But the argument you make is that it includes too many. Thus, according
to you, my definition is not too narrow but too broad.
Your argument with my definition raises issues that anarchists disagree
about -- or rather that people who regard themselves as anarchists
disagree about; one result of the disagreements is that some accuse
others of not really being anarchists. Although those arguments are
interesting to anarchists, they are not helpful to someone who is trying
to find out what anarchism is.
But thank you for providing an example of the kinds of things anarchists
argue about with each other.
> Consistent anarchists oppose *any* institution that seeks to control
> peoples' behavior through coercive manipulation, whether monopolistic
> or otherwise.
I take it that you oppose self defense, then. Presumably you are a
pacifist.
Matt
> mikel evins <mi...@reactivity.com> wrote in message
> news:B6396F1E.4421%mi...@reactivity.com...
> > On 11/15/00 1:35 AM, in article
> > 20001115043502...@ng-fr1.aol.com, "MrGoodSalt"
> > <mrgoo...@aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Question for anarchist population: What is an "Anarchist"? What is
> > > the
> > > philosophy, the purpose, the different factions, etc.?
> >
> > An anarchist is a person who holds that government (in a certain sense)
> > is
> > evil and ought to be abolished.
>
> Too narrow. An anarchist is a person who holds that all forms of
> involuntary servitude and domination is evil and ought to be
> abolished. The state, government, capitalism, family patriarchy, and
> even mass production falls under these categories.
Your claim is a mere assertion. I can just as easily assert that your
definition is too broad--and in fact that is what I'm going to do.
My claim, however, is supported by common dictionary definitions, which
represent a general consensus on what a word means.
Of course, the dictionaries could be wrong. Fortunately, in this case
they're not: not only do anarcho-capitalists define anarchism as
opposition to government, so too did socialist anarchists before they
realized they had anarcho-capitalists to compete with. Only NOW do you
see anarcho-socialists defining anarchism using such wishy-washy
language as you do.
Previously socialist anarchists were not just straightforward about
anarchism is, but also about what government is. By 'government' they
meant of course the state. They did not mean family or workplace
hierarchy; they meant the actual government. Their theory was that
after taking out the state, capitalism would come crumbling down--in
contrast to the Marxists who thought the state should take out
capitalism, and would later disappear on its own.
Now socialist anarchists are redefining their views so that a
capitalist, or even a father, is a kind of government and thus must be
opposed with the same force with which one would oppose a tyrannical
king. This is sloppy, silly reasoning.
Goldman, Bakunin, and Malatesta had a real spark to their writing, which
really attracted me to their arguments. Nowadays we have good reason to
think they were mistaken on certain counts, but most anarcho-socialists
haven't updated their views. Rather, they retreat to ambiguous, often
incoherent language trying to resurrect a dead ideology.
> Of course Mikel will respond by providing a link to another FAQ
> written by a pro-capitalist economist who thinks he has a clue about
> anarchism. Such is an insult to the millions who have struggled in
> work places, neighborhoods, and communities against the imprisonment
> and terrorism of wage slavery, forced tenancy, eviction, rape, and
> every other violent act under the sun.
I'm really disappointed you would write this garbage.
MrGoodSalt
>> Question for anarchist population: What is an "Anarchist"? What is the
philosophy, the purpose, the different factions, etc.?
mikel evins mi...@reactivity.com wrote:
> An anarchist is a person who holds that government (in a certain sense) is
evil and ought to be abolished.
> 'Government' in the sense meant is not the broadest possible sense -- for
example, it does not mean 'self-government'. Anarchism does not mean advocating
that everyone run amok.
I am wondering whether anarchists reject the idea of controlling authority in
general or just "bad" forms of controlling authority.
> 'Government' in the sense that anarchists oppose is any institution that
claims the sole legitimate right to determine how one set of people will use
force against another. A government is an institution that claims a legitimate
monopoly on the use of force.
I have to agree with you on the issue of firearms ownership, but precisely
because firearms empower individual citizens to enforce moral authority when
the state can't do it for them. Firearms enable the individual citizen the
enforce the word "No"; they enable the weak to protect themselves from the
strong.
> Anarchists advocate the position that the only legitimate social
institutions are those formed by voluntary agreement. Any social institution
imposed by force is illegitimate.
I agree in the sense that democracy is better than dictatorship or the
totalitarian state. However, in any society there will inevitably need to be
some kind of "force" to be imposed on someone: punishment for criminal acts.
> The chief factions in anarchism are the faction that defends and advocates
several (or private) property, most often called anarcho-capitalists, and the
faction that opposes and denigrates several property, most ooften called
anarcho-socialists. Most of the argument on alt.anarchism is between these two
factions over issues having to do with several property.
A fascinating conflict, thanks for you overview. :)
MrGoodSalt
>>> Question for anarchist population: What is an "Anarchist"? What is the
philosophy, the purpose, the different factions, etc.?
mikel evins <mi...@reactivity.com> wrote
>> An anarchist is a person who holds that government (in a certain sense) is
evil and ought to be abolished.
"Chris Wilson" chrs...@whoknows.net wrote:
> Too narrow. An anarchist is a person who holds that all forms of
involuntary servitude and domination is evil and ought to be abolished. The
state, government, capitalism, family patriarchy, and even mass production
falls under these categories.
>> 'Government' in the sense that anarchists oppose is any institution that
claims the sole legitimate right to determine how one set of people will use
force against another. A government is an institution that claims a legitimate
monopoly on the use of force.
> Consistent anarchists oppose *any* institution that seeks to control
peoples' behavior through coercive manipulation, whether monopolistic or
otherwise.
>> Anarchists advocate the position that the only legitimate social
institutions are those formed by voluntary agreement. Any social
institution imposed by force is illegitimate.
> Most anarchists today realize that the majority of all economic agreements
are not really made "voluntarily", but under threat of having to undergo one of
many negative alternatives created by landlords, capitalists, and governments.
The "agreement" to work 40-60 hrs a week for minimum wage and no benefits
(i.e., compensation and economic power that's in no way proportional to one's
contribution to the productive process) is not voluntary. A person's
"agreement" to work in a factory after being forcibly evicted from one's native
lands that previously allowed for a self-sufficient lifestyle is not voluntary.
These are forms of slavery, and it's an obscenity to refer to them as anything
else.
>> The chief factions in anarchism are the faction that defends and advocates
several (or private) property, most often called anarcho-capitalists, and the
faction that opposes and denigrates several property, most ooften called
anarcho-socialists.
> Incorrect: "anarcho-capitalists" are not anarchists at all. They advocate an
economic system in which the majority of people are forced to succumb to the
domination of landlords and bosses. Anarchists are opposed to rulers, period
-- not just one particular sort of rulers.
> The term "anarcho-capitalist" didn't even exist until the 1970's when a
neoclassical (i.e., pro-capitalist) economist decided to use the term to
refer to a hypothetical and completely fictional society based upon absolute
property rights in land and capital. The term "anarcho-socialist" didn't exist
until fans of this economist's favored society started debating people who have
classically been referred to as "anarchists". Historically, anarchists have
always opposed capitalism as an economic system that enslaves people to
injurious and monotonous toil and to the hegemonic rule of others. Many
anarchists favor a socialist society in which the means of production are
controlled by the workers themselves. Other anarchists hold that mass
production wouldn't exist if the local self-sufficiency of indigenous peoples
wasn't systematically destroyed in the first place, and hence there's no way
that it would be freely chosen. These anarchists hold that in absence of
widespread coercion, people would eschew the hierarchy of mass organization by
securing their needs in direct relationship with the land just as people did
throughout 99% of human history. Most anarchists fall somewhere in between
these two positions.
> One thing we know for certain however is that anarchists do not support
capitalism -- they never have and they never will. Check out the following
website for more info on anarchism: http://www.anarchistfaq.org/
> Of course Mikel will respond by providing a link to another FAQ written by a
pro-capitalist economist who thinks he has a clue about anarchism. Such is an
insult to the millions who have struggled in work places, neighborhoods, and
communities against the imprisonment and terrorism of wage slavery, forced
tenancy, eviction, rape, and every other violent act under the sun.
The issues you've raised are important. But how do you distinguish between
anarchism and communism?
James A. Donald
<chrs...@whoknows.net> wrote:
> Too narrow. An anarchist is a person who holds that all forms of
> involuntary servitude and domination is evil and ought to be abolished.
By that definition, ever since the civil war, damn near one hundred
percent of the US population are anarchists.
You are not an anarchist, you are a totalitarian. You persistently
use words contrary to their ordinary meaning, which shows that you
know that if you spoke plainly, what you were saying would alarm and
shock people.
------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.
http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
mikel evins
20001118075001...@ng-fo1.aol.com, "MrGoodSalt"
<mrgoo...@aol.com> wrote:
> <mrgoo...@aol.com> wrote:
> I am wondering whether anarchists reject the idea of controlling authority in
> general or just "bad" forms of controlling authority.
It varies, and there are terminology problems. Most anarchists acknowledge
that acts like murder, rape, and assault are unacceptable and the people who
defend themselves against those acts forcefully (or delegate their defense
to others) are in the right. But some would prefer not to call such acts of
self-defense 'controlling authority'. I don't think 'controlling authority'
is a good description of legitimate self-defense myself, but I'm not
inclined to quibble with you about that.
> I have to agree with you on the issue of firearms ownership, but precisely
> because firearms empower individual citizens to enforce moral authority when
> the state can't do it for them. Firearms enable the individual citizen the
> enforce the word "No"; they enable the weak to protect themselves from the
> strong.
Anarchists generally argue that 1) the state tends not to defend citizens'
rights as much as it tends to violate them, and so it fails in its sole
justifying reason for existence; and 2) the state is constituted for the
purpose of violating citizens' rights, and so it has got to go.
>> Anarchists advocate the position that the only legitimate social
>> institutions are those formed by voluntary agreement. Any social institution
>> imposed by force is illegitimate.
>
> I agree in the sense that democracy is better than dictatorship or the
> totalitarian state. However, in any society there will inevitably need to be
> some kind of "force" to be imposed on someone: punishment for criminal acts.
Anarcho-socialists often argue that once the state and property are
eliminated there will be no (or almost no) criminal acts. I personally do
not find this argument credible in the least, but I'm trying to refrain from
defending a particular side of the chief argument among anarchists, in
serfice of providing an even-handed overview.
Those anarchists who do believe that criminal acts will still occur tend to
advocate various kinds of voluntary mutual-aid associations and private
security firms. On the anarcho-capitalist side such proposals are well
developed.
>> The chief factions in anarchism are the faction that defends and advocates
>> several (or private) property, most often called anarcho-capitalists, and the
>> faction that opposes and denigrates several property, most ooften called
>> anarcho-socialists. Most of the argument on alt.anarchism is between these
>>two factions over issues having to do with several property.
>
> A fascinating conflict, thanks for you overview. :)
You will notice that I had no more than posted the above than an
anarcho-socialist took me to task for describing anarcho-capitalism as a
form of anarchism, nicely illustrating the argument for you. :-)
--
mikel evins
mi...@reactivity.com
Charles J. Daniels
I'm a harmonious anarchist, which is basically a person seeking a
utopia--lmao.
I believe laws should only enforce safety, even this I question.
Suicide laws--okay, what's up with that. Legislation on marriage--I
thought state and church were supposed to have been separated? Drug
laws? Just stop those who steal to waintain their habit--and doing
anything like driving under the influence should be punishable by the
wearing of a dunce cap!
Yadda yadda
Unfortunately, harmonious anarchy is long in the undertaking--no
violent coups allowed. Just leave each other the fuck alone. Yell,
scream--just leave your hands to yourself.
--charlie
mikel evins
"Charles J. Daniels" <cha...@wefuckingROCK.com-1.net> wrote:
> I believe laws should only enforce safety, even this I question.
> Suicide laws--okay, what's up with that. Legislation on marriage--I
> thought state and church were supposed to have been separated? Drug
> laws? Just stop those who steal to waintain their habit--and doing
> anything like driving under the influence should be punishable by the
> wearing of a dunce cap!
So who makes the laws and how are they made, anf why does anyone pay any
attention to them?
> Unfortunately, harmonious anarchy is long in the undertaking--no
> violent coups allowed. Just leave each other the fuck alone. Yell,
> scream--just leave your hands to yourself.
What happens when someone doesn't keep his hands to himself?
--
mikel evins
mi...@reactivity.com
James A. Donald
On Mon, 20 Nov 2000 09:25:47 GMT, spider@net (TiTo) wrote:
> You also seem to be tempted to deny that self-declared anarchist
> really are anarchist.
What you are calling "anarchy" has no problem funding public goods,
therefore it is not anarchy. Indeed you cite the classic arguments in
favor of government
http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=684984493 as arguments in
favor of what you call "anarchy".
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
ooItc8cA78gYahQl3ksyqzDDtmON4fsqiU0JO3pQ
4EyHiM6Ali2UV0X+ucHadEu2/SNOHRe45E6YZssgF
Matt
> >Your argument with my definition raises issues that anarchists disagree
> >about -- or rather that people who regard themselves as anarchists
> >disagree about;
>
> You also seem to be tempted to deny that self-declared anarchist
> really are anarchist. I thought you were above that kind of games.
If that's what he's doing, I don't think he's being unreasonable. Do
you really think anyone who calls himself an anarchist is therefore an
anarchist?
If a Catholic calls himself a Muslim, but still goes to mass and never
prays to Allah, he is still a Catholic regardless of what he calls
himself.
Unless 'anarchist' is just a meaningless label, to be an anarchist you
have to actually believe the central component of anarchism: that
government is harmful, unnecessary, and should be abolished. You're not
an anarchist just because you say you are.
While I think there are genuine socialist anarchists, there are other
people who claim to be anarchists but still support government. Either
they want the central government to be more expansive, as Chomsky does,
or they support institutions that most people would call a government,
but they call anarchist because they think their institutions would
truly represent the people. These people are not anarchists.
James A. Donald
Matt:
> > Of course, the dictionaries could be wrong. Fortunately, in this
> > case they're not: not only do anarcho-capitalists define anarchism
> > as opposition to government, so too did socialist anarchists
> > before they realized they had anarcho-capitalists to compete with.
> > Only NOW do you see anarcho-socialists defining anarchism using
> > such wishy-washy language as you do.
TiTo:
> I don't think we have broadened the definition of our ideology
> because we have detected the existence of anarcho-capitalists.
I agree with you. :-) "Anarcho" socialists broadened the definition
of "anarchy", not when anarcho capitalists became prominent, but
rather a little while after painful experience in Catalonia provided
substantial evidence that anarchy and socialism are incompatible.
Your definition of anarchy makes lots of stuff "anarchist". In
particular it makes Stalin's "Foundations of Leninism" anarchist,
which is a little too broad. See below for relevant quote from
"Foundations of Leninism"
> Capitalism in the broader sense (as a system of class dominance)
> will collapse in the absence of the State,
But capitalism is not a system of class dominance. Less than two
percent of the US national income is categorized as profit, so
obviously we are not dominated by people whose primary source of
income is capital. If they did dominate, they would use that
dominance to get a large serving of the gravy.
Matt:
> > Goldman, Bakunin, and Malatesta had a real spark to their writing,
> > which really attracted me to their arguments. Nowadays we have
> > good reason to think they were mistaken on certain counts, but
> > most anarcho-socialists haven't updated their views. Rather, they
> > retreat to ambiguous, often incoherent language trying to
> > resurrect a dead ideology.
Tito:
> Can you please say on what grounds Goldman, Bakunin, and Malatesta
> were mistaken on certain grounds in their anti-authoritarian views?
Bakunin was fighting against governments that were precapitalist,
precapitalist in the sense that these nations were ruled by king and
priest, and big businessmen had to enter the halls of power through
the tradesman's entrance. Thus his views on the economic order are
largely irrelevant to modern societies. His criticism of capitalism
is merely a critique of crony capitalism, and his proposed remedy is
an inheritance tax leading, he hoped, to an economy that we moderns
would describe as dominated by small businesses.
Emma Goldman's views evolved through time. Her early works grew out
of crude and simplistic class war theory. At that time she did not
really understand the US, or the American working class. They were
alien to her, and she grotesquely misread events and people. She
improved with time, and in her last works was a firm fan of free
trade, and somewhat vaguely and unenthusiastically accepted the
legitimacy of property rights in the means of production.
And here is evidence that Stalin is just as "anarchist" as most modern
anarcho socialists:
Stalin "Foundations of Leninism" Chapter 3 "THE PARTY AS THE HIGHEST
FORM OF CLASS ORGANIZATION OF THE PROLETARIAT" (shouting caps in
original)
: : The Party is the organized detachment of the working
: : class. But the Party is not the only organization of the
: : working class. The proletariat has also a number of
: : other organizations, without which it cannot properly
: : wage the struggle against capital: trade unions,
: : cooperative societies factory and works organizations,
: : parliamentary groups, non-Party women's associations, the
: : press, cultural and educational organizations, youth
: : leagues, revolutionary fighting organizations (in times
: : of open revolu-tionary action), Soviets- of deputies as
: : the form of state organization (if the proletariat is in
: : power), etc. The overwhelming majority of these
: : organizations are non-Party, and only a cer-tain part of
: : them adhere directly to the Party, or represent its
: : offshoots. [...] Where is that central organi-zation
: : which is not only able, because it has the necessary
: : experience, to work out such a general line, but, in
: : addition, is in a position,. because it has sufficient
: : prestige for that, to induce all these organizations to
: : carry out this line, so as to attain unity of leadership
: : and to preclude the possibility of working at cross
: : purposes?
: :
: : This organization is the Party of the proletariat.
: :
: : [...]
: :
: : This does not mean, of course, that non-Party
: : organizations, trade unions, cooperative societies, etc.,
: : should be officially subordinated to the Party
: : leadership. It only means that the mem-bers of the Party
: : who belong to these organizations and are doubtlessly
: : influential in them, should do all they can to persuade
: : these non-Party organizations to draw nearer to the Party
: : of the proletariat -in their work and to accept
: : voluntarily its political guidance.
: :
: : [...]
: :
: : That is why the opportunist theory of the independence'
: : and "neutrality" of the non-Party organizations, which
: : breeds independent members of parliament and journalists
: : isolated from the Party, narrow-minded- trade unionists
: : and cooperative society officials grown smug and
: : philistine, is wholly incompatible with -the theory and
: : practice of Leninism.
As you can see, Stalin has just as good a claim to be an anarchist as
most of the socialists in this newsgroup, and a good deal better claim
than Chomsky.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
RxTkRka97/ozy7QOGk16FD3jntm4nE93lJ937gKq
48LmQm4wvTR44gby/9n9XYI0+MR5D+Cu3S2GOi5vL
Mark Roddy
wrote:
>As you can see, Stalin has just as good a claim to be an anarchist as
>most of the socialists in this newsgroup, and a good deal better claim
>than Chomsky.
>
My dog has a good claim to be a three-headed chimera, except of course
that she isn't.
Left-libertarians, like right-libertarians, believe in various degrees
of statelessness. Quite a few reject notions of a revolutionary
overthrow of the existing order on the basis of "been there, done
that, it really, really doesn't work".
Mark Roddy
Lets ignore the fact that the Haitian worker
toils long hours for miserable wages and barely
survives. Instead lets focus on access to techno-junk,
the detritus of capitalist over production, and
pronounce the ordinary people of this planet in this
day and age where capitalism has triumphed across
the globe, better off than kings because
Louis XIV didn't have a DVD.
TiTo
<matt...@my-deja.com> maravilló a la audiencia con su gran sabidurÃa
al emitir este trascendental pronunciamiento:
I don't think we have broadened the definition of our ideology because
we have detected the existence of anarcho-capitalists. Personally i
welcome the advent of anarcho-capitalism as a new branch of anarchism
that has provided theory and ideas on aspects previously rather
ignored by classical anarchists (like the problem of a working legal
system in the absence of a state).
>Previously socialist anarchists were not just straightforward about
>anarchism is, but also about what government is. By 'government' they
>meant of course the state.
We still do so. I say that gov't is the most important realization of
the State.
>They did not mean family or workplace
>hierarchy; they meant the actual government. Their theory was that
>after taking out the state, capitalism would come crumbling down--in
>contrast to the Marxists who thought the state should take out
>capitalism, and would later disappear on its own.
Capitalism in the broader sense (as a system of class dominance) will
collapse in the absence of the State, while capitalism in the narrow
sense (economic freedom and private property) will thrive.
>Now socialist anarchists are redefining their views so that a
>capitalist, or even a father, is a kind of government and thus must be
>opposed with the same force with which one would oppose a tyrannical
>king. This is sloppy, silly reasoning.
The central political problem that we face is in the presence of the
State and its several realizations, like gov't, borders, armies and
police, etc. All branches of anarchism want those things terminated.
Classical anarchists also oppose authority in a broader sense (i do),
all forms of authority, like those coming from the boss in the
workplace, the bishop in church, the father in the family, etc, but
these other forms of authority may still exist in Anarkia depending on
the willingness of every person to accept them. What we must get rid
of, definitively, is the authority coming from the State. The other
forms are left to anyone's opinion. Nonetheless, we do empahsize that
the other (let's say non political) forms of authority are also aginst
the anti-authoritarian principles of anarchism. They are however,
consistent with an even more important anarchist principle, that of
self-gov't.
>Goldman, Bakunin, and Malatesta had a real spark to their writing, which
>really attracted me to their arguments. Nowadays we have good reason to
>think they were mistaken on certain counts, but most anarcho-socialists
>haven't updated their views. Rather, they retreat to ambiguous, often
>incoherent language trying to resurrect a dead ideology.
Can you please say on what grounds Goldman, Bakunin, and Malatesta
were mistaken on certain grounds in their anti-authoritarian views?
TiTo
TiTo
<mi...@reactivity.com> maravilló a la audiencia con su gran sabidurÃa
al emitir este trascendental pronunciamiento:
>Chris Wilson wrote:
>>
>> mikel evins <mi...@reactivity.com> wrote in message
>> news:B6396F1E.4421%mi...@reactivity.com...
>>> On 11/15/00 1:35 AM, in article
>>> 20001115043502...@ng-fr1.aol.com, "MrGoodSalt"
>>> <mrgoo...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> > Question for anarchist population: What is an "Anarchist"? What is
>> the
>>> > philosophy, the purpose, the different factions, etc.?
>>>
>>> An anarchist is a person who holds that government (in a certain
>> sense) is
>>> evil and ought to be abolished.
>>
>> Too narrow. An anarchist is a person who holds that all forms of
>> involuntary servitude and domination is evil and ought to be
>> abolished. The
>> state, government, capitalism, family patriarchy, and even mass
>> production
>> falls under these categories.
>
>If my definition were too naroow then it would include too few people.
>But the argument you make is that it includes too many. Thus, according
>to you, my definition is not too narrow but too broad.
I understand that the narrowenes comes from only considering one type
of authority, that of the State, while there are othe forms of
authority, non political forms (see my reply to Matt on this issue).
>Your argument with my definition raises issues that anarchists disagree
>about -- or rather that people who regard themselves as anarchists
>disagree about;
You also seem to be tempted to deny that self-declared anarchist
really are anarchist. I thought you were above that kind of games.
>one result of the disagreements is that some accuse
>others of not really being anarchists. Although those arguments are
>interesting to anarchists, they are not helpful to someone who is trying
>to find out what anarchism is.
>
>But thank you for providing an example of the kinds of things anarchists
>argue about with each other.
Now you show your class.
TiTo
TiTo
Donald) maravilló a la audiencia con su gran sabidurÃa al emitir este
trascendental pronunciamiento:
> --
>On Mon, 20 Nov 2000 09:25:47 GMT, spider@net (TiTo) wrote:
>> You also seem to be tempted to deny that self-declared anarchist
>> really are anarchist.
>
>What you are calling "anarchy" has no problem funding public goods,
>therefore it is not anarchy. Indeed you cite the classic arguments in
>favor of government
>http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=684984493 as arguments in
>favor of what you call "anarchy".
What problem do you have with a community in which individuals
voluntarily decide to contribute to a public fund?
Mind your own business.
TiTo
malleus
aaaah..now what was that old saying ? united we stand,
divided we fall. nonetheless the whole argument is interesting from a few
points of view.
"mikel evins" <mi...@reactivity.com> wrote in message
news:B63D51EA.4852%mi...@reactivity.com...
> On 11/18/00 7:25 PM, in article 3a1663a0...@news.mindspring.com,
> "Charles J. Daniels" <cha...@wefuckingROCK.com-1.net> wrote:
>
> > I believe laws should only enforce safety, even this I question.
> > Suicide laws--okay, what's up with that. Legislation on marriage--I
> > thought state and church were supposed to have been separated? Drug
> > laws? Just stop those who steal to waintain their habit--and doing
> > anything like driving under the influence should be punishable by the
> > wearing of a dunce cap!
>
> So who makes the laws and how are they made, anf why does anyone pay any
> attention to them?
>
> > Unfortunately, harmonious anarchy is long in the undertaking--no
> > violent coups allowed. Just leave each other the fuck alone. Yell,
> > scream--just leave your hands to yourself.
>
James A. Donald
James A. Donald:
> > What you are calling "anarchy" has no problem funding public
> > goods, therefore it is not anarchy. Indeed you cite the classic
> > arguments in favor of government
> > http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=684984493 as arguments
> > in favor of what you call "anarchy".
Tito:
> What problem do you have with a community in which individuals
> voluntarily decide to contribute to a public fund?
Your account of this fund
http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/threadmsg_ct.xp?AN=682452075
http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/threadmsg_ct.xp?AN=682708534
makes no sense if it actually is voluntary.
You objected to individuals providing for scientific research, and
proposed as a cure "society" providing for scientific research.
If it is genuinely voluntary, they will not contribute to one public
fund for science. Instead each individual will contribute the amount
he pleases to those particular scientific questions that interest him,
which was exactly the system that you criticized and rejected.
Your proposal was proposed as a solution to a public good problem. If
it actually was a solution to the public good problem of funding pure
scientific research, then it is not voluntary. If it actually is
voluntary, it is not a solution to the public good problem, rather it
is the existing system of largely privately financed scientific
research that you condemn as inadequate and biased.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
rWarauDRIVMBdNa8Eb31Sc1drO8ofr0Z+zgVEWKj
43PN9vh4Em8bHfD8Y8kQKUCRd86FKjr0w5XE4WqB5
James A. Donald
James A. Donald
> > As you can see, Stalin has just as good a claim to be an anarchist
> > as most of the socialists in this newsgroup, and a good deal
> > better claim than Chomsky.
Mark Roddy:
> My dog has a good claim to be a three-headed chimera, except of
> course that she isn't.
And most of the "anarchists" in this group are not either.
> Left-libertarians, like right-libertarians, believe in various degrees
> of statelessness.
The problem is that their concept of statelessness is often remarkably
similar to my concept of a totalitarian state. Many of them see
private property, the family, relationships between individuals as the
state, and do not see the state as a the state, and want an all
powerful not-a-state to obliterate all that.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
Ge1ljzh+jInboIRZAOwA3q8Ke0/xM9H8Ro3f+GcW
4L6K9VFjEQ56e79sZ8T8Ni2FHv3wZ1EUWbhrimtd2
Mark Roddy
wrote:
> --
>James A. Donald
>> > As you can see, Stalin has just as good a claim to be an anarchist
>> > as most of the socialists in this newsgroup, and a good deal
>> > better claim than Chomsky.
>
>Mark Roddy:
>> My dog has a good claim to be a three-headed chimera, except of
>> course that she isn't.
>
>And most of the "anarchists" in this group are not either.
No jimmy the analogy is that nor is Stalin an anarchist.
>
>> Left-libertarians, like right-libertarians, believe in various degrees
>> of statelessness.
>
>The problem is that their concept of statelessness is often remarkably
>similar to my concept of a totalitarian state.
Only if by a totalitarian state one has in mind decentralized
community based participatory democracy, but then again you might as
well accept my dog's claim that she is in fact a three headed chimera.
simon.rvx.net
mrgoo...@aol.com (MrGoodSalt) wrote:
> The issues you've raised are important. But how do you distinguish
between
> anarchism and communism?
Do you mean the 'communism' that certain countries were claimed to
have? This is no different to capitalism because a definite something
(or somebody , the state) has ownership of the means of production
(capital). There was no voluntary agreement in forming this government,
99% of people had no say in it at all. Everybody had to work for the
state, there was no voluntary agreement there.
Any sort of 'communist' or 'socialist' movements which do not demand
the abolition of the state are going towards a form of capitalism.
--
simon at 111 dot ac
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
simon.rvx.net
> > involuntary servitude and domination is evil and ought to be
abolished.
>
> percent of the US population are anarchists.
>
> You are not an anarchist, you are a totalitarian. You persistently
> use words contrary to their ordinary meaning, which shows that you
> know that if you spoke plainly, what you were saying would alarm and
> shock people.
>
> We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
> of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
> right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.
>
> http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
If they are all opposed to involuntary servitude and domination then
what about all the people who employ somebody? That is domination, you
allow the government to punish someone who chooses to take food from a
shop instead of coming to your own shop to work. Paid work is slavery,
there isn't a choice of whether you do it or not. The only alternative
is punishment by police and jails which has no place in a free society.
jam...@echeque.com
> > The problem is that their concept of statelessness is often
> > remarkably similar to my concept of a totalitarian state.
In article <d14i1tg0rftkbaji6...@4ax.com>,
Mark Roddy <ma...@wattanuck.mv.com> wrote:
> Only if by a totalitarian state one has in mind decentralized
> community based participatory democracy,
Tom Wetzel has recently posted a detailed description of
a "decentralized community based on participatory democracy". The
problem is that it is considerably less decentralized and less
participatory than that described by Stalin. (In my previous post, I
posted Stalin's description)
The problem with Stalin's decentralized participatory democracy is that
it was decentralized participation in carrying out the central plan,
which of course is in practice not at all decentralized and not at all
democratic.
Constantinople
If individuals voluntarily decide, then it's not a public fund. It
could be a private charity, etc. It's hard to tell what your statement
says one thing but your term says another, contradictory thing. Take
away the word "public" from your statement and it makes sense. Add it
back in and it makes no sense because it contradicts the rest of the
statement. Replace the word "public" with the word "private", and I
would criticize you for being redundant. If individuals voluntarily
contribute, *of course* it's private. No need to add the word "private".
>Mind your own business.
>
>TiTo
--
Constantinople
>
>In article <3a1acf23...@nntp1.ba.best.com>,
> jam...@echeque.com (James A. Donald) wrote:
>> On Fri, 17 Nov 2000 04:03:35 -0800, "Chris Wilson"
>> <chrs...@whoknows.net> wrote:
>> > Too narrow. An anarchist is a person who holds that all forms of
>> > involuntary servitude and domination is evil and ought to be
>abolished.
>>
>> By that definition, ever since the civil war, damn near one hundred
>> percent of the US population are anarchists.
>>
>> You are not an anarchist, you are a totalitarian. You persistently
>> use words contrary to their ordinary meaning, which shows that you
>> know that if you spoke plainly, what you were saying would alarm and
>> shock people.
>>
>> ------
>> We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
>> of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
>> right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.
>>
>> http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
>
>If they are all opposed to involuntary servitude and domination then
>what about all the people who employ somebody? That is domination, you
>allow the government to punish someone who chooses to take food from a
>shop instead of coming to your own shop to work.
The example you give is punishment of a thief who victimizes a
shopowner.
>Paid work is slavery,
>there isn't a choice of whether you do it or not. The only alternative
>is punishment by police and jails which has no place in a free society.
Keeping your example in mind, you consider your inability to rob
shopowners with impunity to be slavery.
Your comments however are not too far below the usual level of discourse
I encounter among anticapitalists.
Matt
<constan...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> >What problem do you have with a community in which individuals
> >voluntarily decide to contribute to a public fund?
>
> If individuals voluntarily decide, then it's not a public fund. It
> could be a private charity, etc.
I think he just means a fund open to the public. E.g., a public golf
course may be a private organization, but you call it public because
anyone from the public can purchase a tee-time, use the driving range,
etc.
Matt
> James A. Donald:
> > > The problem is that their concept of statelessness is often
> > > remarkably similar to my concept of a totalitarian state.
>
> In article <d14i1tg0rftkbaji6...@4ax.com>,
> Mark Roddy <ma...@wattanuck.mv.com> wrote:
> > Only if by a totalitarian state one has in mind decentralized
> > community based participatory democracy,
>
> Tom Wetzel has recently posted a detailed description of
> a "decentralized community based on participatory democracy". The
> problem is that it is considerably less decentralized and less
> participatory than that described by Stalin. (In my previous post, I
> posted Stalin's description)
>
> The problem with Stalin's decentralized participatory democracy is that
> it was decentralized participation in carrying out the central plan,
> which of course is in practice not at all decentralized and not at all
> democratic.
I'm not sure it's even conceivable for a democracy to be decentralized.
At least not unless you start making the democracy more like a market,
with particular people and groups coming to agreements between each
other, instead of one organization imposing the majority view on
everyone.
Constantinople
>> >voluntarily decide to contribute to a public fund?
>>
>> could be a private charity, etc.
>
>I think he just means a fund open to the public. E.g., a public golf
>course may be a private organization, but you call it public because
>anyone from the public can purchase a tee-time, use the driving range,
>etc.
Is it really? OK, I'll have $10,000,000 please. For today's expenses.
I'll be back tomorrow, of course.
Matt
<constan...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> In article <matth2000-6D31C...@news.110.net>, Matt says...
> >
> >In article <8vbob...@edrn.newsguy.com>, Constantinople
> ><constan...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> >
> >> >What problem do you have with a community in which individuals
> >> >voluntarily decide to contribute to a public fund?
> >>
> >> If individuals voluntarily decide, then it's not a public fund. It
> >> could be a private charity, etc.
> >
> >I think he just means a fund open to the public. E.g., a public golf
> >course may be a private organization, but you call it public because
> >anyone from the public can purchase a tee-time, use the driving range,
> >etc.
>
> Is it really? OK, I'll have $10,000,000 please. For today's expenses.
> I'll be back tomorrow, of course.
LOL, no I meant "open to the public" in the sense that anyone from the
public can _contribute_ to it (in contrast to some sort of exclusive
club), and, more importantly, the point of the fund would presumably be
to serve some putative public interest. Like a public golf course, it
could be a private organization funded entirely with voluntary
contributions from individuals.
The difference between it and the golf course is that the golf course
gives individuals something concrete and tangible, like a tee-time and a
cart, while the public fund gives them a vague, sentimental sense that
they've contributed to something important. Any tangible benefits of
such a fund would be widely dispersed over the population, making it
hard to fund. But it still might be a good idea to supply genuinely
public goods.
The only danger is that the people running it might become
self-annointed "protectors" of the public interest (as they see it).
But in a system of private law, they are just going to get shot the
moment they try anything.
Constantinople
>
>In article <8vc62...@edrn.newsguy.com>, Constantinople
><constan...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>> In article <matth2000-6D31C...@news.110.net>, Matt says...
>> >
>> >In article <8vbob...@edrn.newsguy.com>, Constantinople
>> ><constan...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> >voluntarily decide to contribute to a public fund?
>> >>
>> >> could be a private charity, etc.
>> >
>> >I think he just means a fund open to the public. E.g., a public golf
>> >course may be a private organization, but you call it public because
>> >anyone from the public can purchase a tee-time, use the driving range,
>> >etc.
>>
>> Is it really? OK, I'll have $10,000,000 please. For today's expenses.
>> I'll be back tomorrow, of course.
>
>LOL, no I meant "open to the public" in the sense that anyone from the
>public can _contribute_ to it (in contrast to some sort of exclusive
>club), and, more importantly, the point of the fund would presumably be
>to serve some putative public interest. Like a public golf course, it
>could be a private organization funded entirely with voluntary
>contributions from individuals.
>
>The difference between it and the golf course is that the golf course
>gives individuals something concrete and tangible, like a tee-time and a
>cart, while the public fund gives them a vague, sentimental sense that
>they've contributed to something important.
For example, the Jimmy Fund.
>Any tangible benefits of
>such a fund would be widely dispersed over the population, making it
>hard to fund. But it still might be a good idea to supply genuinely
>public goods.
>
>The only danger is that the people running it might become
>self-annointed "protectors" of the public interest (as they see it).
The thought has never occurred to me that the management
of the Jimmy Fund might try to become a state. If you only
mean that the management might exercise discretion over
how the money that was given them is spent, I don't have
a problem with that.
>But in a system of private law, they are just going to get shot the
>moment they try anything.
--
TiTo
<matt...@my-deja.com> maravilló a la audiencia con su gran sabidurÃa
al emitir este trascendental pronunciamiento:
>In article <3a18ecb6...@news.alt.net>, spider@net (TiTo) wrote:
>
>> >Your argument with my definition raises issues that anarchists disagree
>> >about -- or rather that people who regard themselves as anarchists
>> >disagree about;
>>
>> You also seem to be tempted to deny that self-declared anarchist
>> really are anarchist. I thought you were above that kind of games.
>
>If that's what he's doing, I don't think he's being unreasonable. Do
>you really think anyone who calls himself an anarchist is therefore an
>anarchist?
Yes, why would you doubt it?
>If a Catholic calls himself a Muslim, but still goes to mass and never
>prays to Allah, he is still a Catholic regardless of what he calls
>himself.
But then why should he call himself a muslim?
>Unless 'anarchist' is just a meaningless label, to be an anarchist you
>have to actually believe the central component of anarchism: that
>government is harmful, unnecessary, and should be abolished. You're not
>an anarchist just because you say you are.
But all self-declared anarchists are against gov't.
Or do you know anyone calling him/herself anarchist and supporting
gov't?
>While I think there are genuine socialist anarchists, there are other
>people who claim to be anarchists but still support government.
I'm having a hard time believing the above.
>Either
>they want the central government to be more expansive, as Chomsky does,
Has Chomsky declared himself an anarchist?
As an aside, i remember Proudhon writing that some institutions of
gov't, like the monopolization of tarifs, should not be abolished
before other institutions are not abolished as well, and i remember
Tucker writing in favour of that position, because they did not want
to cause more suffering to those with less economic power.
>or they support institutions that most people would call a government,
>but they call anarchist because they think their institutions would
>truly represent the people. These people are not anarchists.
There might be some people who call themselves anarchists when they
really are extreme democrats.
Anyway, i think it is childish to go around these discussion boards
saying "Hey! You are not as anarchist as I am".
TiTo
James A. Donald
Matt
> > you really think anyone who calls himself an anarchist is
> > therefore an anarchist?
On Tue, 21 Nov 2000 14:13:13 GMT, spider@net (TiTo) wrote:
> Yes, why would you doubt it?
I would doubt it because of the violent and sometimes successful
efforts of "anarchists" to create an authoritarian or totalitarian
state.
I would also doubt it because of the reflexive support for the Soviet
Union that we used to see from so many western "anarchists".
Matt:
> > Unless 'anarchist' is just a meaningless label, to be an anarchist
> > you have to actually believe the central component of anarchism:
> > that government is harmful, unnecessary, and should be abolished.
> > You're not an anarchist just because you say you are.
Tito:
> But all self-declared anarchists are against gov't.
But many of them define "government" as what I call "freedom", and
define "anarchy" either as what I call government, or as what I call
"totalitarianism".
> Or do you know anyone calling him/herself anarchist and supporting
> gov't?
Chomsky is an obvious and extreme example.
> > Either they want the central government to be more expansive, as
> > Chomsky does,
> Has Chomsky declared himself an anarchist?
Continually.
> There might be some people who call themselves anarchists when they
> really are extreme democrats.
These people always depict "the people themselves" as doing or
deciding things that can only be done by a single person or a small
group. Therefore they regard the vanguard as "the people themselves",
and mean by extreme democracy, totalitarian power in the hands of a
vanguard.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
eOfQ41RBBMvf0OQZN7uNFubg3eUleBs94PFSNcnQ
48jf8WYqxX5bNImFypuw0a0ZU3ujcRRX+MbMzl82m
James A. Donald
Chris Wilson:
> > > Too narrow. An anarchist is a person who holds that all forms of
> > > involuntary servitude and domination is evil and ought to be abolished.
James A. Donald:
> > By that definition, ever since the civil war, damn near one hundred
> > percent of the US population are anarchists.
> >
> > You are not an anarchist, you are a totalitarian. You persistently
> > use words contrary to their ordinary meaning, which shows that you
> > know that if you spoke plainly, what you were saying would alarm and
> > shock people.
> If they are all opposed to involuntary servitude and domination then
> what about all the people who employ somebody?
Voluntary.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
bYeIAaptqSvVfVg26M8HvBam+ZowHdN1yT/iEAqd
4d2KmvQK8yQeeagCvd1pB3ETrQY8i8JYfllbReiUQ
James A. Donald
On Mon, 20 Nov 2000 06:52:50 -0500, Mark Roddy
<ma...@wattanuck.mv.com> wrote:
> No jimmy the analogy is that nor is Stalin an anarchist.
Exactly so. Stalin writes pleasant sounding words to describe
monstrous things, and the "anarchists" in this group write very
similar pleasant sounding words to describe very similar monstrous
things, and claim that because, like Stalin, they use pleasant words,
this makes them anarchists.
If pleasant sounding words make one an anarchist, if using pleasant
words to describe the standard totalitarian program makes that program
"anarchism", then Stalin is as much an anarchist as any of you.
Mark Roddy:
> > > Left-libertarians, like right-libertarians, believe in various
> > > degrees of statelessness.
James A. Donald:
> > The problem is that their concept of statelessness is often
> > remarkably similar to my concept of a totalitarian state.
Mark Roddy:
> Only if by a totalitarian state one has in mind decentralized
> community based participatory democracy,
Your program is no more and no less decentralized than Stalin's. One
plan, but supposedly somehow many planners.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
zYc41dZVF2OP0cWD7hep0cmS7jnubT/aK2jHsaiv
4ro5NJEwif4vj/Q2cCElzxKmd7UMcj8OJok3jBKes
hewpi...@my-deja.com
> >>> Question for anarchist population: What is an "Anarchist"? What
is the
> philosophy, the purpose, the different factions, etc.?
>
> >> An anarchist is a person who holds that government (in a certain
> evil and ought to be abolished.
>
> > Too narrow. An anarchist is a person who holds that all forms of
> involuntary servitude and domination is evil and ought to be
> state, government, capitalism, family patriarchy, and even mass
production
> falls under these categories.
>
institution that
> claims the sole legitimate right to determine how one set of people
will use
> force against another. A government is an institution that claims a
legitimate
> monopoly on the use of force.
>
> > Consistent anarchists oppose *any* institution that seeks to control
> peoples' behavior through coercive manipulation, whether monopolistic
or
> otherwise.
>
> >> Anarchists advocate the position that the only legitimate social
> institutions are those formed by voluntary agreement. Any social
> institution imposed by force is illegitimate.
>
> > Most anarchists today realize that the majority of all economic
agreements
> are not really made "voluntarily", but under threat of having to
undergo one of
> many negative alternatives created by landlords, capitalists, and
governments.
> The "agreement" to work 40-60 hrs a week for minimum wage and no
benefits
> (i.e., compensation and economic power that's in no way proportional
to one's
> contribution to the productive process) is not voluntary. A person's
> "agreement" to work in a factory after being forcibly evicted from
one's native
> lands that previously allowed for a self-sufficient lifestyle is not
voluntary.
> These are forms of slavery, and it's an obscenity to refer to them
as anything
> else.
>
> >> The chief factions in anarchism are the faction that defends and
advocates
> several (or private) property, most often called anarcho-capitalists,
and the
> faction that opposes and denigrates several property, most ooften
called
> anarcho-socialists.
>
> > Incorrect: "anarcho-capitalists" are not anarchists at all. They
advocate an
> economic system in which the majority of people are forced to succumb
to the
> domination of landlords and bosses. Anarchists are opposed to
rulers, period
> -- not just one particular sort of rulers.
>
> > The term "anarcho-capitalist" didn't even exist until the 1970's
when a
> neoclassical (i.e., pro-capitalist) economist decided to use the term
to
> refer to a hypothetical and completely fictional society based upon
absolute
> property rights in land and capital. The term "anarcho-socialist"
didn't exist
> until fans of this economist's favored society started debating
people who have
> classically been referred to as "anarchists". Historically,
anarchists have
> always opposed capitalism as an economic system that enslaves people
to
> injurious and monotonous toil and to the hegemonic rule of others.
Many
> anarchists favor a socialist society in which the means of production
are
> controlled by the workers themselves. Other anarchists hold that mass
> production wouldn't exist if the local self-sufficiency of indigenous
peoples
> wasn't systematically destroyed in the first place, and hence there's
no way
> that it would be freely chosen. These anarchists hold that in
absence of
> widespread coercion, people would eschew the hierarchy of mass
organization by
> securing their needs in direct relationship with the land just as
people did
> throughout 99% of human history. Most anarchists fall somewhere in
between
> these two positions.
>
> > One thing we know for certain however is that anarchists do not
support
> capitalism -- they never have and they never will. Check out the
following
> website for more info on anarchism: http://www.anarchistfaq.org/
>
> > Of course Mikel will respond by providing a link to another FAQ
written by a
> pro-capitalist economist who thinks he has a clue about anarchism.
Such is an
> insult to the millions who have struggled in work places,
neighborhoods, and
> communities against the imprisonment and terrorism of wage slavery,
forced
> tenancy, eviction, rape, and every other violent act under the sun.
>
> The issues you've raised are important. But how do you distinguish
between
> anarchism and communism?
They are virtually identical in theory. The real difference is when
the vangaurd takes control, the Anarchists are the first to get loaded
onto the railroad cars, much like the brownshirts under the Nazis.
You'll be the first to go, you'll be the first to go, unless you think!
> "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
JOHN 8:32
> Good Christian books listed and described at:
> http://www.hometown.aol.com/mrgoodsalt/index.htm
mikel evins
<spider@net> wrote:
> Con fecha Sun, 19 Nov 2000 18:23:05 -0500, Matt
> <matt...@my-deja.com> maravilló a la audiencia con su gran sabidurÃa
> al emitir este trascendental pronunciamiento:
>
>> In article <3a18ecb6...@news.alt.net>, spider@net (TiTo) wrote:
>>
>>>> Your argument with my definition raises issues that anarchists disagree
>>>> about -- or rather that people who regard themselves as anarchists
>>>> disagree about;
>>>
>>> You also seem to be tempted to deny that self-declared anarchist
>>> really are anarchist. I thought you were above that kind of games.
>>
>> If that's what he's doing, I don't think he's being unreasonable. Do
>> you really think anyone who calls himself an anarchist is therefore an
>> anarchist?
>
> Yes, why would you doubt it?
A person can apply a label to himself mistakenly. If I called myself a
French Poodle, that would not mean that I was one.
>> If a Catholic calls himself a Muslim, but still goes to mass and never
>> prays to Allah, he is still a Catholic regardless of what he calls
>> himself.
>
> But then why should he call himself a muslim?
That's a different question, a question of motivation. The question of
whether someone who claims to be an anarchist actually is one is a factual
question, a question of whether he is describing himself accurately.
>> Unless 'anarchist' is just a meaningless label, to be an anarchist you
>> have to actually believe the central component of anarchism: that
>> government is harmful, unnecessary, and should be abolished. You're not
>> an anarchist just because you say you are.
>
> But all self-declared anarchists are against gov't.
I am sure that all self-declared "anarchists" are more or less against
"government", but that does not mean that they are against government in any
meaningful sense, nor that they are anarchists in any meaningful sense.
> Anyway, i think it is childish to go around these discussion boards
> saying "Hey! You are not as anarchist as I am".
Perhaps, but it isn't childish to try to understand the meaning and
implication of what people are saying. When the face value of their words
contradicts the sense of what they are saying it makes sense to doubt them.
--
mikel evins
mi...@reactivity.com
Chris Wilson
Matt <matt...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:matth2000-389E3...@news.110.net...
> While I think there are genuine socialist anarchists, there are other
> they want the central government to be more expansive, as Chomsky does,
> but they call anarchist because they think their institutions would
> truly represent the people. These people are not anarchists.
Free-market libertarians (including anarcho-capitalists) are often happy
when they learn that a Supreme Court decision rules a piece of oppressive
legislation as "unconstitutional". They are not opposed to one
authoritarian institution curbing the power of another authoritarian
institution. Anarchists are the same way. Corporations and governments are
authoritarian institutions, and hence when the later places restrictions
upon the former (which is rare), we typically are not opposed to that. Of
course, we would rather not have to contend with either of them.
Chris Wilson
> <matt...@my-deja.com> maravilló a la audiencia con su gran sabidurÃa
> >> involuntary servitude and domination is evil and ought to be
> >> abolished. The state, government, capitalism, family patriarchy, and
> >> even mass production falls under these categories.
> >
> >Your claim is a mere assertion. I can just as easily assert that your
> >definition is too broad--and in fact that is what I'm going to do.
> >
> >My claim, however, is supported by common dictionary definitions, which
> >represent a general consensus on what a word means.
If we really must consult dictionaries, let's take a look at what
Merriam-Webster has to say:
Main Entry: an·ar·chism
Pronunciation: 'a-n&r-"ki-z&m, -"när-
Function: noun
Date: 1642
1 : a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be
unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary
cooperation and free association of individuals and groups
One definition of "government" is:
4 : the continuous exercise of authority over and the performance of
functions for a political unit : RULE
This definition can be applied to the actions of many possible institutions,
not just the state. I can make many good arguments that capitalism, as an
economic system, is a form of rule, and that it entails that the majority of
all people continously subject themselves to the authority and domination of
others throughout the course of their life. But one needn't even do
extended definition searches to determine that anarchism isn't exclusively
an opposition to the state. The term "anarchism" literally translates to
"without rulers". Granted, we could argue all day about what does and
doesn't constitute a "ruler", but it's far from self-evident that it refers
specifically to politicians, government bureaucrats, and military leaders.
Anarchists have classically recognized capitalism as an imposition and a
form of domination that people do not truly consent to, hence their
opposition to it. Capitalism has never existed in the absence of the state,
or without the initiation of coercion. Land ownership is an institution
that that grew out of feudalism, under which political states would conquer
lands through slaughter and forced eviction, and delegate political control
over these lands through smaller owners. To this day, indigenous peoples
who live self-sufficiently are still being evicted from their land,
slaughtered, or enslaved for the purpose of creating property rights for
resource-extraction corporations. This is not a system that's based upon
liberty.
> >Of course, the dictionaries could be wrong. Fortunately, in this case
> >they're not: not only do anarcho-capitalists define anarchism as
> >opposition to government, so too did socialist anarchists before they
> >realized they had anarcho-capitalists to compete with. Only NOW do you
> >see anarcho-socialists defining anarchism using such wishy-washy
> >language as you do.
Anarchists defined anarchism as an opposition to rulership, and regarded
capitalism as a form of this.
> >Previously socialist anarchists were not just straightforward about
> >anarchism is, but also about what government is. By 'government' they
> >meant of course the state.
Their opposition to capitalism was never incidental to their anarchism -- it
was never a side issue. On the contrary, they considered their opposition
to capitalism to be central to their anarchism, and in fact mandated by it.
> >They did not mean family or workplace
> >hierarchy; they meant the actual government. Their theory was that
> >after taking out the state, capitalism would come crumbling down--in
> >contrast to the Marxists who thought the state should take out
> >capitalism, and would later disappear on its own.
That in fact was not their theory. Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta
and the like were labor activists and unionists. The purpose of the First
International, of which Bakunin was a part of, was to combat capitalism and
to create a worker controlled economy. The idea was that capitalism had to
be attacked with vigillance along with the state because even if the state
was dismantled, the capitalists would seek to resurrect it. Capitalism and
the State were both considered primary evils that perpetuate each other --
both ways.
> >Now socialist anarchists are redefining their views so that a
> >capitalist, or even a father, is a kind of government and thus must be
> >opposed with the same force with which one would oppose a tyrannical
> >king. This is sloppy, silly reasoning.
There is no re-definition. Anarchists are opposed to rulers. They are
opposed to rulership *because* of the fact that it entails involuntary
servitude and domination for most people.
> >Goldman, Bakunin, and Malatesta had a real spark to their writing, which
> >really attracted me to their arguments. Nowadays we have good reason to
> >think they were mistaken on certain counts, but most anarcho-socialists
> >haven't updated their views. Rather, they retreat to ambiguous, often
> >incoherent language trying to resurrect a dead ideology.
The post-situationists and primitivists who write for "Anarchy: Journal for
a Desire Armed" might use ambiguous and convoluted language, but I feel that
I've been speaking in basic English. How precisely am I unclear?
And anarchism isn't any more "dead" than free-market libertarianism. The
number of anarchists are small, but the number of free-market libertarians
isn't much larger. Most academics don't advocate either system (not that I
care too much). The number of neoliberals and the number of Marxists in
academia are still pretty evenly balanced, so its self-evident that either
capitalism or socialism is closer to being "right". And both capitalism and
state attempts to create socialist societies have lead to atrocities,
starvation, and domination, so I don't think that either is proved legitimat
e by common historical knowledge.
And Matt -- in case you're still perplexed as to why I rejected my
"anarcho-capitalist" views, it's as a result of having to work for a living.
I was a strongly ideological free-market libertarian during my last three
years in college. It's very easy to theorize about politics when perched
atop the ivory tower, mostly shielded from the effects of capitalism.
However, less than a year after graduating college when I was working as a
phone slave for a large software corporation, it suddenly dawned on me, "You
know what? This really sucks!" Free-market libertarianism is advocated by
small business owners, highly paid computer professionals (like the
programmer at my work that I argue with every day), and academics who don't
have to feel the effects of wage slavery for an extended period of time.
Rarely if ever do I see anybody else take this political position.
Yes, I can anticipate you saying that few people believe that
"anarcho-socialism" is the way to go. However, to be honest, I don't even
call myself an "anarchist" when talking to most people, nor am I a member of
any explicitly anarchist organizations. I believe in creating solidarity
alliances with other people, and calling oneself an "anarchist" (or
anything-ist) is not the best way to connect with or relate to other people,
nor is requiring people to pass ideological purity tests before working with
them. I'm a person who believes in individual and community autonomy,
self-sufficiency, and mutual aid, and I try to work on projects that are
conducive to these things with those who agree that they're worthwhile. I'd
rather do without "ism"s of any sort.
Chris Wilson
simon.rvx.net <the_wire...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:8vbauo$9jv$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > You are not an anarchist, you are a totalitarian.
When I was a free-market libertarian, I observed you indiscriminately
calling every opponent of capitalism a "totalitarian". I thought that you
were being unreasonable even then, but now that I'm being called a
"totalitarian" (even though I rejected capitalism because I ceased believing
that it was compatible with liberty), I realize how truly out of touch with
reality you really are.
Chris Wilson
Chris Wilson <chrs...@whoknows.net> wrote in message
news:0XHS5.9223$1c.1...@e420r-sjo2.usenetserver.com...
Constantinople
>
>
>Matt <matt...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
>news:matth2000-389E3...@news.110.net...
>> While I think there are genuine socialist anarchists, there are other
>> people who claim to be anarchists but still support government. Either
>> they want the central government to be more expansive, as Chomsky does,
>> or they support institutions that most people would call a government,
>> but they call anarchist because they think their institutions would
>> truly represent the people. These people are not anarchists.
>
>Free-market libertarians (including anarcho-capitalists) are often happy
>when they learn that a Supreme Court decision rules a piece of oppressive
>legislation as "unconstitutional". They are not opposed to one
>authoritarian institution curbing the power of another authoritarian
>institution.
The courts are not a state. They have no independent command over
force. The courts by themselves do not form an independent state.
>Anarchists are the same way. Corporations
Corporations are not states.
>and governments are
>authoritarian institutions, and hence when the later places restrictions
>upon the former
Anything a state does to a non-state entity is probably to be lamented.
>(which is rare), we typically are not opposed to that. Of
>course, we would rather not have to contend with either of them.
Here's why I think you use the term "authoritarian institution" rather
than "state".
You call anything that it occurs to you to want to modify in any way,
an authoritarian institution, and you'll have a case, because the term
isn't a common one. Whereas "state" is a common term, and so you have
no control over it. If you didn't like racism, you would
call that an authoritarian institution and demand that the state
implement laws proscribing hate speech. If you didn't like smoking,
you would call smoking an authoritarian institution (in fact you
probably already do, with the cigarette makers in the role of
"authority"). And so on.
Chris Wilson
Constantinople <constan...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8vfkc...@edrn.newsguy.com...
I apologize for assuming that people would know the meaning of the words
"authoritarian" and "institution". I promise that I won't use such
"convoluted" and "ambiguous" vocabulary anymore.
When I refer to an institution as "authoritarian", I mean something very
specific. I refer to corporations and the state as "authoritarian" because
they both exercise dominion over the resources that people create and use,
hence requiring people to subject themselves to the rule of others.
Corporations, like states, acquire control of people's native lands through
force, removing their ability to live self-sufficiently. They compensate
for this by providing people with the "opportunity" to survive by engaging
in dangerous, unhealthy, and montonous toil in mines, fields, factories, and
offices, giving them little (if any) decision making power and paying them
only a fraction of the value they contribute to production. The workers can
cover the cost of capital 100 times over through their labor, but the
workplace will never become theirs. Renters can cover the cost of their
homes 100 times over, but their homes will never become theirs. It is an
fact that the majority of people must spend the majority of their lives
working under somebody else's supervision and for somebody else's benefit.
This is not voluntary; it is not consented to. This is a condition created
by human institutions; it is not a simple "fact of nature". Most people
cannot "opt out" of this (although they can choose between masters) without
placing themselves in extreme danger. One can "disassociate" oneself from
capitalism just as easily as one can disassociate oneself from the state.
This is a form of forced domination, not consensual domination (like BD/SM
is). All corporations and businesses are responsible for this state of
affairs, including those that don't own any land. If a company utilizes the
goods or services of the state or corporations that actively destroy
people's autonomy, then they are complicit in the process. If they
opportunistically take advantage of and seek benefit from negative
circumstances people face that are created by the state or corporations,
they are complicit in the process. We as consumers (yes, myself included)
are complicit in the process because we perpetuate its existence through our
ceaseless purchases (although I try to purchase as little as possible).
Just because capitalism is not a unified organization like the state, but a
process initiated by many organizations, that doesn't mean that it is any
less controlling, enslaving or life-destroying.
Contrary to what you may believe, I don't seek to ban wage labor. I seek to
remove the conditions that make it an economic necessity to engage in wage
labor. I acknowledge one's liberty to submit oneself to the domination
inherent in a BDSM-style sexual activity. However, this is a form of
domination that I can choose not to engage in without posing any threat to
my livelihood. Wage and rent slavery is not.
Is all of this clear, or am I being too "vague"?
anarchosy...@my-deja.com
mrgoo...@aol.com (MrGoodSalt) wrote:
> Question for anarchist population: What is an "Anarchist"? What is the
> philosophy, the purpose, the different factions, etc.?
>
geographic areas.
The purpose is to establish Freedom permanently.
There are probably as many factions of anarchism as there are
anarchists.
Anarcho-syndicalists seek to establish a free society through the
mechanism of the General Strike an esentially nonviolent approach,
http://maxpages.com/generalstrike
Anarcho-communists seek to establish a Voluntary Communist society.
Anarcho-capitalists want an unfettered Free Market.
Then the generic "unhyphenated" anarchists are eclectic in their
strategy as long as it is consistent with their goal of a stateless
society.
@
as long as it is consistent with
Dan Clore
> On Sun, 19 Nov 2000 23:35:16 GMT, jam...@echeque.com (James A. Donald)
> wrote:
>
> >As you can see, Stalin has just as good a claim to be an anarchist as
> >most of the socialists in this newsgroup, and a good deal better claim
> >than Chomsky.
> >
> that she isn't.
>
> overthrow of the existing order on the basis of "been there, done
> that, it really, really doesn't work".
You aren't hard enough on Comrade Jimmy. I looked up at his
post (I still have him killfiled) and found three whopping
errors of fact and argument -- these being all three of the
facts and arguments he presented.
First, he misportrays Bakunin like this:
> Bakunin was fighting against governments that were precapitalist,
> precapitalist in the sense that these nations were ruled by king and
> priest, and big businessmen had to enter the halls of power through
> the tradesman's entrance. Thus his views on the economic order are
> largely irrelevant to modern societies. His criticism of capitalism
> is merely a critique of crony capitalism, and his proposed remedy is
> an inheritance tax leading, he hoped, to an economy that we moderns
> would describe as dominated by small businesses.
Bakunin was fighting against governments like those in
France, the UK, and US (among others). The pre-capitalist
governments Jimmy mentioned Bakunin described as
pre-capitalist. He did give qualified support to an
inheritance tax, but hardly expected that alone to bring
about the sort of economy he wanted. As to his proposals,
the economy he hoped for would first be anarcho-collectivist
(workers all own equal shares in their business but are paid
according to the labor) which then hopefully would lead to
anarcho-communism (free access to means of production and to
products). He had no use for the kind of small business that
Jimmy has to be referring to.
Then on to Emma Goldman:
> Emma Goldman's views evolved through time. Her early works grew out
> of crude and simplistic class war theory. At that time she did not
> really understand the US, or the American working class. They were
> alien to her, and she grotesquely misread events and people. She
> improved with time, and in her last works was a firm fan of free
> trade, and somewhat vaguely and unenthusiastically accepted the
> legitimacy of property rights in the means of production.
Jimmy obviously has never read any of the late works of Emma
Goldman, such as "There Is No Communism in Russia" (1935),
in which she describes the Stalinist Soviet Union as an
example of "the crassest sort of state capitalism"; or the
"Address to the International Working Men's Association" in
which she describes her experiences in Spain during the
Civil War and advocates anarcho-communism and syndicalism,
or "Was My Life Worth Living" (1934), her "see I was right"
essay. (Goldman died in 1940.)
As for being a "firm fan of free trade", Goldman never had a
kind word to say for it. Indeed, what Jimmy calls "free
trade" she spent her entire life exposing as unfree and
fighting against. The last essay I list above gives the
closest thing I can find to this supposed fanaticism: "[as
one strike against government] It creates tariffs, which
prevent free exchange." So much for that. She says elsewhere
in the same essay: "Freedom is, therefore, the cornerstone
of the Anarchist philosophy. Of course, this has nothing in
common with a much boasted 'rugged individualism.' Such
predatory individualism is really flabby, not rugged. At the
least danger to its safety it runs to cover of the state and
wails for protection of armies, navies, or whatever devices
for strangulation it has at its command. Their 'rugged
individualism' is simply one of the many pretenses the
ruling class makes to unbridled business and political
extortion." As for Jimmy's last claim, about Goldman
"vaguely and unenthusiastically accepted the legitimacy of
property rights in the means of production", this has no
basis whatsoever in anything Goldman ever wrote.
As to his final claim, that Stalin was an anarchist, he
totally misrepresents the quotation from Stalin that he
presents. Stalin explicitly refers to the Party as the
central, ruling organization. In short, Stalin is describing
Lenin's "democratic centralism" (sans the democracy). Lenin
conceived of "democratic centralism" as the explicit
opposite of the anarchists' decentralism.
And there you have it.
--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore
The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm
"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.
Constantinople
I did not say I did not know the meaning of the words. Your reading
comprehension needs a little work.
>I promise that I won't use such
>"convoluted" and "ambiguous" vocabulary anymore.
>
>When I refer to an institution as "authoritarian", I mean something very
>specific. I refer to corporations and the state as "authoritarian" because
>they both exercise dominion over the resources
I.e. they own property. But the problem with the state is not that it owns
property, but that it monopolizes the administration of justice.
By the way, what resources does the US supremem court directly monopolize?
>that people create and use,
>hence requiring people to subject themselves to the rule of others.
>Corporations, like states, acquire control of people's native lands through
>force,
I think you need to back that up. It seems much more likely that
corporations, like most people, acquire real estate by offering an
attractive price to the previous owner. States, in contrast, are
able to just take the land over the objections of its previous owner.
Dan Clore
> In article <knKS5.14501$1Z3.1...@e420r-sjo3.usenetserver.com>, "Chris says...
> >news:8vfkc...@edrn.newsguy.com...
> >> In article <eGGS5.9392$1Z3.1...@e420r-sjo3.usenetserver.com>, "Chris
> >says...
> >that people create and use,
> >hence requiring people to subject themselves to the rule of others.
> >Corporations, like states, acquire control of people's native lands through
> >force,
>
> I think you need to back that up. It seems much more likely that
> corporations, like most people, acquire real estate by offering an
> attractive price to the previous owner. States, in contrast, are
> able to just take the land over the objections of its previous owner.
Why should he back up something that everyone (apparently except you)
already knows? Because you like being an asshole and calling on others
to do free work for you? In the time I've seen you on Usenet you've gone
from being a simple idiot to being a pathological liar and a complete
jerk. Just in the newsposts I read above this one you respond to three
of my posts, in two of them you both make ridiculously false statements
about what I wrote, snipping material that directly contradicts your
claims without acknowledgement. In the third you demonstrated that you
are too stupid to even understand *your own claims*.
--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore
The Website of Lord Weÿrdgliffe:
Constantinople
>
>Constantinople wrote:
>>In article <knKS5.14501$1Z3.1...@e420r-sjo3.usenetserver.com>, "Chris says...
>> >news:8vfkc...@edrn.newsguy.com...
>> >> In article <eGGS5.9392$1Z3.1...@e420r-sjo3.usenetserver.com>, "Chris
>> >says...
>
>> >hence requiring people to subject themselves to the rule of others.
>> >Corporations, like states, acquire control of people's native lands through
>> >force,
>>
>> corporations, like most people, acquire real estate by offering an
>> attractive price to the previous owner. States, in contrast, are
>> able to just take the land over the objections of its previous owner.
>
>Why should he back up something that everyone (apparently except you)
>already knows?
I doubt that everyone "knows" any such thing.
>Because you like being an asshole and calling on others
>to do free work for you?
Asking someone to back up a claim that I disagree with is not
"being an asshole".
>In the time I've seen you on Usenet you've gone
>from being a simple idiot to being a pathological liar and a complete
>jerk. Just in the newsposts I read above this one you respond to three
>of my posts, in two of them you both make ridiculously false statements
>about what I wrote, snipping material that directly contradicts your
>claims without acknowledgement. In the third you demonstrated that you
>are too stupid to even understand *your own claims*.
Whatever.
James A. Donald
James A. Donald:
> > > You [Chris Wilson] are not an anarchist, you are a totalitarian.
Chris Wilson
> When I was a free-market libertarian, I observed you
> indiscriminately calling every opponent of capitalism a
> "totalitarian".
My recollection of our disagreements differs from your own, just as my
recollection of your former political position differs from your own.
During the time that you erroneously thought yourself to be an
free-market libertarian you wrote:
: : Do anarcho-capitalists and left-anarchists really share
: : any common ground at all?
To which I replied:
: : Yes: Some of them actually are anarchists. [...] many
: : of them, possibly most of them, agree with us on most
: : issues other than property rights
During the time that you erroneously thought yourself to be an
free-market libertarian you wrote:
: : Left-anarchy, in my mind, is no better than any other
: : brand of statism, as it intends to impinge upon human
: : freedom.
To which I replied:
: : But is this a conscious intention? Do they actually look
: : forward to using a baton to work over victims who dare
: : not fight back as so many Trotskyists so plainly do?
: :
: : Some of them obviously do.
: :
: : Some of them engage in double think.
: :
: : Some of them have failed to think things through.
Chris Wilson:
> I thought that you were being unreasonable even then, but now that
> I'm being called a "totalitarian" (even though I rejected
> capitalism because I ceased believing that it was compatible with
> liberty), I realize how truly out of touch with reality you really
> are.
Given the history of the twentieth century, those who reject
capitalism are not in a strong position to condemn other people as
being out of contact with reality.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
4YkMasJTGhU/87johELUZsK994qM0fzx+20zn5H4
4RBPr4DqQ71Wo8g2jq12sfpvCvSBLYZoEzBBYodsD
James A. Donald
Matt
> > My claim, [about the meaning of anarchism] is supported by common
> > dictionary definitions, which represent a general consensus on
> > what a word means.
Chris Wilson:
> If we really must consult dictionaries, let's take a look at what
> Merriam-Webster has to say:
>
> Main Entry: an·ar·chism Pronunciation: 'a-n&r-"ki-z&m, -"när-
> Function: noun Date: 1642 1 : a political theory holding all forms
> of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and
> advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free
> association of individuals and groups
>
> One definition of "government" is:
>
> 4 : the continuous exercise of authority over and the performance of
> functions for a political unit : RULE
>
> This definition can be applied to the actions of many possible
> institutions, not just the state.
I never heard of a corporation being described as a political unit,
and if you think corporations continuously exercise authority over
political units, you need to remember to take your medication.
> I can make many good arguments that capitalism, as an economic
> system, is a form of rule,
When you describe capitalism as a "system of rule", you are retreating
into a cloud of abstractions that can define anything as anything. If
you apply similar treatment to any dictionary definition, you can turn
it into any other dictionary definition.
An "economic system" may well be a "system of rule" but a system does
not rule. A particular group of people, with guns and tanks, rules.
> Anarchists have classically recognized capitalism as an imposition
> and a form of domination that people do not truly consent to, hence
> their opposition to it. Capitalism has never existed in the absence
> of the state, or without the initiation of coercion.
Bullshit.
Capitalism has always sprung up where the reach of the state was
weakest, or between states.
The earliest prominent practitioners of capitalism were the
Canaanites, who were for the most part stateless. The Icelandic
economy was damn near stateless, and it was certainly capitalist, both
in the sense that it was free market, and also in the sense that some
people managed to acquire a lot more capital than others, and those
that acquired a lot more capital tended to be on top.
> Land ownership is an institution
> that that grew out of feudalism,
You are spouting long exposed Marxist lies here. According to
Marxists, feudalism did not exist until medieval times, yet Roman law
was based on absolute private property in land, and treated land as
the paradigmatic example of private property.
According to Sir Moses Finley "Economy and Society", p217
: : In the Homeric poems, the property regime, in particular,
: : was already fully established [....] The regime that we
: : see in the poems was, above all, one of private ownership
: : [...]there was free untrammeled right to dispose of all
: : movable wealth [...] the transmission of a man's estate
: : by inheritance, the movables and immovables together, was
: : taken for granted as the normal procedure upon his death
Finley tells us a few paragraphs later that the Homeric world knew no
conditional tenures, and that in ancient Greece private property was
recognized and protected by the state as the basis of society and that
the state very rarely interfered with the free play of economic forces
and economic initiative.
According to Victor Davis Hanson in "The other greeks", p3
: : The rise of independent farmers who owned and worked
: : without encumbrance their small plots at the end of the
: : Greek Dark ages was an entirely new phenomenon in
: : history. [...] Their efforts to create a greater
: : community of agrarian equals resulted, I believe, in the
: : system of independent but interconnected Greek city
: : states which characterized Western culture.
Chris wilson:
> Anarchists defined anarchism as an opposition to rulership, and
> regarded capitalism as a form of this.
Commie lie.
Free market anarchists have as old a pedigree as socialist anarchists.
The first clear and forceful advocate of anarcho capitalism,
advocating the private and market based provision of force and
justice, was De Molinari in 1849, and we can find Taoists who were
arguably market anarchists going back thousands of years.
> Their opposition to capitalism was never incidental to their
> anarchism -- it was never a side issue.
For Bakunin it was a side issue. He talked of priests and kings,
rather than capitalists. Emma Goldman was at first primarily anti
capitalist, and only secondly anti state, but her priorities changed
as she grew older, perhaps in part as a result of the endless
betrayals by the communists, and the evident futility and absurdity of
advocating class warfare in America. Spooner and De Molinari were
always enthusiastic supporters of privatization and private
enterprise.
Tucker explicitly discussed the question of priorities, and argued
that the state was primary, and that with the state gone, capitalism
was incapable of being very objectionable, that no revolution was
needed against the state and capitalism, but only against the state
alone.
> That in fact was not their theory. Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin,
> Malatesta and the like were labor activists and unionists.
Not exactly true. They were class warfare revolutionaries, which does
not always have much resemblance to being a unionist, nor does being a
unionist make one a class warfare revolutionary. Proudhon's position
underwent the same changes as Emma Goldman's, and in his "Theory of
property" he tells us that property and the family are the only
effective bulwarks against tyranny. Bakunin was always primarily anti
state, rather than anti capitalist. Proudhon became anti state,
rather than anti capitalist, and Emma Goldman eventually equivocated
on private property in the means of production. Tucker, Spooner, and
Molinari were never class warfare revolutionaries.
> The idea was that capitalism had to be attacked with vigillance
> along with the state because even if the state was dismantled, the
> capitalists would seek to resurrect it.
Untrue:
The first international was not anarchist. There was debate on
whether the primary enemy was the state, or capitalism, or both. The
anarchist elements said the state, or said both. The socialist
elements said capitalism and not the state. As a result of this
bitter and unending dispute, the first international eventually split.
According to the Brittanica one of the factions of the first
international was "Proudhonism (after Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who
advocated only the reform of capitalism"
The international split over the issue of Bakunin's anarchism vs the
Marxist's socialism, and in this split the Marxists quite accurately
depicted Bakunin as advocating an anarchic economic system dominated
by free markets and small petit bourgeois businessmen. The social
democrats broke away from the anarchist faction and rejoined the
Marxist dominated faction, in large part because they considered
Bakunin's faction insufficiently socialist, rather than because they
considered it excessively anarchist.
> Capitalism and the State were both considered primary evils that
> perpetuate each other -- both ways.
If this was the case, then the anarchists would have got on just fine
with the socialists in the first international, but instead they
split, and hurled endless bitter anathemas at each other. Your
version of their doctrine was not a widely held doctrine, it was an
uneasy compromise between deeply opposed world views, a compromise
that soon collapsed.
And in that collapse, you have taken the side of Marx, not the side of
Bakunin and Proudhon.
> However, less than a year after graduating college when I was working as a
> phone slave for a large software corporation
What is a college graduate doing manning phones?
I have always argued that the big fans of socialism are the downwardly
mobile, who seek a system where everyone is kept in their proper place
with whip and gun. You have confirmed my expectations.
Yes, manning the phones sucks. Only trash do it, and they get treated
like scum. They get packed into onto a tiny little bench, in a room
with no windows looking on the outside world. No one has any respect
for them.
But it is not just those evil capitalists treating you like trash, it
is EVERYONE treating you like trash.
Here is a word of advice. Get off the phones. It is not those evil
capitalists who have screwed up by giving you humiliating work that no
one respects, it is you who have screwed up. For starters you should
have studied something with more job potential than modern
philosophers and english lit, but it is too late to fix that now.
Take a good look at your career path, and pretty soon you will be
earning some decent money, and when you start earning some decent
money you will then notice the income tax people taking an indecent
share of it. Suddenly, anarcho capitalism will once again seem very
appealing. When I came out of university, I did not take regular job
for over ten years. Why should you?
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
Q0lqH6K8pDsBMQEYDS1Xfa1pvzbss0Sx/0t2dbRh
4hSBF9kv6/ZO4vJ1yuTb9ejIO7853Q5CXRPqV4e2D
Mark Roddy
<cl...@columbia-center.org> wrote:
>Mark Roddy wrote:
>> On Sun, 19 Nov 2000 23:35:16 GMT, jam...@echeque.com (James A. Donald)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >As you can see, Stalin has just as good a claim to be an anarchist as
>> >most of the socialists in this newsgroup, and a good deal better claim
>> >than Chomsky.
>> >
>> My dog has a good claim to be a three-headed chimera, except of course
>> that she isn't.
>>
>> Left-libertarians, like right-libertarians, believe in various degrees
>> of statelessness. Quite a few reject notions of a revolutionary
>> overthrow of the existing order on the basis of "been there, done
>> that, it really, really doesn't work".
>
>You aren't hard enough on Comrade Jimmy. I looked up at his
>post (I still have him killfiled) and found three whopping
>errors of fact and argument -- these being all three of the
>facts and arguments he presented.
>
More power to you. Only in a right-wing lunatic libertarian's head can
Adolph be a socialist and Uncle Joe an anarchist. But really, I do
think my dog's claim to be a threee headed chimera does have validity.
Mark Roddy
Lets ignore the fact that the Haitian worker
toils long hours for miserable wages and barely
survives. Instead lets focus on access to techno-junk,
the detritus of capitalist over production, and
pronounce the ordinary people of this planet in this
day and age where capitalism has triumphed across
the globe, better off than kings because
Louis XIV didn't have a DVD.
Chris Wilson
news:3a1c411...@nntp1.ba.best.com...
> > However, less than a year after graduating college when I was working as
a
> > phone slave for a large software corporation
>
> What is a college graduate doing manning phones?
Paying my rent and my groceries. A college degree in the humanities doesn't
exactly open up a plethora of job opportunities.
> I have always argued that the big fans of socialism are the downwardly
> mobile, who seek a system where everyone is kept in their proper place
> with whip and gun. You have confirmed my expectations.
You can construct all the elaborate illusions that you like. As the
right-wing libertarians are so fond of saying, I just wish to be left alone.
Yet unlike them, I realize that the majority cannot be left alone under
capitalism.
You're confirming my expectation that you're a pathological idiot who sees
people who disagree with them as a predator who desires nothing more than
political power over others. Most normal people who I speak to know better,
including those who have opions more in line with yours than with mine.
> Yes, manning the phones sucks. Only trash do it, and they get treated
> like scum. They get packed into onto a tiny little bench, in a room
> with no windows looking on the outside world. No one has any respect
> for them.
How telling is it that you advocate a political system in which a large
number of people must be treated like trash if they wish to survive?
No, the phone slaves aren't trash -- they're human shields used by
capitalists and executives to deflect criticism away from themselves for
irresponsible and dishonest decisions that they make. Instead of taking
responsibility for their own actions and facing up to the abuse, the
capitalists have others do it for them. These capitalists are the trash.
The abusive customers who treat phone reps as though they aren't human in
order to satisfy their superficial desires are the trash.
> But it is not just those evil capitalists treating you like trash, it
> is EVERYONE treating you like trash.
>
> Here is a word of advice. Get off the phones. It is not those evil
> capitalists who have screwed up by giving you humiliating work that no
> one respects, it is you who have screwed up. For starters you should
> have studied something with more job potential than modern
> philosophers and english lit, but it is too late to fix that now.
I'm no longer at that corporate slave job. I work at a small internet
service provider now, and do work that requires more skill and technical
know-how than my previous job. The job is much better, although I'd still
rather not work at all. And my opinions haven't changed.
Your "blame the victim" attitude is quite repulsive. Capitalism requires
the majority of the population to engage in drudgery for a living, and you
refer to people as "trash" if they don't manage to be amoung the elite few
who manage to escape it. Fuck 'em, right? Piss on 'em. Collateral damage.
> Take a good look at your career path, and pretty soon you will be
> earning some decent money, and when you start earning some decent
> money you will then notice the income tax people taking an indecent
> share of it. Suddenly, anarcho capitalism will once again seem very
> appealing.
You don't really get it, do you? Even when a free-market libertarian,
making an assload of money was never my primary aim to begin with. That
distinguishes me from most right-wing libertarians, whose political
philosophy is incidental to their desire for material gain. My primary
concern is freedom. I would like to be free to live each day on my own
terms, and I would like other people to be free to do the same. Our current
political and economic system makes this impossible for most people.
Contrary to your delusional fantasies, the last thing I want is to
manipulate other people's lives -- I want to remove the conditions that make
it necessary for so many to submit to industrial toil.
I'm resourceful enough that I'll probably eventually be able to live without
paying rent or working a wage job. I'd like nothing more than to provide
for my needs on my own terms by growing my own food and building,
scavenging, or purchasing for cheap the possessions I need. (I'm working up
to it right now.) I'd like to be free to play guitar, visit with friends,
go mountain biking, and other things that don't involve subordinating myself
to another person's authority. I plan to be able to do this eventually, but
I know that capitalists will do everything they can to make this impossible
for most people. Hence, even when I manage to become financially
independent, I'll still be working toward the destruction of all
institutions that force people into submission. Otherwise, multinational
corporations will continue to evict self-sufficient peoples from their lands
(while sometimes slaughtering them), while doing their best to end any
self-sufficiency that communities in industrialized areas manage to create.
When I came out of university, I did not take regular job
> for over ten years. Why should you?
A good question. An even better question is: Why should *anybody*? Your
economic prosperity is currently being made possible by the fact that most
of those on this planet are *not* free throughout the course of their lives.
You only care about your own personal freedom, not that of others. No, its
not your responsibility to help others, but it is your responsibility to try
to refrain from contributing their exploitation. But you'll use other
people with impunity -- after all, they're "trash" who deserve to be
trampled on because they're too stupid, too lazy, or too unimaginative to be
considered anything other than a mere means to your ends. I'm not going to
accuse you of being a totalitarian because it is obviously not your primary
aim to exploit or enslave people -- however, you're more than willing to do
if it is instrumental to other ends you may be pursuing. No, you're not a
totalitarian, but a sociopath -- and an asshole.
Chris Wilson
> --
> James A. Donald:
> > > > You [Chris Wilson] are not an anarchist, you are a totalitarian.
>
> Chris Wilson
> > When I was a free-market libertarian, I observed you
> > indiscriminately calling every opponent of capitalism a
> > "totalitarian".
>
> My recollection of our disagreements differs from your own, just as my
> recollection of your former political position differs from your own.
>
> During the time that you erroneously thought yourself to be an
> free-market libertarian you wrote:
> : : Do anarcho-capitalists and left-anarchists really share
> : : any common ground at all?
>
> To which I replied:
> : : Yes: Some of them actually are anarchists. [...] many
> : : of them, possibly most of them, agree with us on most
> : : issues other than property rights
>
> During the time that you erroneously thought yourself to be an
> free-market libertarian you wrote:
Strange how I knew so many other libertarians at the time (many of whom you
are still acquainted with, I'm sure) who also considered my views to be that
of a free-market libertarian.
(Are you for real?)
> : : Left-anarchy, in my mind, is no better than any other
> : : brand of statism, as it intends to impinge upon human
> : : freedom.
>
> To which I replied:
> : : But is this a conscious intention? Do they actually look
> : : forward to using a baton to work over victims who dare
> : : not fight back as so many Trotskyists so plainly do?
> : :
> : : Some of them obviously do.
> : :
> : : Some of them engage in double think.
> : :
> : : Some of them have failed to think things through.
I stand corrected. Unlike myself, James has no social life apart from
Usenet, and has actually cataloged Usenet posts dating years back. Amazing.
(I don't believe the Deja archive extends that far back anymore.) Here,
James presents an instance in which he says that not all "left-anarchists"
are closet totalitarians. However, I don't recall ever seeing him enter a
discussion with one without prematurely accusing them of being totalitarians
on the basis of slim evidence. He has placed me in the "totalitarian"
category, even though he has read little more than my posts in which I
explain why I think capitalism is an imposition, and not simply the natural
consequence of "leaving people alone".
> Chris Wilson:
> > I thought that you were being unreasonable even then, but now that
> > I'm being called a "totalitarian" (even though I rejected
> > capitalism because I ceased believing that it was compatible with
> > liberty), I realize how truly out of touch with reality you really
> > are.
>
> Given the history of the twentieth century, those who reject
> capitalism are not in a strong position to condemn other people as
> being out of contact with reality.
The Soviet Union initiates programs of mass murder within its borders. The
United States initiates programs of mass murder outside of them. It's not
self-evident that one is better than the other. I of course oppose both of
them, whereas James is supportive of the latter.
Chris Wilson
> >that people create and use,
> >hence requiring people to subject themselves to the rule of others.
> >Corporations, like states, acquire control of people's native lands
through
> >force,
>
> corporations, like most people, acquire real estate by offering an
> attractive price to the previous owner. States, in contrast, are
> able to just take the land over the objections of its previous owner.
Are you serious? I never would have thought I would need to cite evidence
of of a claim that is common knowledge, but here's one example:
http://www.ran.org/ran_campaigns/beyond_oil/oxy/uwa_facts.html
And the U'wa are just *one* of *many* possible examples. But I'm sure that
no atrocity is enough to cause you or most other "libertarians" to refrain
from buying stock in companies like Occidental Petroleum. Who cares about a
bunch of "primitive savages", right? They're not important, right?
Constantinople
>> >that people create and use,
>> >hence requiring people to subject themselves to the rule of others.
>> >Corporations, like states, acquire control of people's native lands
>through
>> >force,
>>
>> corporations, like most people, acquire real estate by offering an
>> attractive price to the previous owner. States, in contrast, are
>> able to just take the land over the objections of its previous owner.
>
>Are you serious? I never would have thought I would need to cite evidence
>of of a claim that is common knowledge, but here's one example:
>
>http://www.ran.org/ran_campaigns/beyond_oil/oxy/uwa_facts.html
>
>And the U'wa are just *one* of *many* possible examples.
You are not thinking clearly. You were explaining why you called
corporations authoritarian institutions. When prompted for an
explanation of the term "authoritarian insitution", you said that
authoritarian institutions acquire people's land through force.
So, if you're right, then every corporation acquires people's
land through force. That's a really hard thing to prove, and as
I pointed out, it seems unlikely. Sure, we'll find a corporation
here or there that does something nasty. We can also find, say,
a Canadian who has, say, raped a pregnant woman. But it does
not follow from such a discovery that Canadians rape pregnant
women. Even if one quarter of all Canadians have raped pregnant
women, it's still incorrect to infer that Canadians are rapists.
Some Canadians are rapists, that's all. Some corporations are
"authoritarian institutions" by your definition (i.e., they've
taken land by force). It doesn't follow that corporations are
authoritarian institutions.
This is simple stuff. Discussions with you people never get
beyond this really basic stuff, and the reason is that you
don't think clearly. You witness a corporation raping a
pregnant woman, and immediately you want to lynch all the
corporations. You think about as clearly as a KKK member.
>But I'm sure that
>no atrocity is enough to cause you or most other "libertarians" to refrain
>from buying stock in companies like Occidental Petroleum. Who cares about a
>bunch of "primitive savages", right? They're not important, right?
Is that what you think? Boy, are you stupid.
Guru George
wrote:
[snip]
>The earliest prominent practitioners of capitalism were the
>Canaanites, who were for the most part stateless. The Icelandic
>economy was damn near stateless, and it was certainly capitalist, both
>in the sense that it was free market, and also in the sense that some
>people managed to acquire a lot more capital than others, and those
>that acquired a lot more capital tended to be on top.
>
[snip]
Side-line, but do you know anything about Harappan culture?
"In the early 1980s J G Shaffer proposed a fundamental reconsideration
of Harappan culture, suggesting that in the Indus valley a
technologically progressive, urban, and literate society was achieved
without recourse to hereditary elites, centralized politics, and war.
As an alternative Shaffer suggested 'that the similarity in style and
manufucture among objects of Mature Harappan material culture reflects
the existence of an extensive and intensive internal redistribution
and communication system ... throughout the vast region.' The
Harappans represented, in others words, an inland version of the
[typically maritime] mercantile state - an intricate net of entrepots
distributing mass-produced goods in return for produce from an
agricultural substrate without primary reliance on territorial control
or coercion."
(Robert L O'Connell, "Ride of the Second Horseman: The Birth and Death
of War", OUP 1995, p220)
It would be truly ironic if "the most extensive Old World Bronze Age
civilisation, sprawling over an area presently estimated at around a
half million miles, or roughly ten times the size of other ancient
river valley societies" [ibid], which flourished for roughly 500 years
between 2300 BCE and 1750 BCE, as the culmination of a gradual
development out of an already fairly sophisticated indigenous cultural
base, was basically capitalist, and seemingly damn near
anarcho-capitalist (no recourse to "centralized politics") at that!
(Its end, relatively sudden as it was, is seemingly still mysterious,
but it probably wasn't the Aryan Indo-Europeans that destroyed
Harappan culture as once thought (they came much later); it may have
been a combination of factors, including disease, natural disaster or
ecological causes, or maybe some earlier wave(s) of invasion by
nomadic warriors than the Aryan. Weapons found have been mostly
slings and bludgeons of various kinds, weapons suitable for
police-style work and basic self-defence, but not much use for mass
slaughter.)
- Guru George
+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+
"Of course, any people always have the government they
deserve, or the God they deserve. It seems incredible
that people could believe that God would speak from a
high mountain only to tell them "no-nos". But many did,
and some still do.
Original sin, no.
Original stupidity, yes."
- Marcelo Ramos Motta,
from Class C commentary to Liber LXV
+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
James A. Donald
rOn Thu, 23 Nov 2000 02:08:45 +0000, Guru George
<gurug...@alphanor.dircon.co.uk> wrote:
> Side-line, but do you know anything about Harappan culture?
>
> "In the early 1980s J G Shaffer proposed a fundamental
> reconsideration of Harappan culture, suggesting that in the Indus
> valley a technologically progressive, urban, and literate society
> was achieved without recourse to hereditary elites, centralized
> politics, and war.
Typical golden age myth.
So little is known about the Harappans, that one can make up any story
one pleases, from golden age socialism to golden age capitalism. But
what little evidence there is suggests that their social order was
depressingly similar to the India of the Rajputs that the British
colonialists encountered three thousand years later.
> As an alternative Shaffer suggested 'that the similarity in style and
> manufucture among objects of Mature Harappan material culture reflects
> the existence of an extensive and intensive internal redistribution
> and communication system ... throughout the vast region.' The
> Harappans represented, in others words, an inland version of the
> [typically maritime] mercantile state - an intricate net of entrepots
> distributing mass-produced goods in return for produce from an
> agricultural substrate without primary reliance on territorial control
> or coercion."
The Harappan culture suffered from highly intrusive town planning.
Not enough is known about them to accurately assess the level of
inequality or war. Their cities were walled, which indicates they had
recourse to war. Uniform seals were used in widely separated cities,
which suggest a common authority ruling over all Harappan cities. The
center of each major city contained a fortified zone, presumably
fortified AGAINST the rest of the inhabitants of the city, which would
suggest some serious social tension. We see outer walls presumably
protecting against external enemies, and inner walls presumably
protecting a small elite against internal enemies.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
PLCQpijyBcHIqDMI64Abpix2gbIGzN2tY2m7rc2+
4L6Jq+HyK9qsnSf1FAH6obC+R/X2Vr/uWK+f5ic9X
James A. Donald
> still have him killfiled) and found three whopping errors of fact
> and argument -- these being all three of the facts and arguments he
> presented.
>
> Then on to Emma Goldman:
James A. Donald:
>> Emma Goldman's views evolved through time. Her early works grew
>> out of crude and simplistic class war theory. At that time she did
>> not really understand the US, or the American working class. They
>> were alien to her, and she grotesquely misread events and people.
>> She improved with time, and in her last works was a firm fan of
>> free trade, and somewhat vaguely and unenthusiastically accepted
>> the legitimacy of property rights in the means of production.
> Jimmy obviously has never read any of the late works of Emma
> Goldman, [...]
>
> As for being a "firm fan of free trade", Goldman never had a
> kind word to say for it.
I am unsurprised to find that I am far more familiar with works of
socialist anarchists than Dan Clore, who purports to be a socialist
anarchist, but who seems to have only read them as described by
totalitarians, and not read them in the original.
In "was my life worth living", by Emma Goldman, the key ideological
section is her indictment of government. She starts off her
indictment of governments as follows:
: : Every individual is hampered by it. It exacts taxes from production. It creates tariffs, which prevent free exchange.
In this indictment, which goes on for a page or so, she says nothing I
would not say, nothing that I have not said many times before. Among
the things she conspicuously fails criticize in her indictment of
government is "enforces property rights in the means of production".
Nor does she describe a businessman's authority as government, nor
condemn honestly gained wealth, either in the indictment, or in the
rest of the article.
Overall, in article as a whole, she is clearly socialist leaning,
clearly not James A. Donald, but she says nothing that is outright
socialist, nothing explicitly in favor of smashing private property
rights in the means of production. In her indictment of government,
which seems to me the key section of her article, she might as well
have been James A. Donald. Had I plagiarized that section and posted
it as my own, no one would have been very surprised.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
jr22siN60CleCpdKwdLtdZNQsYfkh7cXQ4Do3nIR
4g5a4Q7YEa11CmmHb1aG/TSJ9q2ZhutbPi9bJE/XP
James A. Donald
On Wed, 22 Nov 2000 18:54:56 -0800, "Chris Wilson"
<chrs...@whoknows.net> wrote:
> No, the phone slaves aren't trash -- they're human shields used by
> capitalists and executives to deflect criticism away from themselves for
> irresponsible and dishonest decisions that they make. Instead of taking
> responsibility for their own actions and facing up to the abuse, the
> capitalists have others do it for them. These capitalists are the trash.
> The abusive customers who treat phone reps as though they aren't human in
> order to satisfy their superficial desires are the trash.
Phone reps are subhuman. You have wonderfully confirmed my
expectations. You were not merely manning the phones, which is a
perfectly honorable job that someone must do, you were a phone rep.
> You don't really get it, do you? Even when a free-market libertarian,
> making an assload of money was never my primary aim to begin with. That
> distinguishes me from most right-wing libertarians, whose political
> philosophy is incidental to their desire for material gain. My primary
If money was unimportant to you then why take a morally repugnant job
such as phone rep, when you could have had low paid but honorable jobs
such as mowing lawns, painting houses, or whatever? It is not the
capitalists who made you a contemptible person. You had a choice, and
you chose, of your own will, to take a contemptible job.
Then you came to feel bad about it, and blamed capitalists for making
you do things that made so many people despise you. But they did not
make you do it. You did it. You chose to do it. The fact that you
took the job in the first place shows that the flaw is in yourself,
not capitalism. In socialism you would have been just as ready to do
despicable things, and there would have been some other despicable
tasks to do that most would not be willing to stoop to, and you would
have come to be just as despised.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
DCM7kl9R3tA5B9bDhcnR0kI5HacmnxzpdpnIDj4x
4iwn95FBR6XKESl/BzjFEtOTVHy1CN4xGDCxfXWCJ
James A. Donald
> > corporations, like most people, acquire real estate by offering an
> > attractive price to the previous owner. States, in contrast, are
> > able to just take the land over the objections of its previous owner.
On Wed, 22 Nov 2000 19:30:42 -0800, "Chris Wilson"
<chrs...@whoknows.net> wrote:
> Are you serious? I never would have thought I would need to cite evidence
> of of a claim that is common knowledge, but here's one example:
>
> http://www.ran.org/ran_campaigns/beyond_oil/oxy/uwa_facts.html
The oil pipeline is alleged to run NEAR uwa land.
Thus while the oil company may have done all sorts of bad stuff, and
caused substantial pollution, it certainly did not confiscate one inch
of uwa land.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
PqISa78E/dgNMN0sbrHZ1tITzNPkQG1HouVtuGn3
4a9cJL2w6/I5ybL46nG2RYZbnOltmiSs9Cm6pCn44
James A. Donald
On Wed, 22 Nov 2000 19:12:12 -0800, "Chris Wilson"
<chrs...@whoknows.net> wrote:
> The Soviet Union initiates programs of mass murder within its borders. The
> United States initiates programs of mass murder outside of them.
As always, the socialist "anarchist" always comes up with a
rationalization for the crimes of the Soviet Union.
No, the US is not and never was morally equivalent to the Soviet
Union, and anyone who makes that argument reveals his true colors,
colors that showed even in the days when you were kidding others, and
perhaps even yourself, than you were a libertarian.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
frqtONafStEen3KLCDRFfEBMhqRFjErIXcNPB84Y
4b5wbMZK3XHEQZuWtKI2sr64asVbR9CYrwmmis0tc
Guru George
wrote:
> --
Interesting. I'll have to investigate this further. O'Connell says:
"Certain outlying Harappan sites, such as those in the
Kutch-Saurasthtra region, were fortified and appear to have served as
military outposts. As noted, however, settlements in the heartland
did not seem to find circumvallation necessary." I think by the time
Alexander found the area thickly sown with forts, the Harappan culture
was long gone.
He says the original thesis of Harappa as a "river-based despotism,
perhaps one heavily influenced by Mesopotamia" put forward by the
archaeological mainstream after John Marshall's original excavations
of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in the 1920s has gradually been undermined
by the accumulation of more evidence since then. (e.g., what were
once thought of as "citadels" in the centres are now thought to have
been some kind of grain stores.) According to O'Connell, the evidence
now seems to point to something like the uniform culture, but fairly
loose type of social organisation, of a maritime mercantile empire
like Crete or Phoenicia, but inland.
Dr Aidan Rankin
outdated
60s/70s ideas of ‘permissiveness’ along with the politically correct
feminazi agenda of
attacking ‘patriarchy’.
It is surely clear from the experience of the last 30 years that the
breakdown of the
‘patriarchal’ family has increased violence in society and caused the
breakdown of
voluntary social responsibility and shared values of the kind that make
self-regulation
possible. The breakdown of family has also greatly increased the power of
the state
and its involvement in the lives of individuals.
Also, what could be more authoritarian than the ‘politically correct’
agendas of
feminism, multiculturalism and gay rights - I speak as a homosexual myself,
but one
who despises the gay movement and whose friends are mostly ‘straight’ men.
I believe
that only a stable society can have the confidence to be a tolerant one, and
that these
movements undermine tolerance, hurt the people they are supposed to ‘help’
and are
highly censorious, trying to change the way ordinary working people speak,
act and
think. The attack on ‘patriarchy’ increases female poverty and leads to a
crisis of
identity for many young males ‘gay’ or ‘straight’) depriving them of good
role models.
This does not point in the direction of anarchism, or even ‘liberal’
tolerance - it is more
likely to lead to fascism than anything else.
Aidan Rankin
Yorkshire, England
Mark Roddy
wrote:
> --
Dan was right. I let you off too easily. What I wonder about is why
you think that in a world where so much information is so readily
available to all, you persist in distortions and lies. Your claim that
Emma Goldman, the woman who spoke directly to me 30 years ago through
her written essays convincing me of the correctness of the anarchist
perspective, wrote an essay at the end of her life, titled "Was My
Life Worth Living" in which she renounced her belief in socialist
anarchism, an essay which one would have to conclude therefore was
asnwering "no", is an astounding act of propoganda on your part, it is
also patently false.
First, the source itsef, which jimmy ommitted, as to have included it
would of course allow the reader to see through his nonsense.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Essays/lifework.html
Now lets look at how a propagandist works to weave fiction from fact.
Jimmy says:
>In "was my life worth living", by Emma Goldman, the key ideological
>section is her indictment of government. She starts off her
>indictment of governments as follows:
>
>: : Every individual is hampered by it. It exacts taxes from production. It creates tariffs, which prevent free exchange.
Emma actually said:
"I have often been asked why I maintained such a non-compromising
antagonism to government and in what way I have found myself oppressed
by it. In my opinion every individual is hampered by it. It exacts
taxes from production. It creates tariffs, which prevent free
exchange. It stands ever for the status quo and traditional conduct
and belief. It comes into private lives and into most intimate
personal relations, enabling the superstitious, puritanical, and
distorted ones to impose their ignorant prejudice and moral servitudes
upon the sensitive, the imaginative, and the free spirits. Government
does this by its divorce laws, its moral censorships, and by a
thousand petty persecutions of those who are too honest to wear the
moral mask of respectability. In addition, government protects the
strong at the expense of the weak, provides courts and laws which the
rich may scorn and the poor must obey. It enables the predatory rich
to make wars to provide foreign markets for the favored ones, with
prosperity for the rulers and wholesale death for the ruled. However,
it is not only government in the sense of the state which is
destructive of every individual value and quality. It is the whole
complex of authority and institutional domination which strangles
life. It is the superstition, myth, pretense, evasions, and
subservience which support authority and institutional domination. It
is the reverence for these institutions instilled in the school, the
church and the home in order that man may believe and obey without
protest. Such a process of devitalizing and distorting personalities
of the individual and of whole communities may have been a part of
historical evolution; but it should be strenuously combated by every
honest and independent mind in an age which has any pretense to
enlightenment."
What could dear Emma have meant by "In addition, government protects
the strong at the expense of the weak, provides courts and laws which
the rich may scorn and the poor must obey. It enables the predatory
rich to make wars to provide foreign markets for the favored ones,
with prosperity for the rulers and wholesale death for the ruled.
However, it is not only government in the sense of the state which is
destructive of every individual value and quality. It is the whole
complex of authority and institutional domination which strangles
life."
>Overall, in article as a whole, she is clearly socialist leaning,
>clearly not James A. Donald, but she says nothing that is outright
>socialist, nothing explicitly in favor of smashing private property
>rights in the means of production. In her indictment of government,
>which seems to me the key section of her article, she might as well
>have been James A. Donald. Had I plagiarized that section and posted
>it as my own, no one would have been very surprised.
Jimmy would have us believe that 'government' to Emma meant simply the
state, that she was somehow at the end of her life transformed into
that peculiar half-anarchist, the anarcho-capitalist, who sees only
the de jure state as the problem, rather than the whole system of
domination. But clearly she meant something much more, and we don't
have to read anything into this passage as it says so quite clearly,
which is why jimmy could not quote it in its entirety but instead had
to extract a sentence that he could then distort for his own purposes.
Emma speaks more eloquently:
"Of course those steeped in the present find it impossible to realize
that gain as an incentive could be replaced by another force that
would motivate people to give the best that is in them. To be sure,
profit and gain are strong factors in our present system. They have to
be. Even the rich feel a sense of insecurity. That is, they want to
protect what they have and to strengthen themselves. The gain and
profit motives, however, are tied up with more fundamental motives.
When a man provides himself with clothes and shelter, if he is the
money-maker type, he continues to work to establish his status--to
give himself prestige of the sort admired in the eyes of his
fellow-men. Under different and more just conditions of life these
more fundamental motives could be put to special uses, and the profit
motive, which is only their manifestation, will pass away. Even to-day
the scientist, inventor, poet, and artist are not primarily moved by
the consideration of gain or profit. The urge to create is the first
and most impelling force in their lives. If this urge is lacking in
the mass of workers it is not at all surprising, for their occupation
is deadly routine. Without any relation to their lives or needs, their
work is done in the most appalling surroundings, at the behest of
those who have the power of life and death over the masses. Why then
should they be impelled to give of themselves more than is absolutely
necessary to eke out their miserable existence?"
Socialist leanings? Emma never changed her mind about anarchism. So
when jimmy said "she says nothing I would not say, nothing that I have
not said many times before" my understanding is that either he is a
lying propagandist for his cause or that he has joined us on the left
in our opposition to the oppression of both the institution of the
state and the political-economic order of capitalism enforced by the
state.
G*rd*n
| I am very surprised by some of the respondents to this post, who express
| outdated
| 60s/70s ideas of "permissiveness" along with the politically correct
| feminazi agenda of attacking "patriarchy".
|
| It is surely clear from the experience of the last 30 years that the
| breakdown of the
| "patriarchal" family has increased violence in society and caused the
| breakdown of
| voluntary social responsibility and shared values of the kind that make
| self-regulation
| possible. The breakdown of family has also greatly increased the power of
| the state
| and its involvement in the lives of individuals.
In the United States, at least, we can't say that the last 30
years have seen increased violence, if by violence we mean
amateur violence. In the last several years, the rates of
violent crime, other than that practiced by government
agents, have been in sharp decline.
However, even if this were not the case, to say positively
that a weakening of male authority caused some kind of problem
would make it necessary to define and quantify male authority.
I do not observe this being done here; there's merely a pass
at literary or cultural criticism. Surely one would want to
compare the significant absence of male authority brought
about by World War II with that which occurred in the '60s
and the '70s, for example -- if indeed there was an
objectively identifiable absence of male authority in the
second case.
In any case, it seems peculiar to see the State and the Family
opposed. Even in the ancient world, the Family was recognized
as the basic building block of the State. The word _family_
itself comes from _famulus_, meaning "household slave"; the
Family was the lowest level of the slavery system. Even today,
states take care to define and regulate the Family, although
they have become somewhat more casual about it as capitalism
has replaced feudalism and classical slavery as methods or
organizing and disciplining the people.
However, it is true that the principles of liberalism --
individualism, freedom within legal regulation, privacy,
private property, self-actualization, opportunity, equality
before the law -- all conduce to the erosion of the older
forms of authority, including those of the Family. As Marx
noted in a famous passage from _The_Communist_Manifesto_,
... Constant
revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social
conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the
bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen
relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and
opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before
they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is
profaned....
But these changes, as we see from history, need not lead
directly to either vernacular or State violence; they can also
flow back, for better or worse, into the dynamic progress of
capitalism and its works.
David Friedman
_Warfare Before Civilization_ (I forget the author). One of the points
made at the beginning is that there is, or at least was, a strong
prejudice among archaeologists in favor of believing that primitive
people were peaceful. The author provides extensive evidence that, for
the most part, they were not.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
Guru George
wrote:
It's an interesting subject. I think it depends on how far back you
go, and what counts as "primitive", of course. I think there are
probably certain circumstances that incline (but do not necessitate)
us to violence, and I also believe there have been times in the past
when we have been more violent, as a whole, than we are now. But I
think there have also been times when we have been _more_ peaceful
than we are now. Judging from its remains, especially (for me) its
art, I think the Late Neolithic was probably the best time we had
before now, and is the source of the myth of the "Golden Age".
BTW, what do you think of these statistics:-
http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/discus/html/messages/62/73.html?970506661
(from a website on the Chagnon/Tierney controversy:
http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/chagnon.html )
Do these stats tend to show that we are wrong to think of states as
the biggest killers? I mean how would this stack up against Rummel's
evidence about democide? (So many questions - what's "due to
warfare", for example?)
TiTo
<chrs...@whoknows.net> maravilló a la audiencia con su gran sabidurÃa
al emitir este trascendental pronunciamiento:
>James A. Donald <jam...@echeque.com> wrote in message
>news:3a1c411...@nntp1.ba.best.com...
>> > However, less than a year after graduating college when I was working as
>a
>> > phone slave for a large software corporation
>>
>> What is a college graduate doing manning phones?
>
>Paying my rent and my groceries. A college degree in the humanities doesn't
>exactly open up a plethora of job opportunities.
Do not take Donald seriously. You are wasting your time arguing with
him. It seems that when he was a Maoist some guys abused him very
badly and then he developed this pathological hatred for all things
left. Just an advice.
TiTo
James A. Donald
On Thu, 23 Nov 2000 09:38:38 -0500, Mark Roddy
<ma...@wattanuck.mv.com> wrote:
> What I wonder about is why
> you think that in a world where so much information is so readily
> available to all, you persist in distortions and lies. Your claim that
> Emma Goldman, the woman who spoke directly to me 30 years ago through
> her written essays convincing me of the correctness of the anarchist
> perspective, wrote an essay at the end of her life, titled "Was My
> Life Worth Living" in which she renounced her belief in socialist
> anarchism
Not what I said.
What I said was that in the end her concept and ideal of anarchy
became conspicuously less socialist than it was in her early days, in
that she overtly supported free trade and failed to criticize private
property in the means of production, and even in her early days she
was not nearly as socialist as today's "anarcho socialists"
There were never any anarcho socialist who were as socialist as
today's "anarcho" socialists. Emma Goldman in her early days came
fairly close, but in her later days not very close at all.
James A. Donald:
> > In "was my life worth living", by Emma Goldman, the key
> > ideological section is her indictment of government. She starts
> > off her indictment of governments as follows:
> >
> > : : Every individual is hampered by it. It exacts taxes
> > : : from production. It creates tariffs, which prevent
> > : : free exchange.
Mark Roddy
And this is different in what way? Every criticism of government that
Emma made in the above, I have also made, and many of those criticisms
you guys have failed to make.
In particular you commies unfailingly depict existent government as
protecting the poor in the US against the rich the US, an argument
where I attack you again and again, arguing that it does the reverse.
I see no mention of "labor value" "capital", and all the rest of your
commie ideology, stuff that was never all that prominent even in the
early Goldman.
> What could dear Emma have meant by "In addition, government protects
> the strong at the expense of the weak, provides courts and laws which
> the rich may scorn and the poor must obey.
Probably much the same as when I said the same things.
Whatever she meant, she did not mean private property rights in the
means of production.
James A. Donald:
> > Overall, in article as a whole, she is clearly socialist leaning,
> > clearly not James A. Donald, but she says nothing that is outright
> > socialist, nothing explicitly in favor of smashing private
> > property rights in the means of production. In her indictment of
> > government, which seems to me the key section of her article, she
> > might as well have been James A. Donald. Had I plagiarized that
> > section and posted it as my own, no one would have been very
> > surprised.
On Thu, 23 Nov 2000 09:38:38 -0500, Mark Roddy
> Jimmy would have us believe that 'government' to Emma meant simply
> the state,
That is what she said in her indictment. All the crimes she
attributes to "government in the sense of the state" are explicitly
actions that today are monopolized by what anarcho capitalists call
the state -- laws, courts, wars, taxes, prisons.
She also went on to indict government in the sense of internalized
attitudes and feelings, the internalization of authority, the
policeman inside. But nowhere in this article does she depict
businessmen, the authority of an employer, as government.
The idea of reinterpreting business as government, and government as
"the people", was quite alien to anarchists, alien to all anarchists,
until after the debacle in Catalonia. When Emma Goldman attacked
capitalists, she called them capitalists, not government, as did all
anarcho socialists before 1938.
Before 1938 all anarchists, when they said the government, meant the
government.
After 1938, totalitarians, in order to call themselves anarchists,
reinterpreted the old socialist anarchists as totalitarians, by
forcing new and strange meanings onto their plain words.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
b34sS+LS9T04rc/MS7vfXj1AMuTrEkSiE+4LpmG1
4dzVmg2LN7BMPNrFOVE9yk6e5aYpkZ9ZmjjpbNTE9
James A. Donald
On Thu, 23 Nov 2000 11:39:17 +0000, Guru George
<gurug...@alphanor.dircon.co.uk> wrote:
> He says the original thesis of Harappa as a "river-based despotism,
> perhaps one heavily influenced by Mesopotamia" put forward by the
> archaeological mainstream after John Marshall's original excavations
> of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in the 1920s has gradually been undermined
> by the accumulation of more evidence since then. (e.g., what were
> once thought of as "citadels" in the centres are now thought to have
> been some kind of grain stores.) According to O'Connell, the evidence
> now seems to point to something like the uniform culture, but fairly
> loose type of social organisation, of a maritime mercantile empire
> like Crete or Phoenicia, but inland.
Quite possibly. Perhaps the interpretation I gave is out of date.
But there is not much that can be determined from ruins with few
movable goods, and no writings.
It may well be true that the center of each city was a granary, but if
grain is stored at a single depot in the city, and not stored by
individual peasants and merchants, that looks like a centralized
regime to me, and one that would frequently need to defend itself
against the peasants. The interpretation as citadel, and the
interpretation as granary, are not mutually exclusive. If the granary
represents extortion from the peasants, you need to store the grain in
a citadel.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
ezWOilpP8jftkipkUA8FES9pBi2o71Oi6JLZfxIe
4aEPmgR13ZRbAR1N/YgitOtDHRwKsHA8qb/yLS4gZ
James A. Donald
On Thu, 23 Nov 2000 23:39:36 +0000, Guru George
<gurug...@alphanor.dircon.co.uk> wrote:
> It's an interesting subject. I think it depends on how far back you
> go, and what counts as "primitive", of course. I think there are
> probably certain circumstances that incline (but do not necessitate)
> us to violence, and I also believe there have been times in the past
> when we have been more violent, as a whole, than we are now. But I
> think there have also been times when we have been _more_ peaceful
> than we are now. Judging from its remains, especially (for me) its
> art, I think the Late Neolithic was probably the best time we had
> before now, and is the source of the myth of the "Golden Age".
My interpretation of the evidence, is that places differed and times
differed: That a lot of people during the late Neolithic were slaves
of god kings engaged in endless warfare against each other, and a lot
live freely and peacefully.
>http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/discus/html/messages/62/73.html?970506661
The death rate from warfare among Australian aborigines was close to
zero.
Most primitive tribes believe in witchcraft, and do a lot of fighting
for reasons that more sophisticated people find irrational. It is
difficult to separate warfare caused by backwardness, from warfare
supposedly caused by lack of a state apparatus. There is some
evidence of radical changes in the rate of violent death caused by
changes in belief concerning evidence of guilt, or changes in
arrangements for vengeance. Primitive people tend to slip between
Hobbesian and Lockean anarchy. Both are within the human potential.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
YKd6hrPMhYg/5QhNJ5eGoh+GZX5MDUCJ2ObGpC0s
4s3nNGBHypm8tN2qOCHrh2IYJvamIn5WVo0NpA30d
Mark Roddy
wrote:
[snip]
>
>Whatever she meant, she did not mean private property rights in the
>means of production.
>
>James A. Donald:
>> > Overall, in article as a whole, she is clearly socialist leaning,
>> > clearly not James A. Donald, but she says nothing that is outright
>> > socialist, nothing explicitly in favor of smashing private
>> > property rights in the means of production. In her indictment of
>> > government, which seems to me the key section of her article, she
>> > might as well have been James A. Donald. Had I plagiarized that
>> > section and posted it as my own, no one would have been very
>> > surprised.
>
>On Thu, 23 Nov 2000 09:38:38 -0500, Mark Roddy
>> Jimmy would have us believe that 'government' to Emma meant simply
>> the state,
>
>That is what she said in her indictment. All the crimes she
>attributes to "government in the sense of the state" are explicitly
>actions that today are monopolized by what anarcho capitalists call
>the state -- laws, courts, wars, taxes, prisons.
>
The paragraph Jimmy claims only attacks government contains the
following passage:
Emma:
> "However, it is not only government in the sense
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> of the state which is destructive of every individual value and
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> quality. It is the whole complex of authority and institutional
> domination which strangles life. It is the superstition, myth,
> pretense, evasions, and subservience which support authority and
> institutional domination. It is the reverence for these institutions
> instilled in the school, the church and the home in order that man
> may believe and obey without protest. Such a process of devitalizing
> and distorting personalities of the individual and of whole
> communities may have been a part of historical evolution; but it
> should be strenuously combated by every honest and independent mind
> in an age which has any pretense to enlightenment."
Jimmy either can't read or can't comprehend what he reads, or is so
blinded by his deep ideological fervor that he miscomprehends what he
reads, or he is a lying propagandist for his cause. I have long given
up trying to understand why he is so dense.
>She also went on to indict government in the sense of internalized
>attitudes and feelings, the internalization of authority, the
>policeman inside. But nowhere in this article does she depict
>businessmen, the authority of an employer, as government.
>
Really? So the following sections that address the stultifying effects
of capitalist economic organizations are somehow disconnected from the
above passage where she clearly states that by 'government' she does
not mean the de jure institution of the state alone, but the whole
fabric of institutional domination?
Emma again - the exact same passage I quoted the last time. What a
tedious bore you are jimmy.
>"Of course those steeped in the present find it impossible to realize
>that gain as an incentive could be replaced by another force that
>would motivate people to give the best that is in them. To be sure,
>profit and gain are strong factors in our present system. They have to
>be. Even the rich feel a sense of insecurity. That is, they want to
>protect what they have and to strengthen themselves. The gain and
>profit motives, however, are tied up with more fundamental motives.
>When a man provides himself with clothes and shelter, if he is the
>money-maker type, he continues to work to establish his status--to
>give himself prestige of the sort admired in the eyes of his
>fellow-men. Under different and more just conditions of life these
>more fundamental motives could be put to special uses, and the profit
>motive, which is only their manifestation, will pass away. Even to-day
>the scientist, inventor, poet, and artist are not primarily moved by
>the consideration of gain or profit. The urge to create is the first
>and most impelling force in their lives. If this urge is lacking in
>the mass of workers it is not at all surprising, for their occupation
>is deadly routine. Without any relation to their lives or needs, their
>work is done in the most appalling surroundings, at the behest of
>those who have the power of life and death over the masses. Why then
>should they be impelled to give of themselves more than is absolutely
>necessary to eke out their miserable existence?"
What could she be talking about Jimmy? Is it right over your head
because she declines to use marxist rhetoric?
And Emma, thank you once again for speaking so eloquently from across
time and space.
Constantinople
>
>On Fri, 24 Nov 2000 04:02:48 GMT, jam...@echeque.com (James A. Donald)
>wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>>
>>Whatever she meant, she did not mean private property rights in the
>>means of production.
>>
>>James A. Donald:
>>> > Overall, in article as a whole, she is clearly socialist leaning,
>>> > clearly not James A. Donald, but she says nothing that is outright
>>> > socialist, nothing explicitly in favor of smashing private
>>> > property rights in the means of production. In her indictment of
>>> > government, which seems to me the key section of her article, she
>>> > might as well have been James A. Donald. Had I plagiarized that
>>> > section and posted it as my own, no one would have been very
>>> > surprised.
>>
>>On Thu, 23 Nov 2000 09:38:38 -0500, Mark Roddy
>>> Jimmy would have us believe that 'government' to Emma meant simply
>>> the state,
>>
>>That is what she said in her indictment. All the crimes she
>>attributes to "government in the sense of the state" are explicitly
>>actions that today are monopolized by what anarcho capitalists call
>>the state -- laws, courts, wars, taxes, prisons.
>>
>
>following passage:
>
>Emma:
>> of the state which is destructive of every individual value and
>> quality. It is the whole complex of authority and institutional
>> domination which strangles life. It is the superstition, myth,
>> pretense, evasions, and subservience which support authority and
>> institutional domination. It is the reverence for these institutions
>> instilled in the school, the church and the home in order that man
>> may believe and obey without protest. Such a process of devitalizing
>> and distorting personalities of the individual and of whole
>> communities may have been a part of historical evolution; but it
>> should be strenuously combated by every honest and independent mind
>> in an age which has any pretense to enlightenment."
>
>blinded by his deep ideological fervor that he miscomprehends what he
>reads, or he is a lying propagandist for his cause. I have long given
>up trying to understand why he is so dense.
Actually
1) that passage doesn't describe crimes (Emma says "may have been
a part of historical evolution", not crimes).
2) James describes the above passage by Emma briefly in this
following passage, so he didn't miss it:
>>She also went on to indict government in the sense of internalized
>>attitudes and feelings, the internalization of authority, the
>>policeman inside. But nowhere in this article does she depict
>>businessmen, the authority of an employer, as government.
>>
>
>Really? So the following sections that address the stultifying effects
>of capitalist economic organizations are somehow disconnected from the
>above passage where she clearly states that by 'government' she does
>not mean the de jure institution of the state alone, but the whole
>fabric of institutional domination?
Actually, yes, it is separate. The above passage is about reverance
for institutions. The passage below is not about reverance at all,
it's about a worker's lack of interest in his job.
>Emma again - the exact same passage I quoted the last time. What a
>tedious bore you are jimmy.
>
>>"Of course those steeped in the present find it impossible to realize
>>that gain as an incentive could be replaced by another force that
>>would motivate people to give the best that is in them. To be sure,
>>profit and gain are strong factors in our present system. They have to
>>be. Even the rich feel a sense of insecurity. That is, they want to
>>protect what they have and to strengthen themselves. The gain and
>>profit motives, however, are tied up with more fundamental motives.
>>When a man provides himself with clothes and shelter, if he is the
>>money-maker type, he continues to work to establish his status--to
>>give himself prestige of the sort admired in the eyes of his
>>fellow-men. Under different and more just conditions of life these
>>more fundamental motives could be put to special uses, and the profit
>>motive, which is only their manifestation, will pass away. Even to-day
>>the scientist, inventor, poet, and artist are not primarily moved by
>>the consideration of gain or profit. The urge to create is the first
>>and most impelling force in their lives. If this urge is lacking in
>>the mass of workers it is not at all surprising, for their occupation
>>is deadly routine. Without any relation to their lives or needs, their
>>work is done in the most appalling surroundings, at the behest of
>>those who have the power of life and death over the masses. Why then
>>should they be impelled to give of themselves more than is absolutely
>>necessary to eke out their miserable existence?"
>
>What could she be talking about Jimmy? Is it right over your head
>because she declines to use marxist rhetoric?
>
>And Emma, thank you once again for speaking so eloquently from across
>time and space.
>
>
>
>Mark Roddy
>
>Lets ignore the fact that the Haitian worker
>toils long hours for miserable wages and barely
>survives. Instead lets focus on access to techno-junk,
>the detritus of capitalist over production, and
>pronounce the ordinary people of this planet in this
>day and age where capitalism has triumphed across
>the globe, better off than kings because
>Louis XIV didn't have a DVD.
--
James A. Donald
James A. Donald:
> > There were never any anarcho socialist who were as socialist as
> > today's "anarcho" socialists. Emma Goldman in her early days came
> > fairly close, but in her later days not very close at all.
> >
> >
> > [...] nowhere in this article does she depict businessmen, the
> > authority of an employer, as government.
Mark Roddy:
> Really? So the following sections that address the stultifying
> effects of capitalist economic organizations are somehow
> disconnected from the above passage where she clearly states that by
> 'government' she does not mean the de jure institution of the state
> alone, but the whole fabric of institutional domination?
You sound like one of those Christians who find prophesies about the
twentieth century in biblical texts, you are stitching together
different bits, and heavily interpreting the text. The key point is
that in her indictment of government, she indicts taxes, tariffs,
unequal enforcement of the laws, censorship, and laws against
victimless crimes, but does not indict enforcement of property rights
in the means of production. You lot have never indicted tariffs,
rarely indict taxes or unequal enforcement of the law, and continually
indict enforcement of property rights in the means of production.
In those following paragraphs she depicts the pursuit of profit as
something in people's hearts, which should diminish as their hearts
improve.
This is a somewhat different from the early Goldman, and radically
different from today's "anarcho" socialists.
Mark Roddy:
> Emma again - the exact same passage I quoted the last time. What a
> tedious bore you are jimmy.
> : : "Of course those steeped in the present find it
> What could she be talking about Jimmy? Is it right over your head
> because she declines to use marxist rhetoric?
She also declines to talk about the masses seizing the means of
production. Yes, she is pretty damned socialist But she is not as
socialist as she was in her youth, and even in her youth, not as
socialist as you lot.
But once again, I repeat, the key point is that unlike you lot, in
her indictment of government, she indicts taxes, tariffs, unequal
enforcement of the laws, censorship, and laws against victimless
crimes, and unlike you lot does not indict enforcement of property
rights in the means of production.
After 1938 anarcho socialism collapsed and died. What remains is not
anarcho socialism, but the same old socialism that we saw during the
twentieth century, borrowing words from dead movements to cover up the
bloodstains.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
mI8rTzic+VwjqROUw4dgiWkVuJ3jRlSUvGrgRKxr
4qqaJGouNen5Z1NJ2t6B8wezHOdQ2Xjos9zBmFHjH
Mark Roddy
<constan...@my-deja.com> spumed:
>In article <rkus1tkdp71r8v4gq...@4ax.com>, Mark says...
>>
>>On Fri, 24 Nov 2000 04:02:48 GMT, jam...@echeque.com (James A. Donald)
>>wrote:
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>>
>>>Whatever she meant, she did not mean private property rights in the
>>>means of production.
>>>
>>>James A. Donald:
>>>> > Overall, in article as a whole, she is clearly socialist leaning,
>>>> > clearly not James A. Donald, but she says nothing that is outright
>>>> > socialist, nothing explicitly in favor of smashing private
>>>> > property rights in the means of production. In her indictment of
>>>> > government, which seems to me the key section of her article, she
>>>> > might as well have been James A. Donald. Had I plagiarized that
>>>> > section and posted it as my own, no one would have been very
>>>> > surprised.
>>>
>>>On Thu, 23 Nov 2000 09:38:38 -0500, Mark Roddy
>>>> Jimmy would have us believe that 'government' to Emma meant simply
>>>> the state,
>>>
>>>That is what she said in her indictment. All the crimes she
>>>attributes to "government in the sense of the state" are explicitly
>>>actions that today are monopolized by what anarcho capitalists call
>>>the state -- laws, courts, wars, taxes, prisons.
>>>
[snip]
>Actually
>
>1) that passage doesn't describe crimes (Emma says "may have been
>a part of historical evolution", not crimes).
>
A fascinating point, the relevence of which is exactly what? It was
jimmy who claimed that there was some list of crimes that Emma
attributed to government not Emma. (The essay does mention the word
crime once, with respect to marriage between Jew and Gentile.)
The passage jimmy cited was within the paragraph I quoted in its
entirety (as well as providing a link to the entire essay.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Essays/lifework.html)
Jimmy plucked a single phrase out of context and then claimed that
Emma had somehow renounced or moved away from anarchism and towards
neo-liberalism.
Explain the following:
>>>> Jimmy would have us believe that 'government' to Emma meant simply
>>>> the state,
>>>
>>>That is what she said in her indictment.
Emma:
"However, it is not only government in the sense
of the state which is destructive of every individual value and
quality. It is the whole complex of authority and institutional
domination which strangles life."
What could she be taking about?
>2) James describes the above passage by Emma briefly in this
>following passage, so he didn't miss it:
>
No he didn't "miss it" he "misrepresented it". He did not describe the
passage as written, he described his rather humorous distortion of
that passage based on his plucking a single phrase from the paragraph
in question (he could hardly have quoted any more,) and then using
that as his 'proof'. The only issue here is was it dishonest
propagandizing or is he that dense.
the jimmy said:
>Emma Goldman's views evolved through time. Her early works grew out
>of crude and simplistic class war theory. At that time she did not
>really understand the US, or the American working class. They were
>alien to her, and she grotesquely misread events and people. She
>improved with time, and in her last works was a firm fan of free
>trade, and somewhat vaguely and unenthusiastically accepted the
>legitimacy of property rights in the means of production.
and the jimmy's proof was:
>In "was my life worth living", by Emma Goldman, the key ideological
>section is her indictment of government. She starts off her
>indictment of governments as follows:
>
>: : Every individual is hampered by it. It exacts taxes from production. It creates tariffs, which prevent free exchange.
His claim, completely false and dishonest, was "She improved with
time, and in her last works was a firm fan of free trade." He cannot
even get this blatent nonsense from the pathetic snippage he quoted as
Emma said "free exchange" not "free trade", and she meant something
quite a bit different, and quite a bit antithetical to neo-liberalism,
than what you half-anarchists mean by "free trade".
>>>She also went on to indict government in the sense of internalized
>>>attitudes and feelings, the internalization of authority, the
>>>policeman inside. But nowhere in this article does she depict
>>>businessmen, the authority of an employer, as government.
>>>
>>
>>Really? So the following sections that address the stultifying effects
>>of capitalist economic organizations are somehow disconnected from the
>>above passage where she clearly states that by 'government' she does
>>not mean the de jure institution of the state alone, but the whole
>>fabric of institutional domination?
>
>Actually, yes, it is separate. The above passage is about reverance
>for institutions. The passage below is not about reverance at all,
>it's about a worker's lack of interest in his job.
>
No actually it wasn't separate, it was all connected within a single
essay about why Emma remained a commited left-libertarian to the end
of her life, precisely opposite from jimmy's thesis that she somehow
moved over to the neo-liberal side, becoming an advocate of "free
trade" rather than free and voluntary exchange between people without
the domination of the political and economic institutions she fought
all of her life.
I suppose that her attack on a system based on "gain as an incentive"
and her suggestion that a system based on profit should be replaced
with something else are lost on you as well. What could she have
meant?
Guru George
wrote:
> --
>On Thu, 23 Nov 2000 11:39:17 +0000, Guru George
><gurug...@alphanor.dircon.co.uk> wrote:
>> He says the original thesis of Harappa as a "river-based despotism,
>> perhaps one heavily influenced by Mesopotamia" put forward by the
>> archaeological mainstream after John Marshall's original excavations
>> of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in the 1920s has gradually been undermined
>> by the accumulation of more evidence since then. (e.g., what were
>> once thought of as "citadels" in the centres are now thought to have
>> been some kind of grain stores.) According to O'Connell, the evidence
>> now seems to point to something like the uniform culture, but fairly
>> loose type of social organisation, of a maritime mercantile empire
>> like Crete or Phoenicia, but inland.
>
>Quite possibly. Perhaps the interpretation I gave is out of date.
>But there is not much that can be determined from ruins with few
>movable goods, and no writings.
>
>It may well be true that the center of each city was a granary, but if
>grain is stored at a single depot in the city, and not stored by
>individual peasants and merchants, that looks like a centralized
>regime to me, and one that would frequently need to defend itself
>against the peasants. The interpretation as citadel, and the
>interpretation as granary, are not mutually exclusive. If the granary
>represents extortion from the peasants, you need to store the grain in
>a citadel.
>
True, but the weaponry (mostly blunt) doesn't seem to point to the
degree of terror you'd probably need to enforce such a regime. Ah
well, O'Connell has piqued my interest in this culture; I'll have a
wee mosey around and look into it further for myself.
James A. Donald
On Fri, 24 Nov 2000 14:53:19 -0500, Mark Roddy
<ma...@wattanuck.mv.com> wrote:
> Jimmy plucked a single phrase out of context and then claimed that
> Emma had somehow renounced or moved away from anarchism and towards
> neo-liberalism.
Liar.
What I said was:
: : There were never any anarcho socialist who were as
: : socialist as today's "anarcho" socialists. Emma Goldman
: : in her early days came fairly close, but in her later
: : days not very close at all.
Mark Roddy
> Explain the following:
> Emma:
> : : "However, it is not only government in the sense of the
> : : state which is destructive of every individual value
> : : and quality. It is the whole complex of authority and
> : : institutional domination which strangles life."
And she then proceeds to list what she means by the complex of
authority. The pursuit of profit is listed as part of false internal
values, not external coercion. She does not list property rights in
the means of production at all.
Sure, there is lots of socialist leaning stuff in her article, but
once again the key point is that she does not call for seizure of the
means of production, and indicts the state for taxes, tariffs,
interference with freedom of trade, censorship, unequal and capricious
application of the laws, and all that stuff, but does not indict the
state for enforcing property rights.
Obviously Emma goldman is not pro capitalist the way anarcho
capitalists a pro capitalist, she was most certainly socialist in the
sense that we call the British prime minsters socialist, and a good
deal more socialist than that, but she was not socialist in the sense
that the pinkos in this newsgroup are socialist. She does not treat
profit as a crime, nor private ownership of the means of production as
a crime, she supports free trade.
There used to be a bunch of far from clear ideologies that proposed
something that could reasonably be called non state socialism, in so
far as they could be called anything at all, but these all expired in
betrayal and mass murder during the debacle in Catalonia, or as a
consequence of that debacle. What today's anarcho socialists mean by
non state socialism is a system like that depicted in Ken McLeod's
"Cassini division" where the system is "anarchy" because the
permanently re-elected ruling nomenclatura and their central planners
are such nice people.
The pre 1938 anarcho socialist ideologies were very much socialist in
attitude and outlook, in their bitter denunciation of the evil
capitalists, but were not very much socialist in the modern sense, in
that their position on property rights in the means of production, and
property rights in general, was inconsistent and incoherent.
Proudhon's justification for this incoherence was that property rights
are themselves incoherent, which even if true was not a very
satisfactory excuse.
In the first international, those who were later to become the
mainstream of socialism denounced the anarchists as not being real
socialists. In response to this criticism, their rhetoric became
even more socialist, and their program even less socialist.
After the incoherent and self contradictory ideology of the socialist
anarchists took concrete form in the incoherent and self contradictory
acts of the anarchists of Catalonia, the Marxist concept of socialism
became entirely dominant over all others, and remains so to this day,
as we see in the newsgroup debates, in the streets of Seattle, in the
works of Chomsky, and in books such as "the Cassini Division". The
pre 1938 anarcho socialists, were, for the most part, not socialists
as the word is understood today in these newsgroups.
> His claim, completely false and dishonest, was "She improved with
> time, and in her last works was a firm fan of free trade." He cannot
> even get this blatent nonsense from the pathetic snippage he quoted
> as Emma said "free exchange" not "free trade", and she meant
> something quite a bit different, and quite a bit antithetical to
> neo-liberalism, than what you half-anarchists mean by "free trade".
She said tariffs are an obstacle to free exchange. The phrase "Free
trade" means absence of tariffs and regulatory obtacles to trade.
If she meant something other than trade in sense of commerce and
business, why the reference to tariffs?
The reference to tariffs identifies free exchange with what
libertarians mean by free exchange, with what those you call
"neo-liberals" mean by free exchange.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
dDg4laJc2wUnT9DxBE5SKefUV0TfzAV4k5bJT3ZC
4vm54ON5bW7Ad5LGflRxcxpM7GaBw7Iwxw2Xkgsc5
Guru George
wrote:
> --
>On Thu, 23 Nov 2000 23:39:36 +0000, Guru George
><gurug...@alphanor.dircon.co.uk> wrote:
>> It's an interesting subject. I think it depends on how far back you
>> go, and what counts as "primitive", of course. I think there are
>> probably certain circumstances that incline (but do not necessitate)
>> us to violence, and I also believe there have been times in the past
>> when we have been more violent, as a whole, than we are now. But I
>> think there have also been times when we have been _more_ peaceful
>> than we are now. Judging from its remains, especially (for me) its
>> art, I think the Late Neolithic was probably the best time we had
>> before now, and is the source of the myth of the "Golden Age".
>
>My interpretation of the evidence, is that places differed and times
>differed: That a lot of people during the late Neolithic were slaves
>of god kings engaged in endless warfare against each other, and a lot
>live freely and peacefully.
>
Actually maybe I should just have simply said the Neolithic, because
I'm thinking of the period from about 4,000 - 3,000 BCE (and even
earlier - from 6,000, even 8,000). God Kings just squeeze in towards
the end of this period, and only in Egypt (and I believe, following
O'Connell, that they arose as one of the results of the situational
logic of our co-evolution with grain monocultures, the same
situational logic that leads to hive/warrior cultures amongst some
insects). That endless warfare conducted by God-Kings type of
scenario didn't really get going till about 2,500 or so, with Ur,
Akkad, etc., onwards.
I've been particularly impressed with Marija Gimbutas' work on the
Neolithic, and her imaginative conjectures about culture then (I know
that her position is very close to the edge of rejection by orthodox
archaeology, but for all that I don't believe she has been solidly
refuted yet, and I like her anyway!). I know it's no argument, going
by one's intuitions, but I think the art, the craft of that period, is
of a haunting kind of simple beauty and delicacy you don't get from
the art and craft of the warrior kingdoms that came after. I find it
hard to believe that the people who produced that work were violent or
unhappy. But I may be wrong.
>>http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/discus/html/messages/62/73.html?970506661
>
>The death rate from warfare among Australian aborigines was close to
>zero.
>
Yeah, that's how it is. There just isn't really any clear proof one
way or the other unfortunately. Just suggestive little glimpses of
oases of peace here and there.
>Most primitive tribes believe in witchcraft, and do a lot of fighting
>for reasons that more sophisticated people find irrational. It is
>difficult to separate warfare caused by backwardness, from warfare
>supposedly caused by lack of a state apparatus. There is some
>evidence of radical changes in the rate of violent death caused by
>changes in belief concerning evidence of guilt, or changes in
>arrangements for vengeance. Primitive people tend to slip between
>Hobbesian and Lockean anarchy. Both are within the human potential.
>
Yes. We've definitely had both in our past. I think there are vast
periods of our history in which there were really important, sort of
tectonic changes in our overall character that we'll never know about.
For example, frontal sex - what was that all about? Was this some
ancient victory of pre-human female canniness over pre-human male
violence? (Just starting to read "Demonic Males", btw - I think
you've read that?)
James A. Donald
On Fri, 24 Nov 2000 23:06:01 +0000, Guru George
<gurug...@alphanor.dircon.co.uk> wrote:
> I'm thinking of the period from about 4,000 - 3,000 BCE (and even
> earlier - from 6,000, even 8,000). God Kings just squeeze in
> towards the end of this period, and only in Egypt (and I believe,
> following O'Connell, that they arose as one of the results of the
> situational logic of our co-evolution with grain monocultures, the
> same situational logic that leads to hive/warrior cultures amongst
> some insects). That endless warfare conducted by God-Kings type of
> scenario didn't really get going till about 2,500 or so, with Ur,
> Akkad, etc., onwards.
As soon as we see written history, we see god kings, with god kings
being worst at the start of written history, and tending to diminish
as people grew wiser. This gives us some reason to suspect that God
Kings precede written history.
When we look at neolithic remains, we find that some places and times
produced small scale stuff, human sized buildings, and the sort of art
an individual might own, and other places and times produced only
fascist style art, big religious buildings, and very little individual
art or craft
When explorers bumped into various primitives with no written history,
they ran into quite a few god kings, and quite a few rulers that had
despotic power and were surrounded by a personality cult.
There seems to be no simple relationship between the economy and the
political system. The same race, the same technology level, and the
same climate produced the peaceful somewhat capitalist anarchies of
the big man societies, and murderous despotism of King Kamehamemha.
> I've been particularly impressed with Marija Gimbutas' work on the
> Neolithic, and her imaginative conjectures about culture then (I
> know that her position is very close to the edge of rejection by
> orthodox archaeology, but for all that I don't believe she has been
> solidly refuted yet, and I like her anyway!).
No one can be solidly refuted, because we lack any concrete evidence
about the social order of the Neolithic.
In the modern world, brutal tyrannies and reasonably free societies
coexisted. When the europeans entered the Americas, they found brutal
tyrannies and reasonably free societies. On the available evidence,
brutal tyrannies and reasonably free societies have always existed.
> I know it's no argument, going by one's intuitions, but I think the
> art, the craft of that period, is of a haunting kind of simple
> beauty and delicacy you don't get from the art and craft of the
> warrior kingdoms that came after.
Art is a very good indicator of society. Stonehenge looks to me like
the work of a totalitarian regime. The beakers of the beaker people
look to me like the work of free men. I think the message of
Stonehenge is "I am a gigantically important priest king. I can force
armies of men to drag huge rocks", whereas the message of one of the
beaker people's beakers is: "Nice beer. Let us watch the clouds."
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
jZKxaoHnfFDepuiYwQJpB8NUFsAAyFLxjWXX2eh8
4z1kbQ2g1lOukAENQM5FHCte5K3UKte9nxAEW98N/
Guru George
wrote:
> --
>On Fri, 24 Nov 2000 23:06:01 +0000, Guru George
><gurug...@alphanor.dircon.co.uk> wrote:
>> I'm thinking of the period from about 4,000 - 3,000 BCE (and even
>> earlier - from 6,000, even 8,000). God Kings just squeeze in
>> towards the end of this period, and only in Egypt (and I believe,
>> following O'Connell, that they arose as one of the results of the
>> situational logic of our co-evolution with grain monocultures, the
>> same situational logic that leads to hive/warrior cultures amongst
>> some insects). That endless warfare conducted by God-Kings type of
>> scenario didn't really get going till about 2,500 or so, with Ur,
>> Akkad, etc., onwards.
>
>As soon as we see written history, we see god kings, with god kings
>being worst at the start of written history, and tending to diminish
>as people grew wiser. This gives us some reason to suspect that God
>Kings precede written history.
>
Hmmmm. Don't know about that. I see first a build up in horribility
from stuff on the scale of Sumer and Akkad, up to a peak of
frightfulness roundabout Assyria, China, Egypt (also Sparta, in terms
of sheer "dumbing-down"), with a slow decline towards reasonableness
with periodic flare-ups since then (e.g. Rome, Xtian empires, Muslim
empires, European empires, Commies, Fascists, and all their lesser
kindred, et multae ceterae et ad nauseam). I'm prepared to be argued
into thinking that this is too rosy, too pat (especially in view of
the fact that the most recent flare-ups, the Commie and Fascist, have
killed mind-numbing numbers - but I think more because of the cheaper
killing potential from technology than because of any increase in the
awfulness of that kind of mentality); but for the life of me, at the
moment it looks like the truth. Maybe I'm just a "bottle half full"
kinda guy!
>When we look at neolithic remains, we find that some places and times
>produced small scale stuff, human sized buildings, and the sort of art
>an individual might own, and other places and times produced only
>fascist style art, big religious buildings, and very little individual
>art or craft
>
Yes, I agree with that principle very much. (As an aside, for all the
bad, propagandistic side of her art, one of the things I thought Rand
was bang on about was the human scale of the temple Roark builds.)
And the unfortunate thing is that the small, often fragile &
biodegradeable stuff is more difficult to come across than the big,
solid stuff, so we get a biased picture. (But I think that's actually
a slight counter argument to the "mostly bad" scenario ;-)
What's another prime example of Neolithic fascist style for you, apart
from Stonehenge?
>When explorers bumped into various primitives with no written history,
>they ran into quite a few god kings, and quite a few rulers that had
>despotic power and were surrounded by a personality cult.
>
>There seems to be no simple relationship between the economy and the
>political system. The same race, the same technology level, and the
>same climate produced the peaceful somewhat capitalist anarchies of
>the big man societies, and murderous despotism of King Kamehamemha.
>
But isn't there a definite influence from environment in terms of
rigour - i.e. don't we get nasty when times are tough? When times are
tough, the type of pure, blind, relatively stupidly selfish (i.e.
Hobbesian) type of thinking that might have slumbered contentedly in
more prosperous times, has an opportunity to come to the fore. (Or,
if times are _really_ tough, our normally deeply buried and controlled
predatory instincts come to the fore - and you get something even more
stupid even than a Hobbesian equilibrium, just a true war of all
against all.)
I'm thinking of the story of Easter Island. (Seemed to be a nice
paradise when first sparsely colonized; later turned into a crowded
battlefield.)
Otherwise yes, Lockean anarchy seems in some ways to be a crowning
"Good Trick" that some people are just unlucky never to come across.
(Don't know if you are familiar with Anthony de Jasay, but there's a
lot in his work that could contribute towards an understanding of
this. He has a vaguely similar thing (or at least something
complementary) to David Friedman's "Schelling Points" argument, with
his "satellite conventions". However it goes, it has to build up from
something stupid to something intelligent by incremental steps, and
some steps might easily be missed in some circumstances.)
>> I've been particularly impressed with Marija Gimbutas' work on the
>> Neolithic, and her imaginative conjectures about culture then (I
>> know that her position is very close to the edge of rejection by
>> orthodox archaeology, but for all that I don't believe she has been
>> solidly refuted yet, and I like her anyway!).
>
>No one can be solidly refuted, because we lack any concrete evidence
>about the social order of the Neolithic.
>
True - I just meant I hadn't seen anything that had generally been
accepted as having ripped her to shreds (in the way that, say, the
Piltdown hoax was ripped to shreds). There are a few measured
counterarguments I've seen from a normal "Sceptical Inquirer" type of
standpoint, and something from a sort of hermeneutical point of view,
but nothing that would cast into any _serious_ doubt her bold
conjecture that for a long time humans in Old (Neolithic) Europe had a
fairly common, simple religious culture based on a primarily (though
of course not exclusively) female pantheon, and a related matrilineal
type(s?) of family form. Not to say it was paradise, of course, but
maybe it was the peak of human culture before the relatively sudden
catastrophe of our rapid co-evolution with grain (and indeed animal)
monocultures. Only now are we getting back to something like that
last period of stability and relative prosperity, but this time with
improved rationality (and technology) - the one fruit, the one good
thing we've wrested from the past few thousand years of almost
unrelieved horror and tragedy.
>In the modern world, brutal tyrannies and reasonably free societies
>coexisted. When the europeans entered the Americas, they found brutal
>tyrannies and reasonably free societies. On the available evidence,
>brutal tyrannies and reasonably free societies have always existed.
>
Yes. But Neolithic Old Europe in general seems to have been freer
than any time since (up until recently).
>> I know it's no argument, going by one's intuitions, but I think the
>> art, the craft of that period, is of a haunting kind of simple
>> beauty and delicacy you don't get from the art and craft of the
>> warrior kingdoms that came after.
>
>Art is a very good indicator of society. Stonehenge looks to me like
>the work of a totalitarian regime. The beakers of the beaker people
>look to me like the work of free men. I think the message of
>Stonehenge is "I am a gigantically important priest king. I can force
>armies of men to drag huge rocks", whereas the message of one of the
>beaker people's beakers is: "Nice beer. Let us watch the clouds."
>
Agree with you 'bout the beakers, but about Stonehenge I'm not so
sure. I think it may have been something more like a sort of
community religious party spot, somewhere to feast, drink and take
magic mushrooms and sing and dance and play music, and have ecstatic
visions; or somewhere (with its calendrical, and perhaps dramatic
associations) to initiate the young 'uns into the ways of wisdom. In
which case it's not so bad - I can see the sense in it. And actually,
from my limited understanding, it wouldn't have been all _that_ much
bother to build, as a long term project for even a fairly small
community - it just would have taken a long time. People like to do
things for their community sometimes, to make it special in some way;
and for me it's quite conceivable that relatively prosperous people
with a lot of time on their hands, living in the slow, measured
rhythms (some might say inanity!) of a fairly natural way of life,
could be inspired by a collective project a la Stonehenge - we all
like to contribute to something that will outlast us, whether it's our
children or our works (especially as we get older).
Mark Roddy
continues his ridiculous assertion that Emma Goldman transformed
suddenly into a neo-liberal free trader at the end of her life:
> --
>James A. Donald:
>> > There were never any anarcho socialist who were as socialist as
>> > today's "anarcho" socialists. Emma Goldman in her early days came
>> > fairly close, but in her later days not very close at all.
>> >
>> > [...]
>> >
>> > [...] nowhere in this article does she depict businessmen, the
>> > authority of an employer, as government.
>
>Mark Roddy:
>> Really? So the following sections that address the stultifying
>> effects of capitalist economic organizations are somehow
>> disconnected from the above passage where she clearly states that by
>> 'government' she does not mean the de jure institution of the state
>> alone, but the whole fabric of institutional domination?
>
>You sound like one of those Christians who find prophesies about the
>twentieth century in biblical texts, you are stitching together
>different bits, and heavily interpreting the text.
Here jimmy has used the tactic of accusing your opponent of exactly
what you have done. Lets review how this thread started. Jimmy quoted
exactly one sentence from Emma Goldman's essay:
jimmy:
>In "was my life worth living", by Emma Goldman, the key ideological
>section is her indictment of government. She starts off her
>indictment of governments as follows:
>
>: : Every individual is hampered by it. It exacts taxes from production. It creates tariffs, which prevent free exchange.
I pointed out that he, most likely deliberately (but then again the
human capacity for self delusion is hard to over-estimate,) took out
of context and misinterpreted Emma's indictment not of 'the state' as
in the legal institutions of government, but government as a whole, as
in the entire milieu of political social and economic institutions
that constitute the system of control and domination that benefits the
rich and powerful. I quoted the passage from which jimmy plucked his
one supporting sentence in its entirety, and provided a link to the
essay itself.
To the obvious refutation of his claim, the sentences within the very
same paragraph that he misquotes above that read:
"However, it is not only government in the sense of the state which is
destructive of every individual value and quality. It is the whole
complex of authority and institutional domination which strangles
life. It is the superstition, myth, pretense, evasions, and
subservience which support authority and institutional domination."
jimmy has nothing to say. What can he do except to attack me
personally? Emma remained an unrepentant left-libertarian to the end
of her life. Jimmy remains an ideologue willing to lie and distort at
every opportunity to support his 'cause'.
Guru George
<ma...@wattanuck.mv.com> wrote:
>On Fri, 24 Nov 2000 19:13:15 GMT, jam...@echeque.com (James A. Donald)
>continues his ridiculous assertion that Emma Goldman transformed
>suddenly into a neo-liberal free trader at the end of her life:
>
>> --
>>James A. Donald:
>>> > There were never any anarcho socialist who were as socialist as
>>> > today's "anarcho" socialists. Emma Goldman in her early days came
>>> > fairly close, but in her later days not very close at all.
>>> >
>>> > [...]
>>> >
>>> > [...] nowhere in this article does she depict businessmen, the
>>> > authority of an employer, as government.
>>
>>Mark Roddy:
>>> Really? So the following sections that address the stultifying
>>> effects of capitalist economic organizations are somehow
>>> disconnected from the above passage where she clearly states that by
>>> 'government' she does not mean the de jure institution of the state
>>> alone, but the whole fabric of institutional domination?
>>
>>You sound like one of those Christians who find prophesies about the
>>twentieth century in biblical texts, you are stitching together
>>different bits, and heavily interpreting the text.
>
>Here jimmy has used the tactic of accusing your opponent of exactly
>what you have done. Lets review how this thread started. Jimmy quoted
>exactly one sentence from Emma Goldman's essay:
>
>jimmy:
>>In "was my life worth living", by Emma Goldman, the key ideological
>>section is her indictment of government. She starts off her
>>indictment of governments as follows:
>>
>>: : Every individual is hampered by it. It exacts taxes from production. It creates tariffs, which prevent free exchange.
>
>I pointed out that he, most likely deliberately (but then again the
>human capacity for self delusion is hard to over-estimate,) took out
>of context and misinterpreted Emma's indictment not of 'the state' as
>in the legal institutions of government, but government as a whole, as
>in the entire milieu of political social and economic institutions
>that constitute the system of control and domination that benefits the
>rich and powerful. I quoted the passage from which jimmy plucked his
>one supporting sentence in its entirety, and provided a link to the
>essay itself.
>
>To the obvious refutation of his claim, the sentences within the very
>same paragraph that he misquotes above that read:
>
>"However, it is not only government in the sense of the state which is
>destructive of every individual value and quality. It is the whole
>complex of authority and institutional domination which strangles
>life. It is the superstition, myth, pretense, evasions, and
>subservience which support authority and institutional domination."
>
>jimmy has nothing to say. What can he do except to attack me
>personally? Emma remained an unrepentant left-libertarian to the end
>of her life. Jimmy remains an ideologue willing to lie and distort at
>every opportunity to support his 'cause'.
>
>
This is absurd. The full Emma quote you posted is clearly meant as a
response to something like "Hey Emma, I hear you're agin' the
government!?" And her response is clearly that yes, she is against
the government, and for such-and-such reasons, but then she goes on to
wisely remind her interlocutor that it's not just government that's
the problem, but deeper, the bad habit of obedience and all the rest
of it ("government" in the non-state sense), that has government in
the state sense as one of its primary manifestations.
IOW, she's attacking government in the state sense AND the thing that
supports government in the state sense, she's attacking the sense of
_legitimacy_ we stupidly give to others' attempts to dominate us via
the use of social institutions. Her broader target is "the whole
complex of authority and institutional domination", which is opposed
to "individual values". Since free exchange and free trade must be
counted on the side of individual values, for her (since it's part of
the list of things government destroys), then she obviously has no
problem it, and indeed, if consistent, she must want to protect it
from government in the non-state sense AS WELL AS government in the
state sense!
As James says, the list of things she's agin' the government for is
nothing an anarcho-capitalist would disagree with (maybe only in
emphasis, depending on whether they "came from" the right or left,
which would make them aware of different problem areas). She
certainly doesn't seem to be against the government for enforcing
private property, as a true socialist would be; the closest thing she
seems to say to that is that she's against government for being a
system that often promulgates laws that the poor have to obey, but the
rich don't. But it's not really close at all, quite the opposite.
For it's nothing an anarcho-capitalist, or general libertarian, would
disagree with. We want private property rights to be enforced equally
as well for all, rich and poor. (Indeed we think it's precisely the
government's enforcing poor peoples' property rights, or rather - for
a-cs - getting the fuck out of the way of poor people enforcing their
own property rights, that facilitiates their getting richer.)
To be honest, she sounds here more like an individualist anarchist in
the fine old American tradition, than a socialist anarchist.
Mark Roddy
<gurug...@alphanor.dircon.co.uk> joins into the chorus of
half-anarchists who for some reason either a) wish they had a champion
as eloquent as Emma Goldman; or b) will say anything to defend their
hero, the paranoid Mr. Donald, who boxed himself into a corner
claiming that Joe Stalin was an anarchist and Emma Goldman a
neo-liberal free trader:
It is your claim then that (A != A)?
>The full Emma quote you posted is clearly meant as a
>response to something like "Hey Emma, I hear you're agin' the
>government!?" And her response is clearly that yes, she is against
>the government, and for such-and-such reasons, but then she goes on to
>wisely remind her interlocutor that it's not just government that's
>the problem, but deeper, the bad habit of obedience and all the rest
>of it ("government" in the non-state sense), that has government in
>the state sense as one of its primary manifestations.
You know that? You have some insight into Emma's intentions, perhaps
some contemporary commentary? That somehow from 1934 (the date of this
essay,) when according to you folks she had turned into a neo-liberal,
she must then have had a second change of heart in 1936 when she went
to spain to support the Spanish Anarchists? Perhaps you will claim
that the CNT was also prone to individualist-anarchist ideas?
>
>IOW, she's attacking government in the state sense AND the thing that
>supports government in the state sense, she's attacking the sense of
>_legitimacy_ we stupidly give to others' attempts to dominate us via
>the use of social institutions. Her broader target is "the whole
>complex of authority and institutional domination", which is opposed
>to "individual values". Since free exchange and free trade must be
She never mentioned the words: "free trade", that was a simple
invention of Mr. Donald. Free exchange on the other hand, is exactly
what humans engage in when the whole institution of domination and
subjugation is torn down.
The issue here appears to be whether we are to interpret Emma's
statement that:
"However, it is not only government in the sense of the state which is
destructive of every individual value and quality. It is the whole
complex of authority and institutional domination which strangles
life."
Is not to be taken literally, that is not as a statement that
government is more than simply the state, but that there is government
and then there is something else that helps government to dominate us.
I think not. The phrase in question clearly stakes out the
left-anarchist position, that government is much more than simply the
formal institutions of the state, it is the whole system of dominance,
including of course the economic system, which she goes on to
explicitly attack, although not in the marxist class warfare terms
that would make you and jimmy happy as then you could go on to plan B:
all anarchists are crytpo-leninists.
The phrase in question delineates the ideological difference between
left and right anarchism. For you half-anarchists the state is
government and your proposals are simply the elimination of the formal
institutions of the state. Full anarchists recognize that government
is more than simply the formal institutions, it is the whole complex
of authority and institutional domination which strangles life. Gee
that last phrase sounds familiar.
>counted on the side of individual values, for her (since it's part of
>the list of things government destroys), then she obviously has no
>problem it, and indeed, if consistent, she must want to protect it
>from government in the non-state sense AS WELL AS government in the
>state sense!
Certainly anarchists have no problem at all with the free exchange of
goods and services. But that is not the same as being for the economic
domination of the few over the many represented by capitalism. Left
anarchists generally think, as Emma did, that one cannot separate 'the
state' from 'the institutions of dominance' including the economic
dominance of capitalism.
However lest you think that Emma was defending neo-liberalism, perhaps
you would reflect on this paragraph, which you must have missed when
you skimmed the original:
"In art, science, literature, and in departments of life which we
believe to be somewhat removed from our daily living we are hospitable
to research, experiment, and innovation. Yet, so great is our
traditional reverence for authority that an irrational fear arises in
most people when experiment is suggested to them. Surely there is even
greater reason for experiment in the social field than in the
scientific. It is to be hoped, therefore, that humanity or some
portion of it will be given the opportunity in the not too distant
future to try its fortune living and developing under an application
of freedom corresponding to the early stages of an anarchistic
society. The belief in freedom assumes that human beings can
co-operate. They do it even now to a surprising extent, or organized
society would be impossible. If the devices by which men can harm one
another, such as private property, are removed and if the worship of
authority can be discarded, co-operation will be spontaneous and
inevitable, and the individual will find it his highest calling to
contribute to the enrichment of social well-being."
Whatever could Emma have meant by that last sentence? And as your
reading skills appear amiss, it is that part where she says "such as
private property, are removed", that sentence, that you should reflect
on.
>
>As James says, the list of things she's agin' the government for is
>nothing an anarcho-capitalist would disagree with (maybe only in
>emphasis, depending on whether they "came from" the right or left,
>which would make them aware of different problem areas).
Oh really? So you, a known half-anarchist, would agree with:
"Of course those steeped in the present find it impossible to realize
that gain as an incentive could be replaced by another force that
would motivate people to give the best that is in them. To be sure,
profit and gain are strong factors in our present system. They have to
be. Even the rich feel a sense of insecurity. That is, they want to
protect what they have and to strengthen themselves. The gain and
profit motives, however, are tied up with more fundamental motives.
When a man provides himself with clothes and shelter, if he is the
money-maker type, he continues to work to establish his status--to
give himself prestige of the sort admired in the eyes of his
fellow-men. Under different and more just conditions of life these
more fundamental motives could be put to special uses, and the profit
motive, which is only their manifestation, will pass away."
You too are against a system that motivates through profit?
And if so how exactly does half-anarchism or right-libertarianism, or
anarcho-capitalism, or whatever it is you call your ideology cause the
different and more just conditions where the profit motive vanishes?
David Friedman
<gurug...@alphanor.dircon.co.uk> wrote:
> Judging from its remains, especially (for me) its
> art, I think the Late Neolithic was probably the best time we had
> before now, and is the source of the myth of the "Golden Age".
The book cites lots of evidence for mass killing by Amerinds before the
Europeans arrived, and they were neolithic.
The case the book starts with involves excavations of the earliest known
agricultural settlers in Europe. The author put in a grand proposal
which took it for granted that the reason they had walled towns was
military defense, and it was rejected more or less on the grounds that
everyone knew primitive were peaceful. He revised to leave out that bit
and the grant application was accepted.
It turned out, when he excavated, that by some curious coincidence there
were a lot of arrowheads just outside the walls--concentrated at the
gate.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
James A. Donald
On Sat, 25 Nov 2000 16:45:09 +0000, Guru George
> As James says, the list of things she's agin' the government for is
> nothing an anarcho-capitalist would disagree with (maybe only in
> emphasis, depending on whether they "came from" the right or left,
> which would make them aware of different problem areas). She
> certainly doesn't seem to be against the government for enforcing
> private property, as a true socialist would be; the closest thing
> she seems to say to that is that she's against government for being
> a system that often promulgates laws that the poor have to obey, but
> the rich don't. But it's not really close at all, quite the
> opposite. For it's nothing an anarcho-capitalist, or general
> libertarian, would disagree with.
While most anarcho capitalists would not have made the point that Emma
Goldman made about unequal application of the laws, this anarcho
capitalist has frequently made that point
Indeed, in the law-enforcement and drug crimes thread, I made that
point repeatedly some vigor.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
jFpL2E0Y5bskjdG/iVm4d0Ofg630l9zbB77aH4/r
4fgnJc3OOnS5gMRqVaH3bf9CbVIN/fGb1EqhQYHzO
James A. Donald
On Sat, 25 Nov 2000 14:53:19 +0000, Guru George
<gurug...@alphanor.dircon.co.uk> wrote:
> But isn't there a definite influence from environment in terms of
> rigour - i.e. don't we get nasty when times are tough? When times are
> tough, the type of pure, blind, relatively stupidly selfish (i.e.
> Hobbesian) type of thinking that might have slumbered contentedly in
> more prosperous times, has an opportunity to come to the fore. (Or,
> if times are _really_ tough, our normally deeply buried and controlled
> predatory instincts come to the fore - and you get something even more
> stupid even than a Hobbesian equilibrium, just a true war of all
> against all.)
King Kamehameha was one of the nastiest stone age rulers around, and
he ruled over a lightly populated tropical paradise.
> I'm thinking of the story of Easter Island. (Seemed to be a nice
> paradise when first sparsely colonized; later turned into a crowded
> battlefield.)
I think this is a myth. My interpretation of the evidence is that the
devastation of the island followed the collapse. It did not precede
and cause the collapse.
> > Art is a very good indicator of society. Stonehenge looks to me like
> > the work of a totalitarian regime. The beakers of the beaker people
> > look to me like the work of free men. I think the message of
> > Stonehenge is "I am a gigantically important priest king. I can force
> > armies of men to drag huge rocks", whereas the message of one of the
> > beaker people's beakers is: "Nice beer. Let us watch the clouds."
> Agree with you 'bout the beakers, but about Stonehenge I'm not so
> sure. I think it may have been something more like a sort of
> community religious party spot, somewhere to feast, drink and take
> magic mushrooms and sing and dance and play music
I really cannot see people who have a religion based on having a good
time hauling damned great rocks long distances by human power. There
is also an inverse relationship between thumping great monuments and
everyday human scale art. Societies that build whacking great
monuments tend not to leave behind decorative beer mugs and attractive
lamps, and vice versa.
If they feasted and drank at stonehenge, we should find more beer mugs
and wassail bowls.
> for me it's quite conceivable that relatively prosperous people
> with a lot of time on their hands, living in the slow, measured
> rhythms (some might say inanity!) of a fairly natural way of life,
> could be inspired by a collective project a la Stonehenge - we all
> like to contribute to something that will outlast us, whether it's our
> children or our works (especially as we get older).
If they did that, they would have used a larger number of smaller
stones. Using really big stones demonstrates the ability to
coordinate and harness really big teams. Building stonehenge
demonstrates the capability to raise large armies and hurl them at an
objective.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
c/OAmOx12ZGFxJnR2pUrboFjlhheda5Ha3DE2miP
4Uh4+A5K3dbzPcJFq2nS38g6XoheiSRhJk3F9dvjM
James A. Donald
On Sat, 25 Nov 2000 10:24:27 -0500, Mark Roddy
<ma...@wattanuck.mv.com> wrote:
> James A. Donald
> continues his ridiculous assertion that Emma Goldman transformed
Liar. I made no such assertion.
What I said was
> > > > There were never any anarcho socialists who were as socialist as
> > > > today's "anarcho" socialists. Emma Goldman in her early days came
> > > > fairly close, but in her later days not very close at all.
The fact that you have to lie about my words in order to refute a
straw man, is an implicit admission that what I actually said, was
undeniably true, that indeed there were never any anarcho socialists
who were as socialist as today's "anarcho" socialists.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
fI1X2dtPhA3uX2IvZTHIfxeXS6SF3F5iKP+KGALJ
4+Lumf/ycgjN4/FUAYXZre+G685mBxi720jD1WViy
James A. Donald
On Sat, 25 Nov 2000 13:18:48 -0500, Mark Roddy
<ma...@wattanuck.mv.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Nov 2000 16:45:09 +0000, Guru George will say anything to defend their
> hero, the paranoid Mr. Donald, who boxed himself into a corner
> claiming that Joe Stalin was an anarchist and Emma Goldman a
> neo-liberal free trader:
Liar.
I said that if using the language of liberty to describe
totalitarianism makes one an anarchist, then Stalin is as much of an
anarchist as any of the "anarcho" socialists in this newgroup, and
that the program Stalin described in "foundations of Leninism" is a
lot more anarchistic than anything proposed by the "anarcho" socialist
in this newsgroup.
I certainly did not say that Emma Goldman was a neo liberal, since I
have frequently said that neo liberalism is a fictitious ideology
invented by the enemies of freedom.
As I said before, the fact that you need to lie about my words, shows
you know full well the truth of my actual words.
> You know that? You have some insight into Emma's intentions, perhaps
> some contemporary commentary? That somehow from 1934 (the date of this
> essay,) when according to you folks she had turned into a neo-liberal,
Evidently anyone who fails to support Leninism is a neo liberal in
Mark Roddy's eyes.
> She never mentioned the words: "free trade", that was a simple
> invention of Mr. Donald.
She condemned tariffs,. That makes her an advocate of free trade.
> The issue here appears to be whether we are to interpret Emma's
> statement that:
>
> "However, it is not only government in the sense of the state which is
> destructive of every individual value and quality. It is the whole
> complex of authority and institutional domination which strangles
> life."
She then proceeds to describe what she means by that complex of
authority, and conspicuously fails to mention the authority of the
employer as part of it, just as she conspicuously failed to list
"upholds property rights" in her condemnation of government, and did
condemn taxes in her condemnation of government.
> I think not. The phrase in question clearly stakes out the
> left-anarchist position, that government is much more than simply the
> formal institutions of the state,
Indeed it does. But then she proceeds to describe that "complex of
authority", and the employer is not in there.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
k4LYevkCLJCY+RMyP5b9D5BnolJ5GlFpoGs7Qhjm
4Ruxlz4IG9ug5OJFJmFaBLmi2PMaVwASvnkS0XKer
Mark Roddy
persists in attempting to defend the indefensible. As he no longer has
any valid arguments to make regarding his claim that Emma Goldman was
transformed late in life into some sort of neo-liberal free-trader
(and then apparently immediately after this transformation she
switched again into an enthusiastic supporter of the Spanish
Anarchists) he is reduced to calling me a liar:
> --
>On Sat, 25 Nov 2000 10:24:27 -0500, Mark Roddy
><ma...@wattanuck.mv.com> wrote:
>> James A. Donald
>> continues his ridiculous assertion that Emma Goldman transformed
>> suddenly into a neo-liberal free trader at the end of her life:
>
>Liar. I made no such assertion.
>
>What I said was
>> > > > There were never any anarcho socialists who were as socialist as
>> > > > today's "anarcho" socialists. Emma Goldman in her early days came
>> > > > fairly close, but in her later days not very close at all.
>
Actually what you said was:
> Emma Goldman's views evolved through time. Her early works grew out
> of crude and simplistic class war theory. At that time she did not
> really understand the US, or the American working class. They were
> alien to her, and she grotesquely misread events and people. She
> improved with time, and in her last works was a firm fan of free
> trade, and somewhat vaguely and unenthusiastically accepted the
> legitimacy of property rights in the means of production.
You indeed did not use the words "neo liberal" rather you used the
phrase "firm fan of free trade", for which I have substituted the term
neo-liberal as "free trade" is a pillar of neo-liberalism. I did not
say you are a neo-liberal, as you are apparantly an anarcho-capitalist
when you are not defending right wing dictators or accusing everyone
on the left as being secretly out to kill you, or spouting
long-discredited racist theories of history.
I have pointed out repeatedly, citing extensively from the essay in
question, how you have deliberately distorted and misprepresented
Emma's ideas. The best response you can come up with is to call me a
liar.
However, please expain your statement quoted above where you say she:
"somewhat vaguely and unenthusiastically accepted the legitimacy of
property rights in the means of production", when in the very essay
you cite as proof she says:
"In art, science, literature, and in departments of life which we
believe to be somewhat removed from our daily living we are hospitable
to research, experiment, and innovation. Yet, so great is our
traditional reverence for authority that an irrational fear arises in
most people when experiment is suggested to them. Surely there is even
greater reason for experiment in the social field than in the
scientific. It is to be hoped, therefore, that humanity or some
portion of it will be given the opportunity in the not too distant
future to try its fortune living and developing under an application
of freedom corresponding to the early stages of an anarchistic
society. The belief in freedom assumes that human beings can
co-operate. They do it even now to a surprising extent, or organized
society would be impossible. If the devices by which men can harm one
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
another, such as private property, are removed and if the worship of
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
authority can be discarded, co-operation will be spontaneous and
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
inevitable, and the individual will find it his highest calling to
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
contribute to the enrichment of social well-being."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I think perhaps you neglected to read the entire essay, as earlier you
said:
>> What could dear Emma have meant by "In addition, government protects
>> the strong at the expense of the weak, provides courts and laws which
>> the rich may scorn and the poor must obey.
>
>Probably much the same as when I said the same things.
>
>Whatever she meant, she did not mean private property rights in the
>means of production.
Really? Please explain then the above quote. Perhaps, given that by
your interpretation she was a "firm fan of free trade" in 1934, but on
the front lines with the Spanish Anarchists in 1936, she changed her
ideology between one paragraph of her 1934 essay, and the next?
James A. Donald
Mark Roddy
> > > continues his ridiculous assertion that Emma Goldman transformed
> > > suddenly into a neo-liberal free trader at the end of her life:
James A. Donald:
> > Liar. I made no such assertion.
> >
> > What I said was
> > > > > > There were never any anarcho socialists who were as
> > > > > > socialist as today's "anarcho" socialists. Emma Goldman
> > > > > > in her early days came fairly close, but in her later days
> > > > > > not very close at all.
Mark Roddy:
>Actually what you said was:
> : : Emma Goldman's views evolved through time. Her early
> : : works grew out
> : : of crude and simplistic class war theory. At that time
> : : she did not really understand the US, or the American
> : : working class. They were
> : : alien to her, and she grotesquely misread events and
> : : people. She improved with time, and in her last works
> : : was a firm fan of free trade, and somewhat vaguely and
> : : unenthusiastically accepted the
> : : legitimacy of property rights in the means of
> : : production.
And this is equivalent to calling her a neoliberal?
In any case, there is no such ideology or program as "neoliberalism".
I called her "less socialist than the so called anarchists in this
newsgroup". Not only is Emma Goldman less socialist than the so
called anarchists in this newgroup, but even Stalin was less socialist
than most of them. Thus calling her "less socialist" is hardly
equivalent to claiming her to have been an anarcho capitalist or a
soulmate of Milton Friedman
If you are disputing whether Emma Goldman supported free trade, of
course she supported free trade, and always did support free trade,
like all real anarchists, like just about everyone of her time that
claimed to be anarchist. However putting tariffs close to the top of
her indictment of government, instead of somwhere near the bottom, is
substantial change of emphasis from her early days, just as it would
be a substantial change of emphasis if Tim Starr put unequal
application of the laws at the top of his list, rather than the
bottom.
> You indeed did not use the words "neo liberal" rather you used the
> phrase "firm fan of free trade", for which I have substituted the
> term neo-liberal as "free trade" is a pillar of neo-liberalism.
There is no such ideology as neo liberalism therefore it cannot have
any pillars, and there are no neo liberals, therefore neither I nor
Emma Goldman can be neo liberals.
> I have pointed out repeatedly, citing extensively from the essay in
> question, how you have deliberately distorted and misprepresented
> Emma's ideas. The best response you can come up with is to call me a
> liar.
If I distorted her ideas, you would not find it necessary to attribute
to me claims I did not make. The very method you employ is evidence
of the accuracy of my account of her ideas.
No matter how much left leaning and socialistic stuff there is in her
essay, it still straightforwardly condemns tariffs, and conspicuously
fails to condemn private ownership in the means of production, and
conspicuously fails to equate the authority of the employer with the
authority of the state.
You have quoted lots of let leaning and socialistic stuff, but nothing
that changes the simple facts of her position that I reported.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
nTeIX+d/roPmyYyLPGTZ5WJcvvdKSAvm7ZgayR30
4Nhu+Bhn73ssqgFfySSQrJQIovABbL0TLVNZBNFP0
Guru George
wrote:
The troubles arise _out of_ neolithic cultures, for sure (where else
can they come from?); but it looks the trouble gets worse, produces
more "pyramidal"-type cultures, the more the fighters can be said to
be co-evolving with plant monocultures - e.g. I'd hazard a guess that
the worst Amerind stuff was the Mayans, Incas, Aztecs.
I'm sure life wasn't picture perfect in the period from 6,000 BCE -
3,000 BCE in Old Europe, but there does seem to to have been a kind of
broad, relatively peaceful stability of culture for a long time,
perhaps matrilineal (though certainly not matriarchal), perhaps
Goddess-centred. There's also evidence of a lot of trade, and general
interaction, shared patterns of various kinds. (BTW, I believe they
recently pushed back the date of weaving, and apparently very fine
weaving at that? I can't remember what to, though.)
And then, as simple domestication of the wild (or "permaculture")
turned into a sort of runaway co-evolution where we selected grain
monocultures, and the grain monocultures "selected" us, human
predation soon ceased to be an occasional thing, and truly became a
way of life - a horrible cultural programming, akin in effect to the
soldier ant's hardwiring. (And maybe there's a kind of deeper
resonance with, e.g., ideologies being kind of like "alien" memetic
monocultures - kind of a Vernor Vinge concept! :-) Humans cutting
down the grain, humans cut down by the grain.
But it's interesting, and a bit worrying, if the academy's biased in
the way your man describes.
Guru George
wrote:
> --
>On Sat, 25 Nov 2000 14:53:19 +0000, Guru George
><gurug...@alphanor.dircon.co.uk> wrote:
[snip]
>If they feasted and drank at stonehenge, we should find more beer mugs
>and wassail bowls.
>
Well, not if the volunteers cleaned up properly afterwards! :-)
>> for me it's quite conceivable that relatively prosperous people
>> with a lot of time on their hands, living in the slow, measured
>> rhythms (some might say inanity!) of a fairly natural way of life,
>> could be inspired by a collective project a la Stonehenge - we all
>> like to contribute to something that will outlast us, whether it's our
>> children or our works (especially as we get older).
>
>If they did that, they would have used a larger number of smaller
>stones. Using really big stones demonstrates the ability to
>coordinate and harness really big teams. Building stonehenge
>demonstrates the capability to raise large armies and hurl them at an
>objective.
>
Well, it demonstrates the capability, but on its own it doesn't
demonstrate the reality, which I guess would be based on other
circumstantial evidence which we maybe don't have. (I don't know -
what _was_ found at the original site, if anything?)
All I can say is, it's not inconceivable to me that people living in
times where they don't have to work much might get up some
deliberately difficult task, to take pride in it for themselves and
their own capabilities, and to leave a mark on posterity. There's
only so much feasting and drinking you can do, and when you're sober
you've got to do something other than sitting around on your arse if
you don't actually have to do much work to live. If the religion is
simple and heartfelt, based on sheer awe of nature, love of life,
etc., and especially the majesty of the sun, moon, sky and stars, it
might inspire people to build such a monument as Stonehenge. Sheer
mass of cold stone has its own magic, that speaks volumes of the
solidity aspect of nature, makes it very present.
Oh fuck it, maybe I'm just too romantic for my own good! ;-)
Mark Roddy
spluttered yet more sophistry under the theory that if one keeps
replying, in a kind of "hit you last" strategy, victory can be
salvaged from what is to say the least an untenable position:
> --
>Mark Roddy
>> > > continues his ridiculous assertion that Emma Goldman transformed
>> > > suddenly into a neo-liberal free trader at the end of her life:
>
>James A. Donald:
>> > Liar. I made no such assertion.
>> >
>> > What I said was
>> > > > > > There were never any anarcho socialists who were as
>> > > > > > socialist as today's "anarcho" socialists. Emma Goldman
>> > > > > > in her early days came fairly close, but in her later days
>> > > > > > not very close at all.
>
>Mark Roddy:
>>Actually what you said was:
>> : : Emma Goldman's views evolved through time. Her early
>> : : works grew out
>> : : of crude and simplistic class war theory. At that time
>> : : she did not really understand the US, or the American
>> : : working class. They were
>> : : alien to her, and she grotesquely misread events and
>> : : people. She improved with time, and in her last works
>> : : was a firm fan of free trade, and somewhat vaguely and
>> : : unenthusiastically accepted the
>> : : legitimacy of property rights in the means of
>> : : production.
>
>And this is equivalent to calling her a neoliberal?
>
Yes jimmy, claiming that Emma was a "firm fan of frade trade" is in
fact very close if not identical to claiming that she was a
neoliberal.
>In any case, there is no such ideology or program as "neoliberalism".
Sure there is. It is the re-emergence of classic political-economic
liberalism as an ideology. For example the USA's Libertarian party is
neo-liberal. Anarcho-capitalists are extreme neo-liberals. But if I
have invented the term neoliberalism then it means whatever I want it
to mean. In which case it means, amoung other things, one who is a
firm fan of free trade.
>
>I called her "less socialist than the so called anarchists in this
>newsgroup".
Well yes you did but that is not what I objected to. It was your
statement that:
>she overtly supported free trade and failed to criticize private
>property in the means of production, and even in her early days she
>was not nearly as socialist as today's "anarcho socialists"
which is just complete nonsense. I have pointed out exactly where in
the essay you misquoted she explicitly attacks private property and an
economic system based on profit. The fact that she does so not in
marxist rhetoric I'm sure you do find annoying, but attack it she
does.
I have also pointed out that whatever intepretation your odd brain
gives to this essay, you have a chronological problem as well in that
two years later she was in Spain with the Spanish Anarchists. How you
reconcile that with your statement above that she somehow was not
nearly as socialist as today's anarcho-socialist when you have
insisted for years that the Spanish Anarchists were in fact
totalitarian socialists is an exercise in extreme donaldism that even
you must find ridiculous. But good luck, do continue the effort, it is
amusing.
James A. Donald
On Mon, 27 Nov 2000 18:20:37 -0500, Mark Roddy
<ma...@wattanuck.mv.com> wrote:
> Yes jimmy, claiming that Emma was a "firm fan of frade trade" is in
> fact very close if not identical to claiming that she was a
> neoliberal.
There is no such thing as a neoliberal.
There is and was no relationship between people's position on the left
right spectrum, and their position on free trade. The fact that Emma
Goldman was pretty far left in no way contradicts what she so plainly
said about tariffs.
The connection between free trade and political orientation is not a
connection to left and right, but a connection to authoritarian and
anti authoritarian. Emma Goldman, whatever her faults, was always
fairly anti authoritarian, so always supported free trade. You are
totalitarian, so naturally you oppose free trade.
James A. Donald:
> > In any case, there is no such ideology or program as
> > "neoliberalism".
Mark Roddy:
> Sure there is. It is the re-emergence of classic political-economic
> liberalism as an ideology.
Then it would be classic liberalism, not neoliberalism.
James A. Donald:
> > I called her "less socialist than the so called anarchists in this
> > newsgroup".
Mark Roddy:
> Well yes you did but that is not what I objected to. It was your
> statement that:
>
> > she overtly supported free trade and failed to criticize private
> > property in the means of production, and even in her early days
> > she was not nearly as socialist as today's "anarcho socialists"
>
> which is just complete nonsense.
Which is just simple fact, as her plain words show, and your efforts
to misrepresent my words implicitly admit. You have quoted lots of
evidence that shows she was left leaning and socialist leaning,
evidence contradicting the words you falsely attribute to me, but
nothing that contradicts her plain words that I quoted, and her
conspicuous silence that you have failed to find a counterexample to.
> I have pointed out exactly where in
> the essay you misquoted she explicitly attacks private property
Liar.
You quoted a sentence sufficiently vague and general that a commie
could interpret it as somehow including an IMPLICIT condemnation of
private property -- but most people would not so interpret it, and it
was followed by concrete and specific material that made its real
meaning clear, specifics you conspicuously failed to quote.
> I have also pointed out that whatever intepretation your odd brain
> gives to this essay, you have a chronological problem as well in
> that two years later she was in Spain with the Spanish Anarchists.
> How you reconcile that with your statement above that she somehow
> was not nearly as socialist as today's anarcho-socialist
Today's "anarcho" socialists are far more socialist than the Spanish
anarchists were. Indeed, today's "anarcho" socialists are
considerably more socialist than Stalin, whereas the Spanish
anarchists were, for the most part, considerably less socialist than
Stalin. See the debate between Marxists and the followers of Bakunin,
where the Marxists accurately enough depicted Bakunin as advocating a
socialism consisting of small private businesses.
> when you have insisted for years that the Spanish Anarchists were in
> fact totalitarian socialists is an exercise in extreme donaldism
There are degrees of totalitarianism. They were less totalitarian
than Stalin, and Stalin less totalitarian than you and most of the
"anarchist" socialists in this newsgroup. As I say in my web page on
the Spanish anarchists:
http://catalog.com/jamesd/cat/
: : To the extent that they were libertarian, they were not
: : socialist and to the extent that they were socialist, they
: : were not libertarian
: :
: : [...]
: :
: : The Catalonian revolution was complex, and many diverse
: : people attempted many diverse things. To some extent men
: : with high ideals took power and failed disastrously in
: : their efforts to implement their ideals. To some extent
: : monsters seized great and terrible power for themselves,
: : so that they could rule and enslave, and they pursued
: : monstrous ends by monstrous means. It is often difficult
: : to tell error from evil.
: :
: : Perhaps those who intended good may have been the
: : majority, but their efforts to restrain terror and
: : oppression were ineffectual at best, and at worst they
: : found themselves accomplices in dreadful crimes.
: :
: : Most anarcho-socialists in Catalonia were perfectly
: : sincere, but these people did not wind up in positions of
: : power, because positions of power were not supposed to
: : exist, or when they did wind up in positions of power
: : they swiftly came to see privilege and power as no more
: : than their due, exactly as many notable anarchists
: : predicted. Those who wound up exercising power were
: : either hypocrites who saw no contradiction between their
: : rhetoric and their conduct, or people who quite openly
: : regarded "libertarian" socialism as a bait and switch
: : gimmick: Promise the workers liberty, and force standard
: : socialism upon them.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
BEUHOB3RjEacs+QF+DULdxPEtkWrMed/OQSPPbs2
4p8ZdAZG6g9pc6UiHSeAi7gKH+wS/p8R/VsguzABF
James A. Donald
On Mon, 27 Nov 2000 18:44:37 +0000, Guru George
<gurug...@alphanor.dircon.co.uk> wrote:
> I'm sure life wasn't picture perfect in the period from 6,000 BCE -
> 3,000 BCE in Old Europe, but there does seem to to have been a kind of
> broad, relatively peaceful stability of culture for a long time,
Stability of over periods substantially longer than the human lifetime
is stagnation, which hints at authoritarian cultures, rather than
peaceful cultures.
Our best guide to the neolithic is modern stone age cultures with no
wheels. These show a wide diversity of institutions, few of them
matrilineal.
Mainland Australian aborigines: Constipated by tradition and
elaborate social institutions which kept the peace very well but
trapped everyone in his place, a very egalitarian society in which old
men had alarmingly great power over young men, and women were dogs,
and dogs were food.
Tasmanian Australian aborigines. A Hobbesian war of all against all,
in which women had even lower status, due their frequent violent
transfer from one owner to the next, with the result that a young
woman cost somewhat less than a good dog, perhaps because it was
harder to steal a dog.
New Guinea commercial big man societies -- fairly peaceful anarchy,
dominated by businessmen only modestly wealthier than their neighbors.
New Guinea war leader big man societies -- hobbesian anarchy, in which
the big man typically gets to rape his followers wives and daughters,
and continually provokes wars justified by alleged witchcraft and
similar nonsense.
Hawaii of King Kamehameha: Stone age totalitarianism.
> And then, as simple domestication of the wild (or "permaculture")
> turned into a sort of runaway co-evolution where we selected grain
> monocultures, and the grain monocultures "selected" us, human
> predation soon ceased to be an occasional thing, and truly became a
> way of life - a horrible cultural programming, akin in effect to the
> soldier ant's hardwiring.
In those societies where we have reliable knowledge, the societies
that the colonialists encountered, there does not seem to have been
any simple relation between the technological level and the political
system. Africa did not have any grain monocultures, and African
political institutions varied from bad to worse.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
NpvFaTKw6yA1KaR9IVS2Flab3oLrDy+GLphDkN9n
4UBkpAkLlt+Co6rnIpFqNBFD/Cl7SMfvWNh0bP8Gm
Guru George
<ma...@wattanuck.mv.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 25 Nov 2000 16:45:09 +0000, Guru George
><gurug...@alphanor.dircon.co.uk> joins into the chorus of
>half-anarchists who for some reason either a) wish they had a champion
>as eloquent as Emma Goldman; or b) will say anything to defend their
>hero, the paranoid Mr. Donald, who boxed himself into a corner
>claiming that Joe Stalin was an anarchist and Emma Goldman a
>neo-liberal free trader:
>
>>On Sat, 25 Nov 2000 10:24:27 -0500, Mark Roddy
>><ma...@wattanuck.mv.com> wrote:
>>
>>>On Fri, 24 Nov 2000 19:13:15 GMT, jam...@echeque.com (James A. Donald)
>>>continues his ridiculous assertion that Emma Goldman transformed
>>>suddenly into a neo-liberal free trader at the end of her life:
>>>
>>>> --
[snip]
>>This is absurd.
>
>It is your claim then that (A != A)?
>
No, I meant your inquisition is absurd. That wasn't James' claim, so
far as I can see. His claim was more modest, a claim of transition
from more to less socialist. "Firm fan" was probably a bit of an
exaggeration, but his measured statement is clear enough. He said:
"Emma Goldman's views evolved through time. Her early works grew out
of crude and simplistic class war theory. At that time she did not
really understand the US, or the American working class. They were
alien to her, and she grotesquely misread events and people. She
improved with time, and in her last works was a firm fan of free
trade, and somewhat vaguely and unenthusiastically accepted the
legitimacy of property rights in the means of production."
That seems to me to be consistent with Emma's essay, and you're really
wasting your time with this inquisitorial nonsense.
Tell you what Mark, if you find you can honestly say, hand on heart:
"although I am against the bad habit of obedience in general, against
government in the general sense, I am also against government in the
strict state sense because NUMBER ONE, it "exacts taxes from
production" and NUMBER TWO it "creates tariffs, which prevent free
exchange"; if you can say this without puking, I'll admit that maybe
I'm wrong in joining James in believing that modern day anarchists are
more socialist/Marxoid (and a darn sight more stupid) than some of the
great anarchists of the past. Till then, give your blood pressure a
rest.
James isn't claiming a turn to neo-liberalism, he's just claiming
something like this: that some anarchists of the past were as sensible
as some modern left-wing democratic parties tend to be nowadays - e.g.
Emma seems to have grudgingly accepted the necessity for a _free_
market (i.e. a market free of government interference), a necessity to
keep the state out of economic affairs (partly because she seems to
realise that that's one of the main means whereby the rich oppress the
poor); at least in the interim, until her ideal society (which is
admittedly something envisaged without private property) could be
attained.
The issue is confusing because of the arbitrary left anarchist
distinction between "possession" and "private property". I presume
that a leftist anarchist would square their growing sense of realism
with their socialist rhetoric by extending "possession" to the tools
and materials of small-time capitalists, collectives, etc., and
reserving the boo-term "private property" for Whatever Belongs To
Really Big Capitalists Who Use Government, the kind we can all hiss
off the stage.
>>The full Emma quote you posted is clearly meant as a
>>response to something like "Hey Emma, I hear you're agin' the
>>government!?" And her response is clearly that yes, she is against
>>the government, and for such-and-such reasons, but then she goes on to
>>wisely remind her interlocutor that it's not just government that's
>>the problem, but deeper, the bad habit of obedience and all the rest
>>of it ("government" in the non-state sense), that has government in
>>the state sense as one of its primary manifestations.
>
>You know that? You have some insight into Emma's intentions, perhaps
>some contemporary commentary? That somehow from 1934 (the date of this
>essay,) when according to you folks she had turned into a neo-liberal,
>she must then have had a second change of heart in 1936 when she went
>to spain to support the Spanish Anarchists? Perhaps you will claim
>that the CNT was also prone to individualist-anarchist ideas?
>
Oh Grand Inquisitor, I merely humbly submitted my interpretation of
what she was saying. Is that all right? The quote has an internal
logic that I was trying to pick out, based on the sentence "I have
often been asked why I maintained such a non-compromising antagonism
to government and in what way I have found myself oppressed by it".
Please forgive me for my presumption, I beseech you <cringes>.
As for what Emma did next, I couldn't give a flying fuck. Perhaps her
socialist idealism got the better of her in the end, perhaps she
genuinely thought the Spanish anarchists would protect "free
exchange". Who knows what goes on in the self-contradictory mind of a
socialist anarchist?
>>
>>IOW, she's attacking government in the state sense AND the thing that
>>supports government in the state sense, she's attacking the sense of
>>_legitimacy_ we stupidly give to others' attempts to dominate us via
>>the use of social institutions. Her broader target is "the whole
>>complex of authority and institutional domination", which is opposed
>>to "individual values". Since free exchange and free trade must be
>
>She never mentioned the words: "free trade", that was a simple
>invention of Mr. Donald. Free exchange on the other hand, is exactly
>what humans engage in when the whole institution of domination and
>subjugation is torn down.
>
Is there a difference between "free exchange" and "free trade", other
than that "free exchange" is more general?
>The issue here appears to be whether we are to interpret Emma's
>statement that:
>
>"However, it is not only government in the sense of the state which is
>destructive of every individual value and quality. It is the whole
>complex of authority and institutional domination which strangles
>life."
>
>Is not to be taken literally, that is not as a statement that
>government is more than simply the state, but that there is government
>and then there is something else that helps government to dominate us.
>
>I think not. The phrase in question clearly stakes out the
>left-anarchist position, that government is much more than simply the
>formal institutions of the state, it is the whole system of dominance,
>including of course the economic system, which she goes on to
>explicitly attack, although not in the marxist class warfare terms
>that would make you and jimmy happy as then you could go on to plan B:
>all anarchists are crytpo-leninists.
>
>The phrase in question delineates the ideological difference between
>left and right anarchism. For you half-anarchists the state is
>government and your proposals are simply the elimination of the formal
>institutions of the state. Full anarchists recognize that government
>is more than simply the formal institutions, it is the whole complex
>of authority and institutional domination which strangles life. Gee
>that last phrase sounds familiar.
>
Never mind the fancy stuff about more or less general senses of
"government", are you AT LEAST against the government in the state
sense to the degree that she obviously is, and for the same reasons?
Could you openly, brazenly say, as she did: "I am against government
because NUMBER ONE, it "exacts taxes from production" and NUMBER TWO
it "creates tariffs, which prevent free exchange"?
No socialist would say that; I don't think somebody like you or
Chomsky would say that. But she did. Therefore whatever kind of
anarchist she is, she's not wholly _your_ kind of anarchist. Can you
accept that simple fact, just as a-cs can accept that she's not wholly
_our_ kind of anarchist either?
>>counted on the side of individual values, for her (since it's part of
>>the list of things government destroys), then she obviously has no
>>problem it, and indeed, if consistent, she must want to protect it
>>from government in the non-state sense AS WELL AS government in the
>>state sense!
>
>Certainly anarchists have no problem at all with the free exchange of
>goods and services. But that is not the same as being for the economic
>domination of the few over the many represented by capitalism. Left
>anarchists generally think, as Emma did, that one cannot separate 'the
>state' from 'the institutions of dominance' including the economic
>dominance of capitalism.
>
That's as it may be, but she obviously thought that government in the
state sense was a bad thing because it taxes production and its
tariffs hamper free exchange, both of which she evidently counts as
"individual values".
>However lest you think that Emma was defending neo-liberalism, perhaps
>you would reflect on this paragraph, which you must have missed when
>you skimmed the original:
>
>"In art, science, literature, and in departments of life which we
>believe to be somewhat removed from our daily living we are hospitable
>to research, experiment, and innovation. Yet, so great is our
>traditional reverence for authority that an irrational fear arises in
>most people when experiment is suggested to them. Surely there is even
>greater reason for experiment in the social field than in the
>scientific. It is to be hoped, therefore, that humanity or some
>portion of it will be given the opportunity in the not too distant
>future to try its fortune living and developing under an application
>of freedom corresponding to the early stages of an anarchistic
>society. The belief in freedom assumes that human beings can
>co-operate. They do it even now to a surprising extent, or organized
>society would be impossible. If the devices by which men can harm one
>another, such as private property, are removed and if the worship of
>authority can be discarded, co-operation will be spontaneous and
>inevitable, and the individual will find it his highest calling to
>contribute to the enrichment of social well-being."
>
>Whatever could Emma have meant by that last sentence? And as your
>reading skills appear amiss, it is that part where she says "such as
>private property, are removed", that sentence, that you should reflect
>on.
>
I missed that. But it wouldn't've changed my post radically.
The pious, wistful reference here is to the abolition of private
property as a hoped-for social experiment. It's hardly a call to the
frigging barricades.
We're still in the position where she's less socialist than you lot,
and more importantly, practically speaking, surprisingly close to us
(in terms of being against government in the state sense for some of
the things we're against it for) - unless you can say, hand on your
heart, that you are against government because it taxes production and
because its tariffs prevent free exchange.
>>
>>As James says, the list of things she's agin' the government for is
>>nothing an anarcho-capitalist would disagree with (maybe only in
>>emphasis, depending on whether they "came from" the right or left,
>>which would make them aware of different problem areas).
>
>
>Oh really? So you, a known half-anarchist, would agree with:
>
>"Of course those steeped in the present find it impossible to realize
>that gain as an incentive could be replaced by another force that
>would motivate people to give the best that is in them. To be sure,
>profit and gain are strong factors in our present system. They have to
>be. Even the rich feel a sense of insecurity. That is, they want to
>protect what they have and to strengthen themselves. The gain and
>profit motives, however, are tied up with more fundamental motives.
>When a man provides himself with clothes and shelter, if he is the
>money-maker type, he continues to work to establish his status--to
>give himself prestige of the sort admired in the eyes of his
>fellow-men. Under different and more just conditions of life these
>more fundamental motives could be put to special uses, and the profit
>motive, which is only their manifestation, will pass away."
>
>You too are against a system that motivates through profit?
>
>And if so how exactly does half-anarchism or right-libertarianism, or
>anarcho-capitalism, or whatever it is you call your ideology cause the
>different and more just conditions where the profit motive vanishes?
>
Motive schmotive. I don't believe the same things as Emma Goldman,
neither does James, neither do you, obviously. The animus against the
profit motive is based on a bunch of fallacies - e.g. that wealth is
of a fixed quantity, that value is objective, that someone's gain must
logically be another's loss. If those propositions were true, then we
would have to agree with you. Since they're not - since wealth is
(generally) created, not found, and is not of a fixed quantity; since
economic value is subjective (an evaluation, not a property intrinsic
to objects); and since in an exchange, both can gain - then there can
be no moral problem with the profit motive. Since there is no fixed
pie that must be shared equally if it to be shared in a moral way,
there can be no problem with people wanting bigger pie slices.
But none of this alters the facts that her list of indictments of
government in the state sense include, first of all, that it exacts
taxes from production, and that it creates tariffs which prevent free
exchange; nor does it alter the fact that this is a rather
un-socialist thing to say.
Matt
<gurug...@alphanor.dircon.co.uk> wrote:
> Never mind the fancy stuff about more or less general senses of
> "government", are you AT LEAST against the government in the state
> sense to the degree that she obviously is, and for the same reasons?
> Could you openly, brazenly say, as she did: "I am against government
> because NUMBER ONE, it "exacts taxes from production" and NUMBER TWO
> it "creates tariffs, which prevent free exchange"?
LOL, Roddy would never say that. He is one of those big government
anarchists. ;-)
Or perhaps he is not a self described anarchist, but one of those
fence-sitters like Tom Wetzel who argue for anarcho-socialism, attack
its critics, but then go on to claim they are not anarchists after all,
and so are not subject to criticisms of anarcho-socialism. Who knows.