>>>"Economically he will permit no exclusive possession of
the sources of life in order to preserve his opportunity of
free access.">>>

>>>>> RS: Free access is economic nonsense because scarcity
is an economic fact.>>>>>

     So.. then we all die together instead of only 3/4 of us
going! In other words, perhaps the species just isn't meant
to continue existing then?

     I mean if I'm going to be excluded and die so that another
may live, because of some absurd notion that a right to private
ownership to the means of production justly determines those who
can afford to purchase their freedom and secure one's survival
for a time in the future when a resource may become scarce...??
Naww... just doesn't make too much sense to me. Probably because
there are so many better solutions for resource scarcity than
the enforcement of private ownership for the few.

     And there is no call for alarm.. We socialists don't succumb
to the scare tactic of resource scarcity as an economic factor.
Indeed, the line of reasoning behind the socialist's economic
argument fully takes into account the problem and provides rational
solutions...


>>> "But why not give each according to the value of his work?"
you ask. Because there is no way by which value can be measured.>>>

>>>>>RS: Utility measures value and so the above is also nonsense.>>>>>

     Utilitarianism and/or pragmaticism has it's place in our
subjective evaluations, but it certainly is only a single
consideration in the entire socio-economic scheme of things.
The STV (Subjective Theory Of Value) also is flawed by the
same sort of inherent principled difficulties..

      And yes, the consequences of our actions, or the measurable
usefulness or practical results of our behaviors are taken into
account, but under a socially useful agenda, rather than in terms
of an individual's personal gain over another's loss.

      There can be no way to determine a sense of individual
meritocracy in regards to socially created wealth. Scientists
have known this for years and have accepted this truism, and
while they may take partial credit and fame, they all agree
unanimously that no one is alone in their discoveries. This
truism is no different in any other field of endeavor.

    RJE

O.k.. Boys;

I suppose that one of us women should say something
here!...Laughing right out loud..

One of the editors of the CV deals with culturally
oppressive notions.. like semantic gender distinctions
made in our language use that should not be gender
specific at all. For example many job discriptions should
not have to take on gender identification titles like those
of waitress or waiter..and although we've come a ways on
this-- now we use the term food server.. or salesperson
instead of salesman, there are still many examples left
to tackle.. We can draw upon the fact that in the day when
there were no females in such professions we have always
made due without such gender indentifications..like
with judge or lawyer or doctor...there never was a judger,
and judgess, or lawyer, and lawyeress, or doctor and
doctoress .. I find it interesting that where women were
allowed to participate in any such field of labor that
society decided to create this separation, when clearly
there was no real need to do so. The only reason I can think
of is that discrimination was so deeply embedded and ingrained
into us culturally that the use was not even thought of
in those terms.. However, the employer probably loved the
idea of being able to distinguish between male and female
applicants!

I believe it was Adam Buick that first brought to
my attention the idea of signing off with nothing more
than one's initials.. that way there would be no preconceived
stero-typying prejudices (even if unconsciously or unintentional),
creeping in from our cultural indoctrinations.

That might be a good idea, me thinks!

RJE

"Economically he will permit no exclusive possession of the sources
of life in order to preserve his opportunity of free access."

RS: Free access is economic nonsense because scarcity is an economic
fact.

"But why not give each according to the value of his work?" you ask.
Because there is no way by which value can be measured.

RS: Utility measures value and so the above is also nonsense.

Regards,
Richard Sherratt

> Under government and exploitation there can be neither equal liberty
> nor equal opportunity - hence all the evils and troubles of present-
> day society.

     Government is any form of bureaucracy to carry out the will of the
people. Exploitation is not dependent on government.

> Communist Anarchism is based on the understanding of this
> incontrovertible truth.


     Truth? Which Truth is this? Whose truth?

> Life on such a basis fully satisfies the demands of justice.

     What are the demands of justice?

> You are
> to be entirely free, and everybody else is to enjoy equal liberty,
> which means that no one has a right to compel or force another, for
> coercion of any kind is interference with your liberty.

     There is a difference between personal liberty and societal liberty.

> Similarly equal opportunity is the heritage of all. Monopoly and the
> private ownership of the means of existence are therefore eliminated
> as an abridgement of the equal opportunity of all.

     Eliminated? Means of existence? Confusing terms. Monopoly capitalism and
the private ownership of the means of production may work against equal
opportunity for all.

> If we keep in mind this simple principle of equal liberty and
> opportunity, we shall be able to solve the questions involved in
> building a society of Communist Anarchism.

     And those questions are...?

> Politically, then, man will recognize no authority which can force or
> coerce him. Government will be abolished.

     Oops, a little discontinuity here! Why will man recognize no authority.
It's not that way now. How will man change? And why? Who is going to abolish
the bureaucracy of carrying out the wishes of the people?

> Economically he will permit no exclusive possession of the sources of
> life in order to preserve his opportunity of free access.

     He? Sources of life?

> In a nutshell, then, the meaning of Communist Anarchism is this: the
> abolition of government, of coercive authority and all its agencies,
> and joint ownership - which means free and equal participation in the
> general work and welfare.

     This confuses the state with government. there must, even in an
anarchist society, be some means of government, though not a state form of
government.

     No need to go on. This is a thoroughly misplaced perception. This
qualifies under the "baffle them with bullshit" rubric.

     Michael

Hayduke wrote:

> on 3/7/04 10:19 PM, Kete F. at kete_f@... wrote:
>
> > Yes, millennia!  For as long as there has been history, there has been a
> > state, a rule of a minority, not a minority in the mainstream media's
> > sense but a minority meaning a comparative few number of the population
> > governing the rest, which greatly outnumber the government, and they
> > justify this because of many reasons including criminals will be free to
> > murder or whatever, when the bourgeoisie are the real thieves who steal
> > everything and murder to keep it all.
>
>     This turns out not to be the case. State society has only existed
> 5,000
> to 8,000 years. Before that, humans lived in non-state societies, in which
> governance was held locally. It's helpful to be aware of history and
> prehistory.

5,000 to 8,000 years are five to eight millennia!

> How does one stop the capitalist ruling class? How does one make
> capitalism cease to exist?

"By any means necessary"! (Malcolm X)

> > It has occurred a couple times in recorded history, but both times were
> > defeated.  In Russia, anarchists were defeated by the Bolsheviks, and in
> > Spain, anarchists were defeated by fascists.
>
>     In other words, attempts at non-state societies have always been
> defeated by external, state forces. How will that change to allow a
> non-state society to flourish? Doesn't it require the entire world, all 6
> billion people to move toward a non-state society simultaneously?

How would I know?!

> > the world will be one society.  as one society, we'll have whatever we
> > need.  if a farm in "Nebraska" needs a replacement part from "Australia"
> > then they can have it 'cause it will be a gift economy.
>
>     This is totally unrealistic. The world will never be one society. It's
> just not the way humans organize themselves. Why think that humans would
> ever do something  so, well, unhuman?

Call me a pinko commie!

> > Well, in theory, it will work.
>
>     Not in theory, in imagination and hope. This is not a theory, it is an
> unrealistic supposition, with no evidence from human behavior to suggest
> that it will ever succeed.

If you say so!

> > There just seems to be so much to go
> > around.  I know for a fact that the USA wastes more than enough food to
> > feed the world even though Africans are starving to death, everyday.
> > For one thing, the meat diet is so wasteful.  You have to clear land for
> > the cattle for example.  Vegan diets are less wasteful.
>
>     Yes, this is all very true. yet humans continue to prefer eating
> meat in
> many societies. There is no way to force 6 billion people to stop eating
> meat.

OK!

> >> Why would peple act differently than they act now?
> >
> > Well, it will be a whole new world.  Our children won't be
> > psychologically traumatized before they leave the womb and until the day
> > they die.  Society won't be based on competition.  It will be based on
> > cooperation.
>
>     This is like saying "The Rapture will. . . ."

Sure it is!  It's anything close to saying, "The Rapture is" anything!

> take us all up to Heaven and we'll
> live in peace and harmony." Human beings are they way human beings are
> now.
> There will never be a whole new world. The human word will be different in
> the future, but humans will continue to act then as humans act now.

Then, how will you ever get your non-state, non-market economy?!

> > om, i didn't know you work at a public radio station, but it's still a
> > state-run station; so it still needs to be decentralized.  notice that
> > even though public officials are supposed to answer to the public, they
> > don't.  they answer to the ruling class.
>
>     You obviously know very little about public radio stations! Better
> stick
> to subjects you're familiar with!

Whatever, bub.  Do you think politicians are recallable by the public??
I bet you do!

> > Well, there's lots of people who don't believe.  I'm sure somebody else
> > could give you a convincing argument.
>
>     It's not a matter of belief. Belief is the province of religion.
> Either
> there is evidence to support such a proposition or there is not. What
> is the
> evidence?
>
>     Michael

I was saying, maybe somebody else could provide you with that evidence,
neighbor!

Anarcho-communism

  Alexander Berkman: ABC of Anarchism. Will Communist Anarchism Work?

As we have seen in the preceding chapter, no life can be free and
secure, harmonious and satisfactory unless it is built on principles
of justice and fair play. The first requirement of justice is equal
liberty and opportunity.

Under government and exploitation there can be neither equal liberty
nor equal opportunity - hence all the evils and troubles of present-
day society.

Communist Anarchism is based on the understanding of this
incontrovertible truth. It is founded on the principle of non-
invasiveness and non-coercion; in other words, on liberty and
opportunity.

Life on such a basis fully satisfies the demands of justice. You are
to be entirely free, and everybody else is to enjoy equal liberty,
which means that no one has a right to compel or force another, for
coercion of any kind is interference with your liberty.

Similarly equal opportunity is the heritage of all. Monopoly and the
private ownership of the means of existence are therefore eliminated
as an abridgement of the equal opportunity of all.

If we keep in mind this simple principle of equal liberty and
opportunity, we shall be able to solve the questions involved in
building a society of Communist Anarchism.

Politically, then, man will recognize no authority which can force or
coerce him. Government will be abolished.

Economically he will permit no exclusive possession of the sources of
life in order to preserve his opportunity of free access.

Monopoly of land, private ownership of the machinery of production,
distribution, and communication can therefore not be tolerated under
Anarchy. Opportunity to use what every one needs in order to live
must be free to all.

In a nutshell, then, the meaning of Communist Anarchism is this: the
abolition of government, of coercive authority and all its agencies,
and joint ownership - which means free and equal participation in the
general work and welfare.

"You said that Anarchy will secure economic equality," remarks your
friend. "Does that mean equal pay for all?"

It does. Or, what amounts to the same, equal participation in the
public welfare. Because, as we already know, labor is social. No man
can create anything all by himself, by his own efforts. Now, then, if
labor is social, it stands to reason that the results of it, the
wealth produced, must also be social, belong to the collectivity. No
person can therefore justly lay claim to the exclusive ownership of
the social wealth. It is to be enjoyed by all alike.

"But why not give each according to the value of his work?" you ask.

Because there is no way by which value can be measured. That is the
difference between value and price. Value is what a thing is worth,
while price is what it can be sold or bought for in the market. What
a thing is worth no one really can tell. Political economists
generally claim that the value of a commodity is the amount of labor
required to produce it, of "socially necessary labor," as Marx says.
But evidently it is not a just standard of measurement. Suppose the
carpenter worked three hours to make a kitchen chair, while the
surgeon took only half an hour to perform an operation that saved
your life. If the amount of labor used determines value, then the
chair is worth more than your life. Obvious nonsense, of course. Even
if you should count in the years of study and practice the surgeon
needed to make him capable of performing the operation, how are you
going to decide what "an hour of operating" is worth? The carpenter
and mason also had to be trained before they could do their work
properly, but you don't figure in those years of apprenticeship when
you contract for some work with them. Besides, there is also to be
considered the particular ability and aptitude that every worker,
writer, artist or physician must exercise in his labors. That is a
purely individual, personal factor. How are you going to estimate its
value?

That is why value cannot be determined. The same thing may be worth a
lot to one person while it is worth nothing or very little to
another. It may be worth much or little even to the same person, at
different times. A diamond, a painting, or a book may be worth a
great deal to one man and very little to another. A loaf of bread
will be worth a great deal to you when you are hungry, and much less
when you are not. Therefore the real value of a thing cannot be
ascertained; it is an unknown quantity.

But the price is easily found out. If there are five loaves of bread
to be had and ten persons want to get a loaf each, the price of bread
will rise. If there are ten loaves and only five buyers, then it will
fall. Price depends on supply and demand.

The exchange of commodities by means of prices leads to profit
making, to taking advantage and exploitation; in short, to some form
of capitalism. If you do away with profits, you cannot have any price
system, nor any system of wages or payment. That means that exchange
must be according to value. But as value is uncertain or not
ascertainable, exchange must consequently be free, without "equal"
value, since such does not exist. In other words, labor and its
products must be exchanged without price, without profit, freely,
according to necessity. This logically leads to ownership in common
and to joint use. Which is a sensible, just, and equitable system,
and is known as Communism.

"But is it just that all should share alike?" you demand. "The man of
brains and the dullard, the efficient and the inefficient, all the
same? Should there be no distinction, no special recognition for
those of ability?"

Let me in turn ask you, my friend, shall we punish the man whom
nature has not endowed as generously as his stronger or more talented
neighbor? Shall we add injustice to the handicap nature has put upon
him? All we can reasonably expect from any man is that he do his
best - can any one do more? And if John's best is not as good as his
brother Jim's, it is his misfortune, but in no case a fault to be
punished.

There is nothing more dangerous than discrimination. The moment you
begin discriminating against the less capable, you establish
conditions that breed dissatisfaction and resentment: you invite
envy, discord, and strife. You would think it brutal to withhold from
the less capable the air or water they need. Should not the same
principle apply to the other wants of man? After all, the matter of
food, clothing, and shelter is the smallest item in the world's
economy.

The surest way to get one to do his best is not by discriminating
against him, but by treating him on an equal footing with others.
That is the most effective encouragement and stimulus. It is just and
human.

"But what will you do with the lazy man, the man who does not want to
work?" inquires your friend.

That is an interesting question, and you will probably be very much
surprised when I say that there is really no such thing as laziness.
What we call a lazy man is generally a square man in a round hole.
That is, the right man in the wrong place. And you will always find
that when a fellow is in the wrong place, he will be inefficient or
shiftless. For so-called laziness and a good deal of inefficiency are
merely unfitness, misplacement. If you are compelled to do the thing
you are unfitted for by your inclinations or temperament, you will be
inefficient at it; if you are forced to do work you are not
interested in, you will be lazy at it.

Every one who has managed affairs in which large numbers of men were
employed can substantiate this. Life in prison is a particularly
convincing proof of the truth of it and, after all, present-day
existence for most people is but that of a larger jail. Every prison
warden will tell you that inmates put to tasks for which they have no
ability or interest are always lazy and subject to continuous
punishment. But as soon as these "refractory convicts" are assigned
to work that appeals to their leanings, they become "model men," as
the jailers term them.

Russia has also signally demonstrated the verity of it. It has shown
how little we know of human potentialities and of the effect of
environment upon them - how we mistake wrong conditions for bad
conduct. Russian refugees, leading a miserable and insignificant life
in foreign lands, on returning home and finding in the Revolution a
proper field for their activities, have accomplished most wonderful
work in their right sphere, have developed into brilliant organizers,
builders of railroads and creators of industry. Among the Russian
names best known abroad to-day are those of men considered shiftless
and inefficient under conditions where their ability and energies
could not find proper application.

That is human nature: efficiency in a certain direction means
inclination and capability for it; industry and application signify
interest. That is why there is so much inefficiency and laziness in
the world to-day. For who indeed is nowadays in his right place? Who
works at what he really likes and is interested in?

Under present conditions there is little choice given the average man
to devote himself to the tasks that appeal to his leanings and
preferences. The accident of your birth and social station generally
predetermines your trade or profession. The son of the financier does
not, as a rule, become a woodchopper, though he may be more fit to
handle logs than bank accounts. The middle classes send their
children to colleges which turn them into doctors, lawyers, or
engineers. But if your parents were workers who could not afford to
let you study, the chances are that you will take any job which is
offered you, or enter some trade that happens to afford you an
apprenticeship. Your particular situation will decide your work or
profession, not your natural preferences, inclinations, or abilities.
Is it any wonder, then, that most people, the overwhelming majority,
in fact, are misplaced? Ask the first hundred men you meet whether
they would have selected the work they are doing, or whether they
would continue in it, if they were free to choose, and ninety-nine of
them will admit that they would prefer some other occupation.
Necessity and material advantages, or the hope of them, keep most
people in the wrong place.

It stands to reason that a person can give the best of himself only
when his interest is in his work, when he feels a natural attraction
to it, when he likes it. Then he will be industrious and efficient.
The things the craftsman produced in the days before modern
capitalism were objects of joy and beauty, because the artisan loved
his work. Can you expect the modern drudge in the ugly huge factory
to make beautiful things? He is part of the machine, a cog in the
soulless industry, his labor mechanical, forced. Add to this his
feeling that he is not working for himself but for the benefit of
some one else, and that he hates his job or at best has no interest
in it except that it secures his weekly wage. The result is shirking,
inefficiency, laziness.

The need of activity is one of the most fundamental urges of man.
Watch the child and see how strong is his instinct for action, for
movement, for doing something. Strong and continuous. It is the same
with the healthy man. His energy and vitality demand expression.
Permit him to do the work of his choice, the thing he loves, and his
application will know neither weariness nor shirking. You can observe
this in the factory worker when he is lucky enough to own a garden or
a patch of ground to raise some flowers or vegetables on. Tired from
his toil as he is, he enjoys the hardest labor for his own benefit,
done from free choice.

Under Anarchism each will have the opportunity of following whatever
occupation will appeal to his natural inclinations and aptitude. Work
will become a pleasure instead of the deadening drudgery it is to-
day. Laziness will be unknown, and the things created by interest and
love will be objects of beauty and joy.

"But can labor ever become a pleasure?" you demand.

Labor is toil to-day, unpleasant, exhausting, and wearisome. But
usually it is not the work itself that is so hard: it is the
conditions under which you are compelled to labor that make it so.
Particularly the long hours, unsanitary workshops, bad treatment,
insufficient pay, and so on. Yet the most unpleasant work could be
made lighter by improving the environment. Take gutter cleaning, for
instance. It is dirty work and poorly paid for. But suppose, for
example, that you should get 20 dollars a day instead of s dollars
for such work. You will immediately find your job much lighter and
pleasanter. The number of applicants for the work would increase at
once. Which means that men are not lazy, not afraid of hard and
unpleasant labor if it is properly rewarded. But such work is
considered menial and is looked down upon. Why is it considered
menial? Is it not most useful and absolutely necessary? Would not
epidemics sweep our city but for the street and gutter cleaners?
Surely, the men who keep our town clean and sanitary are real
benefactors, more vital to our health and welfare than the family
physician. From the viewpoint of social usefulness the street cleaner
is the professional colleague of the doctor: the latter treats us
when we are ill, but the former helps us keep well. Yet the physician
is looked up to and respected, while the street cleaner is slighted.
Why? Is it because the street cleaner's work is dirty? But the
surgeon often has much "dirtier" jobs to perform. Then why is the
street cleaner scorned? Because he earns little.

In our perverse civilization things are valued according to money
standards. Persons doing the most useful work are lowest in the
social scale when their employment is ill paid. Should something
happen, however, that would cause the street cleaner to get 100
dollars a day, while the physician earns so, the "dirty" street
cleaner would immediately rise in estimation and social station, and
from the "filthy laborer" he would become the much-sought man of good
income.

You see that it is pay, remuneration, the wage scale, not worth or
merit, that to-day-under our system of profit determines the value of
work as well as the "worth" of a man.

A sensible society - under Anarchist conditions - would have entirely
different standards of judging such matters. People will then be
appreciated according to their willingness to be socially useful.

Can you perceive what great changes such a new attitude would
produce? Every one yearns for the respect and admiration of his
fellow men; it is a tonic we cannot live without. Even in prison I
have seen how the clever pickpocket or safe blower longs for the
appreciation of his friends and how hard he tries to earn their good
estimate of him. The opinions of our circle rule our behavior. The
social atmosphere to a profound degree determines our values and our
attitude. Your personal experience will tell you how true this is,
and therefore you will not be surprised when I say that in an
Anarchist society it will be the most useful and difficult toil that
men will seek rather than the lighter job. If you consider this, you
will have no more fear of laziness or shirking.

But the hardest and most onerous task could be made easier and
cleaner than is the case to-day. The capitalist employer does not
care to spend money, if he can help it, to make the toil of his
employees pleasanter and brighter. He will introduce improvements
only when he hopes to gain larger profits thereby, but he will not go
to extra expense out of purely humanitarian reasons. Though here I
must remind you that the more intelligent employers are beginning to
see that it pays to improve their factories, make them more sanitary
ant hygienic, and generally better the conditions of labor. They
realize it is a good investment: it results in the increased
contentment and consequent greater efficiency of their workers. The
principle is sound. To-day, of course, it is being exploited for the
sole purpose of bigger profits. But under Anarchism it would be
applied not for the sake of personal gain, but in the interest of the
workers' health, for the lightening of labor. Our progress in
mechanics is so great and continually advancing that most of the hard
toil could be eliminated by the use of modern machinery and labor
saving devices. In many industries, as in coal mining, for instance,
new safety and sanitary appliances are not introduced because of the
masters' indifference to the welfare of their employees and on
account of the expenditure involved. But in a non-profit system
technical science would work exclusively with the aim of making labor
safer, healthier, lighter, and more pleasant.

"But however light you'll make work, eight hours a day of it is no
pleasure," objects your friend.

You are perfectly right. But did you ever stop to consider why we
have to work eight hours a day? Do you know that not so long ago
people used to slave twelve and fourteen hours, and that it is still
the case in backward countries like China and India?

It can be statistically proven that three hours' work a day, at most,
is sufficient to feed, shelter, and clothe the world and supply it
not only with necessities but also with all modern comforts of life.
The point is that not one man in five is to-day doing any productive
work. The entire world is supported by a small minority of toilers.

First of all, consider the amount of work done in present-day society
that would become unnecessary under Anarchist conditions. Take the
armies and navies of the world, an] think how many millions of men
would be released for useful and productive effort once war is
abolished, as would of course be the case under Anarchy.

In every country to-day labor supports the millions who contribute
nothing to the welfare of the country, who create nothing, and
perform no useful work whatever. Those millions are only consumers,
without being producers. In the United States, for instance, out of a
population of 120 millions there are less than 30 million workers,
farmers included. A similar situation is the rule in every land.

Is it any wonder that labor has to toil long hours, since there are
only 30 workers to every 120 persons? The large business classes with
their clerks, assistants, agents, and commercial travelers; the
courts with their judges, record keepers, bailiffs, etc.; the legion
of attorneys with their staffs; the militia and police forces; the
churches and monasteries; the charity institutions and poorhouses;
the prisons with their wardens, officers, keepers, and the non-
productive convict population; the army of advertisers and their
helpers, whose business it is to persuade you to buy what you don't
want or need, not to speak of the numerous elements that live
luxuriously in entire idleness. All these mount into the millions in
every country.

Now, if all those millions would apply themselves to useful labor,
would the worker have to drudge eight hours a day? If 30 men have to
put in eight hours to perform a certain task, how much less time
would it 'take 120 men to accomplish the same thing? I don't want to
burden you with statistics, but there are enough data to prove that
less than 3 hours of daily physical effort would be sufficient to do
the world's work.

Can you doubt that even the hardest toil would become a pleasure
instead of the cursed slavery it is at present, if only three hours a
day were required, and that under the most sanitary and hygienic
conditions, in an atmosphere of brotherhood and respect for labor?

But it is not difficult to foresee the day when even those short
hours would be still further reduced. For we are constantly improving
our technical methods, and new labor saving machinery is being
invented all the time. Mechanical progress means less work and
greater comforts, as you can see by comparing life in the United
States with that in China or India. In the latter countries they toil
long hours to secure the barest necessities of existence, while in
America even the average laborer enjoys a much higher standard of
living with fewer hours of work. The advance of science and invention
signifies more leisure for the pursuits we love.

I have sketched in large, broad outline the possibilities of i e
under a sensible system where profit is abolishes. It is not
necessary to go into the minute details of such a social condition:
sufficient has been said to show that Communist Anarchism means the
greatest material welfare with a life of liberty for each and all.

We can visualize the time when labor will have become a pleasant
exercise, a joyous application of physical effort to the needs of the
world. Man will then look back at our present day and wonder that
work could ever have been slavery, ant question the sanity of a
generation that suffered less than one fifth of its population to
earn the bread for the rest by the sweat of their brow while those
others idled and wasted their time, their health, and the people's
wealth. They will wonder that the freest satisfaction of man's needs
could have ever been considered as anything but self-evident, or that
people naturally seeking the same objects insisted on making life
hard and miserable by mutual strife. They will refuse to believe that
the whole existence of man was a continuous struggle for food in a
world rich with luxuries, a struggle that left the great majority
neither time nor strength for the higher quest of the heart and mind.

"But will not life under Anarchy, in economic and social equality
mean general leveling?" you ask.

No, my friend, quite the contrary. Because equality does not mean an
equal amount but equal opportunity. It does not mean, for instance,
that if Smith needs five meals a day, Johnson also must have as many.
If Johnson wants only three meals while Smith requires five, the
quantity each consumes may be unequal, but both men are perfectly
equal in the opportunity each has to consume as much as he needs, as
much as his particular nature demands.

Do not make the mistake of identifying equality in liberty with the
forced equality of the convict camp. True Anarchist equality implies
freedom, not quantity. It does not mean that every one must eat,
drink, or wear the same things, do the same work, or live in the same
manner. Far from it; the very reverse, in fact.

Individual needs and tastes differ, as appetites differ. It is equal
opportunity to satisfy them that constitutes true equality.

Far from leveling, such equality opens the door for the greatest
possible variety of activity and development. For human character is
diverse, and only the repression of this diversity results in
leveling, in uniformity and sameness. Free opportunity of expressing
and acting out your individuality means development of natural
dissimilarities and variations.

It is said that no two blades of grass are alike. Much less so are
human beings. In the whole wide world no two persons are exactly
similar even in physical appearance; still more dissimilar are they
in their physiological, mental, and psychical make-up. Yet in spite
of this diversity and of a thousand and one differentiations of
character we compel people to be alike to-day. Our life and habits,
our behavior and manners, even our thoughts and feelings are pressed
into a uniform mold and fashioned into sameness. The spirit of
authority, law, written and unwritten, tradition and custom force us
into a common groove and make of man a will-less automaton without
independence or individuality. This moral and intellectual bondage is
more compelling than any physical coercion, more devastating to our
manhood and development. All of us are its victims, and only the
exceptionally strong succeed in breaking its chains and that only
partly.

The authority of the past and of the present dictates not only our
behavior but dominates our very minds and souls, and is continuously
at work to stifle every symptom of nonconformity, of independent
attitude and unorthodox opinion The whole weight of social
condemnation comes down upon the head of the man or woman who dares
defy conventional codes. Ruthless vengeance is wreaked upon the
protestant who refuses to follow the beaten track, or upon the
heretic who disbelieves in the accepted formulas. In science and art,
in literature, poetry, and painting this spirit compels adaptation
and adjustment, resulting in imitation of the established and
approved, in uniformity and sameness, in stereotyped expression. But
more terribly still is punished nonconformity in actual life, in our
every-day relationships and behavior. The painter and writer may
occasionally be forgiven for defiance of custom and precedent
because, after all, their rebellion is limited to paper or canvas: it
affects only a comparatively small circle. They may be disregarded or
labeled cranks who can do little harm, but not so with the man of
action who carries his challenge of accepted standards into social
life. Not harmless he. He is dangerous by the power of example, by
his very presence. His infraction of social canons can be neither
ignored nor forgiven. He will be denounced as an enemy of society.

It is for this reason that revolutionary feeling or thought expressed
in exotic poetry or masked in high-brow philosophic dissertations may
be condoned, may pass the official and unofficial censor, because it
is neither accessible to nor understood by the public at large. But
give voice to the same dissenting attitude in a popular manner, and
immediately you will face the frothing denunciation of all the forces
that stand for the preservation of the establishes.

More vicious and deadening is compulsory compliance than the most
virulent poison. Throughout the ages it has been the greatest
impediment to man's advance, hedging him in with a thousand
prohibitions and taboos, weighting his mind and heart down with
outlived canons and codes, thwarting his will with imperatives of
thought and feeling, with "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not" of
behavior and action. Life, the art of living, has become a dull
formula, flat and inert.

Yet so strong is the innate diversity of man's nature that centuries
of this stultification have not succeeded in entirely eradicating his
originality and uniqueness. True, the great majority have fallen into
ruts so deepened by countless feet that they cannot get back to the
broad spaces. But some do break away from the beaten track and find
the open road where new vistas of beauty and inspiration beckon to
heart and spirit. These the world condemns, but little by little it
follows their example and lead, and finally it comes up abreast of
them. In the meantime those pathfinders have gone much further or
tied, and then we build monuments to them and glorify the men we have
vilified and crucified as we go on crucifying their brothers in
spirit, the pioneers of our own day.

Beneath this spirit of intolerance and persecution is the habit of
authority: coercion to conform to dominant standards, compulsion -
moral and legal - to be and act as others, according to precedent and
rule.

But the general view that conformity is a natural trait is entirely
false. On the contrary, given the least chance, unimpeded by the
mental habits instilled from the very cradle, man evidences
uniqueness and originality. Observe children, for instance, and you
will see most varied differentiation in manner and attitude, in
mental and psychic expression. You will discover an instinctive
tendency to individuality and independence, to non-conformity,
manifested in open and secret defiance of the will imposed from the
outside, in rebellion against the authority of parent and teacher.
The whole training ant "education" of the child is a continuous
process of stifling ant crushing this tendency, the eradication of
his distinctive characteristics, of his unlikeness to others, of his
personality and originality. Yet even in spite of yearlong
repression, suppression, and molding, some originality persists in
the child when it reaches maturity, which shows how deep are the
springs of individuality. Take any two persons, for example, who have
witnessed some tragedy, a big fire, let us say, at the same time and
place. Each will tell the story in a different manner, each will be
original in his way of relating it and in the impression he will
produce, because of his naturally different psychology. But talk to
the same two persons on some fundamental social matter, about life
and government, for instance, and immediately you hear expressed an
exactly similar attitude, the accepted view, the dominant mentality.

Why? Because where man is left free to think and feel for himself,
unhindered by precept and rule, and not restrained by the fear of
being "different" and unorthodox, with the unpleasant consequences it
involves, he will be independent and free. But the moment the
conversation touches matters within the sphere of our social
imperatives, one is in the clutches of the taboos and becomes a copy
and a parrot.

Life in freedom, in Anarchy, will do more than liberate man merely
from his present political and economic bondage. That will be only
the first step, the preliminary to a truly human existence. Far
greater and more significant will be the results of such liberty, its
effects upon man's mind, upon his personality. The abolition of the
coercive external will, and with it of the fear of authority, will
loosen the bonds of moral compulsion no less than of economic and
physical. Man's spirit will breathe freely, and that mental
emancipation will be the birth of a new culture, of a new humanity.
Imperatives and taboos will disappear, and man will begin to be
himself, to develop and express his individual tendencies and
uniqueness. Instead of "thou shalt not," the public conscience will
say "thou mayest, taking full responsibility." That will be a
training in human dignity and self-reliance, beginning at home and in
school, which will produce a new race with a new attitude to life.

The man of the coming day will see and feel existence on an entirely
different plane. Living to him will be an art and a joy. He will
cease to consider it as a race where every one must try to become as
good a runner as the fastest. He will regard leisure as more
important than work, and work will fall into its proper, subordinate
place as the means to leisure, to the enjoyment of life.

Life will mean the striving for finer cultural values, the
penetration of nature's mysteries, the attainment of higher truth.
Free to exercise the limitless possibilities of his mind, to pursue
his love of knowledge, to apply his inventive genius, to create, and
to soar on the wings of imagination, man will reach his full stature
and become man indeed. He will grow and develop according to his
nature. He will scorn uniformity, and human diversity will give him
increased interest in, and a more satisfying sense of, the richness
of being. Life to him will not consist in functioning but in living,
and he will attain the greatest kind of freedom man is capable of,
freedom in joy.

"That day lies far in the future," you say; "how shall we bring it
about?"

Far in the future, maybe; yet perhaps not so far-one cannot tell. At
any rate we should always hold our ultimate object in view if we are
to remain on the right road. The change I have described will not
come over night; nothing ever does. It will be a gradual development,
as everything in nature and social life is. But a logical, necessary,
and, I dare say, an inevitable development. Inevitable, because the
whole trend of man's growth has been in that direction; even if in
zigzags, often losing its way, yet always returning to the right
path.

How, then, might it be brought about?

  Guy Aldred: Representation and the State

"The State! Whatever the State saith is a lie; whatever it hath is a
theft: all is counterfeit in it, the gnawing sanguinary, insatiate
monster. It even bites with stolen teeth. Its very bowels are
counterfeit."

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE


"Communism in material production, anarchy in the intellectual -that
is the type of a Socialist mode of production, as it will develop
from the rule of the proletariat - in other words, from the Social
Revolution, through the logic of economic facts, whatever might be
the wishes, intentions, and theories of the proletariat."

KARL KAUTSKY.

The argument that Socialism involves State tyranny of a type with
which the worker is not unacquainted under present day society is one
which the opponents of Socialism regard as being not the least
valuable in their somewhat limited armory. This fact, coupled with
the somewhat hazy notions which even some Socialists seem to have as
to the position of the State in future society, warrants an
examination of the part the State plays in Capitalist society, an
enquiry into its transient elements, and a recognition of what
constitutes its permanent character. The matter is one which must be
considered in the light of society's evolution. We must note how the
Central Directing Authority in society has evolved its threefold
function of legislative, judicial, and administrative power.

From living in a tribal state and gathering whatever nature offered
him spontaneously, man slowly came to invent one weapon and tool
after another, in order to aid him in his struggle for existence.
Each instrument was more delicate and complex than its predecessor,
and corresponded with the development of his skill as fisherman,
hunter, and cattle raiser. The latter occupation carried with it a
negation of primitive Communism, wherein no class struggle existed,
and led to the private ownership of the land and instruments of labor
which were the necessary basis, of a final settling down to
agriculture and handicraft. As pasture farming involved Communism, so
cattle breeding on the one hand, carrying with it handicraft on the
other, required individual skill, a negation of associated labor, and
consequently private ownership of the means of production employed by
the craftsman, and of the products which he created. Thus began petty
industry based upon the individuality, the skill, industry, and
perseverance of the worker, demanding, requiring, and securing unto
himself private property. These were the basis of bourgeois society.
From satisfying its own requirements only, the peasant family, owing
to the progress of agriculture beyond the needs of the family, began
to produce a surplus of food, tools, and garments. The situation of
the family governing largely the nature of the surplus they produced
and the differing implements required and tastes acquired, the basis
for exchange was laid, specialization of industry was established,
and goods were produced both for consumption within the establishment
in which they were produced, and for the purpose of exchange for the
products of another establishment.

Goods now became commodities, barter was established, and the
necessity for some standard commodity or exchange value-such as gold -
  realized. As the handicraftsman had produced primarily for exchange
purposes, so the peasant, in the course of industrial development,
was brought to be a producer of commodities. The division of labor,
which these conditions necessitated, took the form of every single
concern producing a different class of goods, and the private
ownership of the goods exchanged by those who exchanged them. Mutual
independence in society, side by side with private property, became
increasingly the main conditions of society. As production for
personal consumption was more and more superseded by production of
commodities, buying and selling became an art, and merchant trading
arose, the success of which was founded on buying cheaply and selling
dearly. How these economic conditions made for monopoly, on the one
hand, in the course of time, and for the creation of a proletariat on
the other, is known now to every student.

The rapidity of industrial development in the terms of an ever-
increasing velocity, and its financial reflex in the present
generation of steam, electricity, and centralization, is apparent to
the eyes of all. With the story of its daily unfoldment before him
let the reader but reflect how the peasant who produced goods for his
own consumption gave place to the peasant who exchanged these
commodities for other articles for his own use; how he, in turn, made
way for the merchant who neither produced for his own use nor bought
articles for his own use exclusively, but bought and exchanged
commodities with the intention of making a profit.

Removal from the manufacture and production of commodities
constituted the road to wealth. The merchant prince gave way to the
financier, and the latter made for present day monopoly.

The political reflex of this industrial development is found in the
story of a social passage from Communism through tribalism to
nationalism founded on feudalism and vassalage, to Imperialism
and 'Colonial developments. As the commercial class laid the basis of
imperial developments, so the financial class pursued the
exploitation of other lands within that development, and identified
successful share-mongering with national prosperity, and consol
returns, and Imperial debts, with the opening out of Colonial
civilization. The courage of the soldier, the nautical equipment of
the sailor, the scholarship of the scientist, the permanent value of
literature, were all subservient to Capital's idol-finance, its only
standard of success.

The anomalies were strange and disastrous. The little shareholder to
live had to invest, and the success of his investment made only for
his own buying out by the director king, who could then render his
money useless as being no longer capital. On the other hand, the
investment failing, the shares could still be foisted upon the
financial public, and the director retire the gainer. The standard of
wealth, gold, concentrated into fewer and fewer hands and with it the
control of the means and instruments of production which nature had
begotten and labor power created. Trade unions, to realize the value
of their funds, had to invest in capitalist concerns. Their
officials, as a dependent official caste, opposed strong industrial
action against the capitalist class, because such activity depleted-
both by direct call and loss of interest on capital invested-the
funds of the unions and so hazarded the jobs of the union officials.
So that labor became more enslaved as men drawn from the ranks of
labor became more and more the interested officials, and legal
administrators of capitalism, in their official capacity as
representatives of share-holding interests, preachers, legislators,
and capitalistic philosophers.

The growing competition of women industrially, and the reduction of
the standard age of the worker owing to specialization made for a
negation of skilled labor. The advocate of woman's suffrage on the
same basis as man's suffrage hastened to secure the propertied
enfranchisement of woman, whilst working men witnessed the formation
of Women's Trade Unions and Universal Adult Suffrage Societies. The
Parliamentarian Revisionist sought to secure representation. The
financial credit reformer blamed monopoly and the State. The
proletarian was driven to enquire what should constitute his attitude
towards the State and its machinery. The worker fully recognized that
the fact of women having the vote did not render them more open to
bribery than men, since that was an impossibility in view of the
history of the pocket boroughs, the capitalistic proclivities of men,
and the corruption of male Poor Law Guardians. On the other hand, in
view of the perpetuation of misery and exploitation in those
countries where women have the vote, he had to confess that the vote
of women did not aid him in giving political expression to the class
struggle so long as women voters failed to understand the economic
conditions. The enfranchisement of a number of women who belonged to
the parasite class seriously affected him in the securement of such a
political expression of the industrial struggle. So far, therefore,
as the woman's political enfranchisement was concerned, the
proletarian could only note that, both as a question of abstract
justice, and a matter of expressing politically the true industrial
relations, absolute adult suffrage irrespective of sex and property
qualifications was the only solution of the problem.

This would carry with it the right, so long denied, of women to be
returned to Parliament. Whilst the basis of society's recognition of
this right, so far as working women are concerned, would be
industrial fear, its realization would have no different effect from
the return to Parliament of working men-a fact that is demonstrated
by the women trade union officials being neither worse nor better
than the men trade union officials in the question of palliative
effort rather than of Socialist endeavor. It would still leave,
furthermore, the question of true representation untouched so long as
the political machine was controlled in the interests of class
society, and governed by the present system of representation on the
lines of party voting.

This brings us directly to the question of what the State is and
does, as a prelude to this difficulty of majority or minority rule -a
difficulty which belongs purely to bourgeois society. Of the intimate
connection existent between economic and political freedom we have
already spoken. Each fresh economic development carrying with it a
corresponding political transformation, it follows that as absolute
monarchy in the political world is mated with personal slavery and
vassalage in economics, so representative government in politics goes
along with the economic system of commercialism. In the course of
this transformation, the social purpose of the State has been so
evolving as to show the radical reconstruction which was - or is - in
store for it in the future. As the aristocracy freed itself from the
domination of the Monarchy, as the bourgeois secured their
emancipation from their feudal oppressors, so the State has become
less and less powerfully essential as an engine of oppression and
more and more established as a vehicle of administration. Greater
than all the decrees of despotism, Dame Nature's Constitutionalism
has decided that the lot of the State for the domination of man by
man must cease, and the function of the State as a machine for the
management of production must be raised and developed.

As an instrument of domination it took its rise as a necessity at a
certain stage of economic development, necessarily linked with the
division of society into classes. It was the official representative
of society as a whole, its personification in a visible body, but
inasmuch as it was the State it only stood for the class which
represented in itself the whole of society. According to the
philosophic conception it was "the realization of the idea" of the
kingdom of God upon earth, the domain where eternal truth and eternal
justice realized themselves or ought to have done. The result was a
superstitious reverence for the State and for everything in
connection with it, which was all the more evident from the fact that
his insignificancy, the individual was taught from childhood to
suppose that public business and the 'common interest of society
could not be cared for in any other way than through the State and
its well-paid employees.

It was fondly thought that a great step had been made in advance when
faith was lost in a hereditary monarchy and claims laid to a
democratic republic. But even the necessity for such claims was only
to be found in the fact that the State's function was mainly
legislative and judicial, not industrially administrative. An
instrument of oppression used 'by one class over another, and quite
as much so under a democratic republic as under a monarchy, its
capture by the bourgeoisie, subsequent to the republican agitation
only meant that its existence was becoming less an absolute and more
a representative one-and therefore more anonymous and changeable in
character-its position was becoming more and more hazardous in view
of the advancing industrial conditions in the direction of social
production and distribution. Thus as economic conditions have made
for Socialism, the political reflex has made less, and less for the
success of State tyranny. Let us analyze what the failure of the
Capitalist State - as the last political reflex of class society -
means.

Of late years, the cry for proportional representation, second
ballot, etc., has grown in volume. The reason for it has been the
obvious failure of the House of Commons, or Chamber of Deputies, as
the case may be, throughout capitalist civilization to represent what
is termed the opinion of the country. In other words, a majority on
the Government benches of the People's Chamber may actually represent
a minority of opinion in the country, and generally does not
represent the true proportional majority in the country. The historic
failure has long been pointing in this direction. On the other hand,
the Capitalist State existing as a reflex of economic "conditions, it
can be seen that whilst the cost of its management is being paid for
by the capitalist class out of the surplus value, the basis of its
recognition of working-class representation is the growing class
consciousness of the latter class and the growth of revolutionary
endeavor on its part. Even, therefore, as a palliative, and out of
sheer despair of curtailing the growth of this spirit, the Capitalist
State must give heed to the question of electoral reform, in its
various phases of proportional representation, adult suffrage, etc.,
and even to the question of the abolition of the House of Lords.

Now, on all these questions, the division is rapidly becoming
a 'class, and not an individual one. Bourgeois Radicalism, with its
theoretical belief in the modification of the State structure in
every particular, and antagonism to Imperial development, has found
that the continuance of the society to whose support it looks,
demands that their foreign policy shall be a continuation of Tory
traditions, and their modifications of State structure exceedingly
slow, timid, and expedient. Conversely, in matters of foreign policy
and on questions of State structure, the Tory would adopt an attitude
of absolute autocracy and non-negation of the status quo. On either
of these rocks, capitalism would be bound to split. Radicalism
meaning the undoing of its political power to oppress, and
Conservatism the centralization of the power to such an extent that
its very menace would be its own undoing. Hence, whilst the political
rewards and family traditions have formed the basis of individual
adherence to this or that party, concessions to social expediency
have been the basis of their political continuance and securement of
the stability of the system. But this has meant the gradual but
certain coming-together of the two parties for the defense of the
profit-mongering system, the equally certain emphasizing of their
class-basis, the taking of common action against strikers at home and
empire-disrupters in the colonies or abroad. The Liberal Statesmen
has vied with his Tory confrere in oppression in Egypt, South Africa,
and in India, as well as in shooting down the workers at home.

The growing evidence of the hypocrisy of this party system its
essential class unity, has been the cause of Labor, from relying on
mere trade union activity, taking to political action. In the whole
of that action compromise has been more apparent than stern defiance.
But even so it has presented to the capitalist politician some
evidences of the inherent tendency of class-society to undo itself.

To counteract such a possibility, all that capitalist politicians can
do, with safety, is to concentrate their endeavors on the political
reforms of adult suffrage, second ballot, and proportional
representation as already indicated. Yet even so, to so extend the
franchise and to secure a larger continuance of power, the task of
the capitalist politician is no easy one, for to, hunt the devil of
corruption from parliament to people by an extension of the
franchise, is only to more readily expose the basic rottenness of
capitalist society and bring about the downfall of its empire.

More and more would it become apparent that the M.P.s were but the
puppets of the Party Whips and of the Cabinet, which were but the
agents of the desires of trust-magnates, whose growing financial
power would involve the corruption of business, politics, and
citizenship; the easy punishment and bossing of Premiers, Senates,
Titular Monarchs, and Republican Presidents; the ruin of the little
middle-class whose affected contempt of the manual laborer
would ,thus slowly vanish together with their position. Carrying with
it, as can already he seen, the negation of legislative and judicial
dignity, by rendering justice a farce and legislation chicanery, it
would inevitably reveal the State's 'function as one coercive of
persons and not administrative of things, and show that the
instability of a corrupt society demanding, the stability of a free
society would not require, the punishment of persons for evils which
were socially produced and not individually malicious. It would also
show that the punishment or coercion of persons was no guarantee of
social calm.

.Side by side with this would be the further fact-awaiting a social
recognition-of the powerlessness of the State to do the one thing
which would abolish, or at least check, all revolutionary endeavor -
to abolish pauperism. Its only power, so far as it could concern
itself with pauperism, would be seen to consist in police
regulations, charity, etc. To abolish poverty it would have to
abolish those conditions responsible for its own existence, and hence
to abolish itself. As the abolition of ancient slavery involved the
abolition of the Ancient State, so the abolition of modern capitalist
slavery would involve the abolition of the bourgeois Representative
State. As soon as it evolved to being the representative of the whole
of society in a complete society, the judicial and legislative
functions of the State would become superfluous, with the result that
the State, as class society has historically known it, would become
superfluous. Equally superfluous would become the anti-statism or
voluntaristic production which partakes of the' same representative
character as the State, and is equally corrupt under class society.
Growing out of the industrial conditions which necessitated the
negation of private ownership, would be social ownership based on
social production and distribution. Individually this would mean
social freedom, whilst socially it would embody all the efficiency
that a historically evolved administrative function, having its basis
deep down in society's foundations, could alone carry with it. This,
however, the opponents of Socialism tells us, would involve tyranny
and expertism. Let us see.

Its erection being on a ruins of a society where production had been
for profit and not for use, wherein the coercion of man had been at a
premium against which the growing social consciousness had revolted,
this would hardly appear to be the case. The failure of legislative
and judicial activity being amongst its progenitors Socialism could
hardly perpetuate that coercion which its very coming into existence
must necessarily negate. .But now we have to consider the basis of
expertism under capitalism in order to show it to be impossible under
Socialism. Our preliminary shall be a statement of the attitude of
the newly found individualist opponents of Socialism, who tell us
that every State is a despotism, because, whether the despot be one
or many, whether the State be monarchial or republican, solely from
the principle that all right or authority belong to the collectivity
of the people-and the collectivity represents the status quo, whether
autocratic or democratic - its existence as a State implies the
oppression of the individual, against whose interests the State
arraigns itself. Agreeing that the historic role of the State has
been that of a despotism, and that violence against State authority
is no more criminal than legal violence against the individual, the
proletarian must needs seek an explanation for the being of State
authority. "How is it that, whether by apathy or indifference, the
collective will of the people support the State against the
individual well-being of the majority of the people?"

Why does the property owner pay taxes and duties to the State and the
oppressed worker seek its benediction?" asks this economical
enquirer. "Education by the State," is the voluntarist reply. "But,"
pursues the investigator, "the State is but an anonymous reflex of
the collective will of the people. If, therefore, the State create
that will, it must be at least coexistent with it, if not, as the
creative agency, prior to it. But it cannot be created by a will it
creates, nor can it be a reflex of the collective will. If it is only
a reflex of the collective will, how is that will formed? If the
collective Will is the outcome of statism, we must seek elsewhere for
the latter's origin." Let us investigate.

Accepting the principles of the materialistic conception of history,
we learn that, if the engineer is paid twenty times more than the
navvy(i.e. day [wage] laborer), it is because the cost necessary to
produce an engineer is more considerable than that necessary to
produce a navvy by nineteen times the cost of the latter's
production. Now, it having cost society twenty times as much to
produce the engineer than it did to produce the navvy, the engineer
is twenty times more indebted to society than the navvy. Instead,
therefore, of taxing society for greater privileges he should return
more to society. As he does not, under the system under which the
engineer flourishes because of advantages of education the navvy is
dispossessed of his rights; and therefore the capitalist system which
is at once society and the wage system has established the technical
education of the navvy's children in order to protect itself against
the expertism of the engineer. In working its own undoing once more,
in a vain attempt to secure temporary relief capitalist society is
abolishing the expert in the interests of social progress. In the
face of these facts to pretend that the expert will become a parasite
and tyrant under Socialism is absurd. With his numbers growing his
occupation is going, because - as an intellectual - he is rapidly
becoming the rule and not the exception.

It may, however, be contended that, under capitalist society, it is
the extent of monopoly in education and in industry, and not their
various costs of production, which has enabled the engineer, the
scientist, and the doctor, to draw from society ten or a hundred
times more than the laborer, and the weaver to earn three times as
much as the toiler in the fields, and ten times as much as the match-
girl. Were this correct, it might, of course, justify the inference
that under Socialism, the representatives of administration would so
control industry and education as to become the monopolizes of its
advantage, and hence impose upon the people a bureaucratic expertism.
In order to expose the fallacious nature of this contention, it is
only necessary to enquire more fully into what is' the industrial
basis of that monopoly which enables the engineer, the scientist, and
the doctor to simply draw their profits from their own sort of
capital-their degrees and their certificates-just as the manufacturer
draws a profit from a mill, or as a nobleman used to do from his
birth and title.

The first in our enquiry will 'be to note that in modern capitalist
society, as we have already shown, a bourgeois minority control and
direct the means and production of social livelihood for the great
majority the vile mass of workers who toil to live and live to toil
in the interests of the minority. Degraded, they receive the bare
means of subsistence for preserving themselves and rearing other wage-
slaves-their children-whose education also is in the hands of the
capitalist class. Now, the sooner the children begin to work the
greater is the commodity, labor-power, which is offered for sale; and
the less the price required, owing to competition. The longer the
child is kept from work-i.e. the longer the time spent in his
education the greater is his cost since his parents are receiving
money from the capitalist class in excess of their immediate personal
needs of subsistence. Consequently, having more time devoted to its
education, it has to study and to live, be fed and clothed, for a
longer period than children not so fortunately placed. It accordingly
has to experience less competition at a later stage when offering its
labor power to the capitalist class, and consequently demands a
higher wage necessary to the preservation of its position and
knowledge; and it is so placed because it has cost society more to
develop its technical knowledge. If "monopoly in education and
industry" be the cause of this discrepancy only, now, as
the "nobleman's birth and title" was formerly how came the one cause
to change into the other cause? The answer can only be, because of
material development on the industrial plane; not the title, the
educational privilege, nor the monopoly, but the industrial
conditions necessitating these reflexes as sequences, the causes or
cause. The privilege of a monopolized education, therefore,
represents immunity from laboring at the expense of others who are
rendered industrially immune from intellectual development. But here
a strange factor enters in. As the feudalistic contempt for defending
themselves, believing this to be the duty of bourgeois society, lay
the basis of its downfall, so the bourgeois contempt for the studies
as well as for the manual labor it gratefully abandons to the
proletariat, is forming the basis for its own overthrow. Not only so;
but its very evolution is a splendid object-lesson not merely in the
tyranny but also in the ignorance of expertism. And so well has
bourgeois society placed the hallmark 'of its disciplinarian
mediocrity upon all professions, that slowly but surely, genius is
being forced to enlist in the class army of the proletariat.

Here, however, it is being taught to despise expertism as the
bourgeoisie in its days of revolution-was taught to despise titles.
That contempt has remained its consistent characteristic where its
success has been most unquestioned. And it has paved the way for the
similar contempt of proletarian genius for bourgeois profit mongering
to become the characteristic of future society. Thus, the evolution
of the capitalistic educational system, has prepared a minimum
educational basis for the future society to start from, which is
founded on an ever-increasing negation of expertism; the development
of its judicial and legislative machinery has shown not merely its
class-basis but also the impracticability of judging and condemning
men as criminals; the pursuit of its science has shown the basic
psychological idealism of humanity, with its records of martyrs, and
its social history showing that the greatest crimes of class-rule
have been done in the name of lofty sentiment in the name of justice,
righteousness, and equality; and its giving birth to a class which is
inspired by the lofty sentiment of freeing society from all class
domination.

Thus, economically, politically, and psychologically the whole of the
trend of social evolution shows that Socialism can only have its
social expression in an era of freedom, and its political expression
in a State which shall treat of the management of production instead
of the control of persons. The psychological guarantee against
expertism will be found in the contempt with which all men will
regard it, and the tendency to excellence of administration will be
reposed in the admiration which all men will have for efficiency
Should this possibility still meet with opposition on the ground that
such a central directing authority finding its embodiment in a
collective will, would not find legal oppression incongruous with its
industrial basis, one cm only conclude that either humanity is
inherently bad and progress an impossibility or else that in a system
of absolute individualism must humanity's hope lie.

If in the latter alternative, then its basis must be that all social
relationship is an impossibility since where co-operation takes
place, management coming in, there must be some centralization of
directive authority. But the whole trend of civilization serves to
negate this assumption.Teacher and scholar, pulpit and pew, orator
and audience, editor and readers, in their growing approximation to
each other are emphasising the passing of capitalistic
professionalism, and the development of Socialist simplicity. Even
the military is being infected with the spirit of the revolutionary
consciousness which is undermining the foundation of the Capitalist
State. And amid the growing volume of its expression is drowned the
echoes of the sectarianism so common to class society. Men and women,
seeking the spirit of the hi hest impulses rather than the letter of
the narrow dogmas of meaningless import are seeing in its arrival the
realisation of those impulse - in the social Brahm the communistic
Nirvana. In this evidence of its philosophic harmony of movement may
be caught a glimpse of the lofty impulses which have served to direct
its evolution. It is this philosophic essence of unity which supplies
us with a quintessential index to the meaning of the evidence I have
adduced in the present essay, showing the failure of the bourgeois
representative system, the inevitable collapse of its state, and the
erection on its ruins of a social system which shall in truth be
apostrophied as the Commonwealth! For it would be the intelligence of
the community that would select the most capable administrators of
its workings, instead of the plutocratic administration deciding the
limits of its representation.

II.

Happy augury of the liberty which will exist under the Socialist
Commonweal, we see that as the agencies of production and
distribution have become increasingly social, despite the fact that
control has been private, political freedom has become more and more
a reality. Thus recognising the growing incongruity of its role of
legal oppressor and its mischievousness to 'capitalistic production,
the State has more and more concerned itself with the distribution of
the armed forces, the duties of the secret police, the appointment of
arbitration and conciliation boards, the feeding of necessitous
children as a palliative. 'On the other hand, thus realising its
administrative character on questions of penal reform and criminal
punishment, its attitude has become "more humane" -as the bourgeoisie
say the decentralisation of its authority becoming synonymous with
the growth of economic oppression, and the failure of the Party
system. On all hands it is, therefore, being recognised that the
social problem is rapidly resolving itself into an economic rather
than narrowing itself down to a political issue. The duel is between
the financier and the business man on the one side, representative of
private profit; and the proletarian on the other, symbolical of
production for use and not for profit. To these combatants, Liberal
and Tory have given way; and significant of the change, their avowed
capitalist successors, under the guise of individual freedom, have
assumed a chastening attitude towards the State wherein their ideals
have hitherto found a safe embodiment. Their fear is lest Socialism
should involve majority tyranny. Their hope is that of impressing the
workers with a consciousness of the essential liberty of capitalism.
The better to remove their fear, let us outline and examine the basis
of their hope.

The latter's foundations are laid deep down in the social life of the
bourgeoisie. It had its comer stone in the right of individuals to
privately own articles Or instruments of production which constitute
capital. Its edifice is to be found in a social structure which seeks
the elevation of his insignificancy, the individual, at the expense
of his collective unconsciousness, society. Its science of being,
subsists in the growing recognition by the bourgeoisie of the
necessity of mastering political economy, and the adaptation of its
state organisation to a harmonious incorporation of the rules evolved
in the study. Its expression of its consciousness of its destiny is
seen in the bourgeois appreciation of Buckle's very true declaration
that the only good done by modern legislation was the repeal of the
old.

Prior to the bourgeois recognition of the importance of right
opinions on political economy the State carefully sought to supervise-
in direct contravention of economic laws-the price of corn, the wages
of labourers, the importation of corn, the manufacture of beer, the
rate of interest on loans, attendance at divine service, the
apprenticeship of children, the combination of workmen, etc. All this
was done in the interest of a governing and established class,
conscious of its security. But economic facts made for its undoing
through the medium of the very laws thus passed in its own interests.
A statute of Henry VIII went so far as to forbid the use of machinery
in the manufacture of broadcloth, and the woollen trade threatened to
take refuge in Holland, where the "divers devilish contrivances" were
under no law. In order to encourage sheep-breeding, a law was passed
that the dead should be buried in woollen garments it being urged
that since sheep would be bred, wool would rise in price, and mutton
be cheaper. But economic laws re-established their inevitable social
equation, and the artificial stimulant became an absurdity All usury
being urged as wrong on religious grounds, and it being thought that
10% represented the maximum interest which was compatible with a non-
injury to trade, this was the interest fixed, in Henry VIII.'s reign,
on loans. As economic laws asserted them selves, the anomalies this
law' created made for numerous modifications, until sound sense
prevailed and any amount became allowable in the early half of the
nineteenth century. Similarly, the State obtruded into the marital
relations, and similarly its functions have become more and more
anomalous, until now the right of Free Love, under the pressure of
economical backing, is being recognised as valid by the bourgeoisie.
Laws are to be found on the Statute Book setting forth with what
amount of energy and thoroughness the ploughman shall plough each
furrow. Regrating and forestalling were crimes, the laws against them
being aptly said, by Adam Smith, to be laws against providence and
thrift.

Recognising the general trend of economic law to assert itself, and
realising the impossibility of averting the tendency, bourgeois
society has made for the workman being, politically, a 'free man. It
allows him the right to employ himself in any work he can get
entrusted to him, so long as he recognises the right of the employer
to employ whom he likes. He may demand any wages he thinks right, and
take advantage of the favour of supply and demand in his direction,
so long as he recognises the right of similar activities on the part
of the employer. He may 'combine and boycott so long as he allows the
right of his master to combine and boycott. Out of this right of
employer and employed the wage system itself springs as a form of
mutual convenience, arising out of a Cooperation in which, as Henry
George might have it, one of the parties prefers a certain to a
contingent result. Consequently, there is no "'iron law of wages,"
but a natural and healthy reward, with-in capitalist society, for all
human exertion employed in the production of wealth! So much for the
capitalistic appearance of liberty for employer and' employed!

Did 'matters thus stand still, and petty enterprise thrive in
bourgeois society, this equal right of master and serf might thus
form the basis of a certain amount of social sordidness, but never
permit of matters coming to a head. But nature abhors such a
contingency as certainly as she abhors a vacuum. And so it comes
about that from time to time we hear of some Sugar King, or Railway
Magnate, owner of some vast stretch of land, complaining at the
uncontrollable character of the wealth and the industrial conditions
which have made him. In America, the home of Trusts no less so than
in England where combinations are thinly disguised under various
names, a few men control more money than does the Government. Their
power being absolute, the bourgeoisie, mistaking itself for the whole
of the people, plead that such individuals are corrupting business,
politics, and 'citizenship, and in evidence of this assertion point
to how titles are obtained in England, and how political power is
controlled by millionaires in America. This plutocratic element, an
increasing one under capitalism, judges men not by their principles
but by their price. It regards public office as an article of
merchandise, to be bought and sold the same as dry goods or railroad
shares. The strongest political argument it can offer is a thumping
cheque. Its very being evidences the failure of democratic
government, and shows that there is no difference beyond that of form
between the crowned Monarch in England the sceptred Emperor in
German, and the uncrowned President of' the United States. It means
that even if in other details democratic representation was not a
farce, the affirmative usages 0f government were controlled by
plutocracy. To its offices were elected the sons of the plutocrats.
Affirmatively, therefore, the State is but a bureaucratic
institution, the official representatives of which tax or blackmail
the capitalist class to the tune of several millions per annum for
the privilege of being supplied with a standing army, navvy, judicial
bench, etc., for the purposes of enabling the capitalist class to
pocket its surplus value the unearned profit which it derives from
the exploitation of the proletariat. A reflection of industrial
conditions, the State is thus seen to he controlle4 by, and managed
in the interests of, the capitalist class, whose turn the government
must always serve, since government officialism is paid for directly
by the capitalist class out of the surplus value. In other words, the
cost of the army, navvy, charitable institutions, police, bench, bar,
and the whole judicial machinery, represents the cost of the
capitalists class's insurance policy. Labour produces the wealth and
capital pays the insurance. Official mismanagement is, in some
directions, causing capital to resent the terms of its insurance and
long for "Voluntarism"; in other directions, to long for better-
centralised control-and the nationalisation of the land, the mines,
and the railways.

To the capitalistic advocates of the voluntaristic philosophy, who
assure the world that one cannot get more intelligence out of the
administrative or legislative machine than one puts into it, the
proletarian-remembering that genius is also the mental characteristic
of a revolutionary class during the period of outlawed existence will
lend a sympathy not unaccompanied with the reservation that, however
true the statement, it does not concern the proletaire, in whose
interests, Government, so long as the capitalist system lasts, will
not, and cannot, be administered. When that system has departed,
class interests will have vanished, and Government will be
unnecessary. Antagonistic to the spirit and letter of government, the
mastering of the industrial principle of the class war, will have
supplied the proletarian with an explanation of its existence which
will but serve to add a flippant contempt for government decrees to
an intellectual scorn of its methods and an intense hatred of
conventional morality - so dear to drawing-room prudes living on the
unearned increment which makes for prostitution - as being but the
vicious profit-mongering pretences of an anonymous slave-society.

  Richard Barbrook: The Net as Really Existing Anarcho-Communism

Despite originally being invented for the U. S. military, the Net was
constructed around the gift economy. The Pentagon initially did try
to restrict the unofficial uses of its computer network. However, it
soon became obvious that the Net could only be successfully developed
by letting its users build the system for themselves. Within the
scientific community, the gift economy has long been the primary
method of socialising labour. Funded by the state or by donations,
scientists don't have to turn their intellectual work directly into
marketable commodities. Instead, research results are publicised
by 'giving a paper' at specialist conferences and by 'contributing an
article' to professional journals. The collaboration of many
different academics is made possible through the free distribution of
information.

Within small tribal societies, the circulation of gifts established
close personal bonds between people. In contrast, the academic gift
economy is used by intellectuals who are spread across the world.
Despite the anonymity of the modern version of the gift economy,
academics acquire intellectual respect from each other through
citations in articles and other forms of public acknowledgement.
Scientists therefore can only obtain personal recognition for their
individual efforts by openly collaborating with each other through
the academic gift economy. Although research is being increasingly
commercialised, the giving away of findings remains the most
efficient method of solving common problems within a particular
scientific discipline.

From its earliest days, the free exchange of information has
therefore been firmly embedded within the technologies and social
mores of cyberspace. When New Left militants proclaimed
that 'information wants to be free' back in the Sixties, they were
preaching to computer scientists who were already living within the
academic gift economy. Above all, the founders of the Net never
bothered to protect intellectual property within computer-mediated
communications. On the contrary, they were developing these new
technologies to advance their careers inside the academic gift
economy. Far from wanting to enforce copyright, the pioneers of the
Net tried to eliminate all barriers to the distribution of scientific
research. Technically, every act within cyberspace involves copying
material from one computer to another. Once the first copy of a piece
of information is placed on the Net, the cost of making each extra
copy is almost zero. The architecture of the system presupposes that
multiple copies of documents can easily be cached around the network.
As Tim Berners-Lee - the inventor of the Web - points out:

"Concepts of intellectual property, central to our culture, are not
expressed in a way which maps onto the abstract information space. In
an information space, we can consider the authorship of materials,
and their perception; but ... there is a need for the underlying
infrastructure to be able to make copies simply for reasons of
[technical] efficiency and reliability. The concept of 'copyright' as
expressed in terms of copies made makes little sense."

Within the commercial creative industries, advances in digital
reproduction are feared for making the 'piracy' of copyright material
ever easier. For the owners of intellectual property, the Net can
only make the situation worse. In contrast, the academic gift economy
welcomes technologies which improve the availability of data. Users
should always be able to obtain and manipulate information with the
minimum of impediments. The design of the Net therefore assumes that
intellectual property is technically and socially obsolete.

In France, the nationalised telephone monopoly has accustomed people
to paying for the on-line services provided by Minitel. In contrast,
the Net remains predominantly a gift economy even though the system
has expanded far beyond the university. From scientists through
hobbyists to the general public, the charmed circle of users was
slowly built up through the adhesion of many localised networks to an
agreed set of protocols. Crucially, the common standards of the Net
include social conventions as well as technical rules. The giving and
receiving of information without payment is almost never questioned.
Although the circulation of gifts doesn't necessarily create
emotional obligations between individuals, people are still willing
to donate their information to everyone else on the Net. Even selfish
reasons encourage people to become anarcho-communists within
cyberspace. By adding their own presence, every user contributes to
the collective knowledge accessible to those already on-line. In
return, each individual has potential access to all the information
made available by others within the Net. Everyone takes far more out
of the Net than they can ever give away as an individual.

"... the Net is far from altruistic, or it wouldn't work... Because
it takes as much effort to distribute one copy of an original
creation as a million ... you never lose from letting your product
free...as long as you are compensated in return ... What a miracle,
then, that you receive not one thing in value in exchange - indeed
there is no explicit act of exchange at all - but millions of unique
goods made by others!"

Despite the commercialisation of cyberspace, the self-interest of Net
users ensures that the hi-tech gift economy continues to flourish.
For instance, musicians are using the Net for the digital
distribution of their recordings to each other. By giving away their
own work to this network community, individuals get free access to a
far larger amount of music in return. Not surprisingly, the music
business is worried about the increased opportunities for
the 'piracy' of copyrighted recordings over the Net. Sampling, DJ-ing
and mixing are already blurring property rights within dance music.
However, the greatest threat to the commercial music corporations
comes from the flexibility and spontaneity of the hi-tech gift
economy. After it is completed, a new track can quickly be made
freely available to a global audience. If someone likes the tune,
they can download it for personal listening, use it as a sample or
make their own remix. Out of the free circulation of information,
musicians can form friendships, work together and inspire each other.

"It's all about doing it for yourself. Better than punk."

Within the developed world, most politicians and corporate leaders
believe that the future of capitalism lies in the commodification of
information. Over the last few decades, intellectual property rights
have been steadily tightened through new national laws and
international agreements. Even human genetic material can now be
patented. Yet, at the 'cutting edge' of the emerging information
society, money-commodity relations play a secondary role to those
created by a really existing form of anarcho-communism. For most of
its users, the Net is somewhere to work, play, love, learn and
discuss with other people. Unrestricted by physical distance, they
collaborate with each other without the direct mediation of money or
politics. Unconcerned about copyright, they give and receive
information without thought of payment. In the absence of states or
markets to mediate social bonds, network communities are instead
formed through the mutual obligations created by gifts of time and
ideas.

"This informal, unwritten social contract is supported by a blend of
strong-tie and weak-tie relationships among people who have a mixture
of motives and ephemeral affiliations. It requires one to give
something, and enables one to receive something. ... I find that the
help I receive far outweighs the energy I expend helping others; a
marriage of altruism and self-interest."

On the Net, enforcing copyright payments represents the imposition of
scarcity on a technical system designed to maximise the dissemination
of information. The protection of intellectual property stops all
users having access to every source of knowledge. Commercial secrecy
prevents people from helping each other to solve common problems. The
inflexibility of information commodities inhibits the efficient
manipulation of digital data. In contrast, the technical and social
structure of the Net has been developed to encourage open cooperation
among its participants. As an everyday activity, users are building
the system together. Engaged in 'interactive creativity', they send e-
mail, take part in listservs, contribute to newsgroups, participate
within on-line conferences and produce Web sites. Lacking copyright
protection, information can be freely adapted to suit the users'
needs. Within the hi-tech gift economy, people successfully work
together through "... an open social process involving evaluation,
comparison and collaboration."

The hi-tech gift economy is even at the forefront of software
development. For instance, Bill Gates admits that Microsoft's biggest
competitor in the provision of Web servers comes from the Apache
program. Instead of being marketed by a commercial company, this
program is shareware. Like similar projects, this virtual machine is
being continually developed by its techie users. Because its source
code is not protected by copyright, the program can be modified,
amended and improved by anyone with the appropriate
programmingskills. When someone does make a contribution to a
shareware project, the gift of their labour is rewarded by
recognition within the community of user-developers.

The inflexibility of commodified software programs is compounded by
their greater unreliability. Even Microsoft can't mobilise the amount
of labour given to some successful shareware programs by their
devotees. Without enough techies looking at a program, all its bugs
can never be found. The greater social and technical efficiency of
anarcho-communism is therefore inhibiting the commercial take-over of
the Net. Shareware programs are now beginning to threaten the core
product of the Microsoft empire: the Windows operating system.
Starting from the original software program by Linus Torvalds, a
community of user-developers are together building their own non-
proprietary operating system: Linux. For the first time, Windows has
a serious competitor. Anarcho-communism is now the only alternative
to the dominance of monopoly capitalism.

"Linux is subversive. Who could have thought even five years ago that
a world-class operating system could coalesce as if by magic out of
part-time hacking by several thousand developers scattered all over
the planet, connected only by the tenuous strands of the Internet?"

on 3/7/04 10:19 PM, Kete F. at kete_f@... wrote:

> Yes, millennia!  For as long as there has been history, there has been a
> state, a rule of a minority, not a minority in the mainstream media's
> sense but a minority meaning a comparative few number of the population
> governing the rest, which greatly outnumber the government, and they
> justify this because of many reasons including criminals will be free to
> murder or whatever, when the bourgeoisie are the real thieves who steal
> everything and murder to keep it all.

     This turns out not to be the case. State society has only existed 5,000
to 8,000 years. Before that, humans lived in non-state societies, in which
governance was held locally. It's helpful to be aware of history and
prehistory.

>> Why would this class of ruler cease to exist?
>
> We'd have to stop him.

     Stop him? How does one stop the capitalist ruling class? How does one
make capitalism cease to exist?

> It has occurred a couple times in recorded history, but both times were
> defeated.  In Russia, anarchists were defeated by the Bolsheviks, and in
> Spain, anarchists were defeated by fascists.

     In other words, attempts at non-state societies have always been
defeated by external, state forces. How will that change to allow a
non-state society to flourish? Doesn't it require the entire world, all 6
billion people to move toward a non-state society simultaneously?

> the world will be one society.  as one society, we'll have whatever we
> need.  if a farm in "Nebraska" needs a replacement part from "Australia"
> then they can have it 'cause it will be a gift economy.

     This is totally unrealistic. The world will never be one society. It's
just not the way humans organize themselves. Why think that humans would
ever do something  so, well, unhuman?

> Well, in theory, it will work.

     Not in theory, in imagination and hope. This is not a theory, it is an
unrealistic supposition, with no evidence from human behavior to suggest
that it will ever succeed.

> There just seems to be so much to go
> around.  I know for a fact that the USA wastes more than enough food to
> feed the world even though Africans are starving to death, everyday.
> For one thing, the meat diet is so wasteful.  You have to clear land for
> the cattle for example.  Vegan diets are less wasteful.

     Yes, this is all very true. yet humans continue to prefer eating meat in
many societies. There is no way to force 6 billion people to stop eating
meat.

>> Why would peple act differently than they act now?
>
> Well, it will be a whole new world.  Our children won't be
> psychologically traumatized before they leave the womb and until the day
> they die.  Society won't be based on competition.  It will be based on
> cooperation.

     This is like saying "The Rapture will take us all up to Heaven and we'll
live in peace and harmony." Human beings are they way human beings are now.
There will never be a whole new world. The human word will be different in
the future, but humans will continue to act then as humans act now.

> om, i didn't know you work at a public radio station, but it's still a
> state-run station; so it still needs to be decentralized.  notice that
> even though public officials are supposed to answer to the public, they
> don't.  they answer to the ruling class.

     You obviously know very little about public radio stations! Better stick
to subjects you're familiar with!

> Well, there's lots of people who don't believe.  I'm sure somebody else
> could give you a convincing argument.

     It's not a matter of belief. Belief is the province of religion. Either
there is evidence to support such a proposition or there is not. What is the
evidence?

     Michael

Hayduke wrote:

> If it will be, why isn't it now?

Simply because we are interrupted.  The state does not allow us.

>     Certainly not for millennia!

Yes, millennia!  For as long as there has been history, there has been a
state, a rule of a minority, not a minority in the mainstream media's
sense but a minority meaning a comparative few number of the population
governing the rest, which greatly outnumber the government, and they
justify this because of many reasons including criminals will be free to
murder or whatever, when the bourgeoisie are the real thieves who steal
everything and murder to keep it all.

> Why would this class of ruler cease to exist?

We'd have to stop him.

> What will cause this change? Why hasn't this change already occurred?

It has occurred a couple times in recorded history, but both times were
defeated.  In Russia, anarchists were defeated by the Bolsheviks, and in
Spain, anarchists were defeated by fascists.

>     How do the possessors of the farm, mine or factory acquire new capital
> for improvements, expansion or replacement? Capital doesn't grow on trees!
> :>)

the world will be one society.  as one society, we'll have whatever we
need.  if a farm in "Nebraska" needs a replacement part from "Australia"
then they can have it 'cause it will be a gift economy.

>     If everyone respects people's possession, why would it be
> necessary to know how to defend oneself from burglary?

Well, maybe it won't be necessary, but it's pretty necessary, now.

> If everyone gives what they choose and takes what they wish, there can
> never be enough for everyone. What is the
> incentive to make sure that all needs are met?

Well, in theory, it will work.  There just seems to be so much to go
around.  I know for a fact that the USA wastes more than enough food to
feed the world even though Africans are starving to death, everyday.
For one thing, the meat diet is so wasteful.  You have to clear land for
the cattle for example.  Vegan diets are less wasteful.

>     Why not? Why can't I have a brand new Hummer every year? I like
> Hummers.  I don't like them when they're dirty. I want a new Hummer!

I don't know.  Maybe someone else can answer your question.

>     Why would peple act differently than they act now?

Well, it will be a whole new world.  Our children won't be
psychologically traumatized before they leave the womb and until the day
they die.  Society won't be based on competition.  It will be based on
cooperation.

> > If someone is not producing some
> > product, then s/he has no business in deciding how to make the product.
>
>     Says who? Who enforces this edict?

Well, the worker of course.  Just like today, this is not enforced.
Workers are oppressed by the state who keeps them divided.  That's the
whole purpose of the police!  You have to see it this way: if someone
comes in and attempts to command the proletariat, then we will just
resist and determine how we manage our own lives, producing our own
products.

>     Democracy entails a LOT more than decisions about work!


I imagine so.

om, i didn't know you work at a public radio station, but it's still a
state-run station; so it still needs to be decentralized.  notice that
even though public officials are supposed to answer to the public, they
don't.  they answer to the ruling class.

> > Now, we are dependent on the state or capitalists for protection,
> > medical, food, and clothing.  If we survived on our own, then we'd have
> > an association of doctors, food servers, and clothing producers who had
> > nothing to do with a government or money.
>
>     Sounds good to me! How to we get twixt hither and yon?

Work with libertarian organizations like IWW and Food Not Bombs just to
name a couple.

> > Whatever anyone does for this non-market,
> > non-state society is good enough for them to take from it as well, and
> > that's all there is to it.  Somebody else could explain it better, but
> > that's good enough for me, right now.
>
>     I understand what you are referring to. I don't see any evidence to
> suggest that a free access society can ever produce enough to feed, clothe
> and house 6 billion people throughout the world.

Well, there's lots of people who don't believe.  I'm sure somebody else
could give you a convincing argument.

>     You've only answered them once in this forum!

You're amazing with your simplicity.  I've answered them 100 times,
elsewhere.  No offense

> I would find it interesting to discuss the facts of the Spanish
> Anarchists and the reality
> of their failed attempt at an alternative society.
>
>     Michael

okay

on 3/7/04 9:07 PM, Kete F. at kete_f@... wrote:

> We just have simple agreements between people.  A lot of paperwork and a
> bunch of meetings aren't necessary.  In fact, only as much organization
> as needed might be the best idea.  People will unite with each other,
> forming collectives of, say, a dozen people at most and federate with
> other collectives, sending delegates to communicate between
> collectives.  These collectives would work together in a confederation
> to provide everything the society needed.

     Why? This sounds like it's inevitable and we only need to wait for it to
happen. If it will be, why isn't it now?

> Well, I assumed democracy isn't flourishing because some people have
> ruled the rest of us for millennia.  Once this class of rulers no longer
> exists, I believe people will be more interested in working together to
> solve common problems.

     Certainly not for millennia! Why would this class of ruler cease to
exist? What will cause this change? Why hasn't this change already occurred?

> No, in a non-market economy, nobody owns capital.  Instead, everybody
> shares the land and means of production depending on how many people use
> certain things.  For example, a farm, a mine, or a factory is possessed
> by as many people who utilize said farm, mine, or factory,

     How do the possessors of the farm, mine or factory acquire new capital
for improvements, expansion or replacement? Capital doesn't grow on trees!
:>)

but someone's
> bicycle is only used by the one person who possesses it.  Everyone
> respects people's possessions 'cause theft is anti-social, and everyone
> would know how to defend oneself from burglary.

     If everyone respects people's possession, why would it be necessary to
know how to defend oneself from burglary?

> Everyone will give what they choose to a non-market economy and take
> what they wish.

     Why? I've never understood this. If everyone gives what they choose and
takes what they wish, there can never be enough for everyone. What is the
incentive to make sure that all needs are met?

> Since the economy will be free for all, nobody will
> learn greed and overconsumption.

     Why not? Why can't I have a brand new Hummer every year? I like Hummers.
I don't like them when they're dirty. I want a new Hummer!

     Why would peple act differently than they act now?

> If someone is not producing some
> product, then s/he has no business in deciding how to make the product.

     Says who? Who enforces this edict?

> That is what bosses do, and that's why workers, making their own
> decisions, is democracy.

     Democracy entails a LOT more than decisions about work!

> Now, I'm not suggestion you "take over" the radio station if you aren't
> organized and can't keep it in your control, but your fellow workers and
> you expropriate the radio station by doing your jobs as if the Board of
> Directors no longer existed.

     We already do our jobs as if the Board of Directors don't exist. The
Board of Directors don't know how to do our job.

> The Board of Directors don't answer to the
> community.

     Yes, they do. that's what they're for!

> If they did, then you'd have a non-market economy.

     Public Radio stations do not operate in the market economy. That's why
they're called "Public!"

> No, the
> Board of Directors answer to the ruling class, so to take over the radio
> station, you simply ignore your bosses and run the station as if it is
> the shared possession of you and your co-workers.  Maybe you could let
> your listeners have a hand in the programming of course.

     They already do! We have no bosses. We al work together, knowing our
jobs, none of which the General Manager could do on his own.

> I guess the content wouldn't be commercial.

     This is a Public Radio station. The content is already not commercial.

> Now, we are dependent on the state or capitalists for protection,
> medical, food, and clothing.  If we survived on our own, then we'd have
> an association of doctors, food servers, and clothing producers who had
> nothing to do with a government or money.

     Sounds good to me! How to we get twixt hither and yon?

> Whatever anyone does for this non-market,
> non-state society is good enough for them to take from it as well, and
> that's all there is to it.  Somebody else could explain it better, but
> that's good enough for me, right now.

     I understand what you are referring to. I don't see any evidence to
suggest that a free access society can ever produce enough to feed, clothe
and house 6 billion people throughout the world.

> Yes, they are simple questions, and that's the only reason I can answer
> them; but answering them for the 100th time is driving me nuts.

     You've only answered them once in this forum!

> How is this different from what the Spanish anarchists accomplished in
> the Spanish civil war?

     The Spanish Anarchists were defeated in the Spanish Civil War. The
achieved a cooperative society for a very short period of time, that was
admirable and a grand model for future development. I would find it
interesting to discuss the facts of the Spanish Anarchists and the reality
of their failed attempt at an alternative society.

     Michael

How do we achieve democracy, that is, decision-making by the people, in a society in which no
state exists to enforce a particular social system?

  Democracy has not flourished to date. Why would this change?

In a non-market economy, aren't the producers the capital owners?

So, if the producers are making the decisions, how is this democracy? Not everyone can be a producer!

I work at a public radio station that is run by a Board of Directors made up of members of the community. How
do my fellow workers "take over" the radio station?

How would we operate the station differently than we do now under a non-market, non-state society?

How is "surviving on our own" different from the way we survive now?

    How will I acquire my living space, my food, my clothing in a
non-market, non-state society, while working at my chosen professional as a
public radio professional?

    These are seemingly simple questions that are generally glossed over in discussions about non-state, non-market societies.

Since this has never been attempted in the past, I think it prudent, at the very least, to give it
some thought before we overthrow the present society and toss capitalism on the ash heap of history!

    Michael

From:  "robbo203" <RRobincox@a...>

> Just sat through a channel four documentary called status anxiety
> presented by philosopher Alain de Botton. I dont know if anyone on
> this list also saw it but I found it extremely interesting. I ve
> posted a write up from the Channel 4 website below. If you can get
> to see it dont miss it - I think its a 3 part series

     I don't have a TeeVee so can't watch it, even here in the land of
eleventy bazillion empty cable channels. Have to make do with actually
reading words placed in a row.

Status Anxiety

> Philosopher and author Alain de Botton believes there's something the
> vast majority of people desire even more than money. Whatever their
> background or social class, whatever their age or country of origin,
> what they desperately crave is status.

     Well, there's no accounting for deeply held beliefs. Belief exists
without evidence, so what can I say?

> asking why people are unable to curtail their painful
> aspirations and whether those at the bottom of society merit their
> position there as much as those at the top do theirs.

     This assumes at the outset that people are unable to curtail their
painful aspirations, whatever that means. No evidence is presented to
suggest that such a thing exists!

> As well as examining the work of classical philosophers, de Botton
> develops his theory with the help of a Washington DC restaurant
> manager who considers himself destined to become a chat show host;
> motivational speaker Les Brown; homeless lady Jenny Lamont; and
> members of the Native American population.

     Ah! So these individuals then would be the researchers who present the
evidence that people are unable to curtail their painful aspirations. And
the evidence is?

> De Botton's search for possible cures to status anxiety

     Wait, wait! We don't know that status anxiety even exists yet. A cure?
Is status anxiety a disease?

> He learns how a discovery of one's mortality can suddenly
> put the constitute elements of status, such as careers, possessions,
> appearance and fame, into perspective.

     Discovery? I didn't know our mortality was a secret to be discovered.
How can a discovery of something that was always there ad perspective to
one's life.

     This is the worst of TeeVee pop psychology.  Of interst to "our" sector?
Naw!

> Find out more about Alain De Botton's theory of status anxiety

     This is not a theory, but an unsupported proposition. I always thought
British TeeVee was better than the American variety!

     Michael

on 3/7/04 6:16 PM, Kete F. at kete_f@... wrote:

> in an anti-state society, democracy is what bonds the people.

     This may be the result, if democracy exists. How do we achieve
democracy, that is, decision-making by the people, in a society in which no
state exists to enforce a particular social system?

> Wouldn't democracy naturally flourish if someone didn't interrupt it?

     Not necessarily. Democracy has not flourished to date. Why would this
change?

> Decisions are made by the producers rather than the capital owners who
> wouldn't exist in a non-market economy.

     This is not my understanding. In a non-market economy, aren't the
producers the capital owners? So, if the producers are making the decisions,
how is this democracy? Not everyone can be a producer!

> We realize this organization by taking over our workplaces and farms and
> disobeying the law enforcers after coming together and learning how to
> successfully do this and survive on our own.

     By taking over our workplaces... So, I work at a public radio station
that is run by a Board of Directors made up of members of the community. How
do my fellow workers "take over" the radio station? How would we operate the
station differently than we do now under a non-market, non-state society?
How is "surviving on our own" different from the way we survive now?

     We live in a capitalist economy, which means that we trade our labor for
money, so as to buy food, shelter and clothing. I work at the radio station
20-25 hours a week and they give me a piece of paper that I give to my bank
who tots it up in my bank account, allowing me to withdraw cash to buy food,
clothing and pay the rent on the mobile home space where I live.

     How will I acquire my living space, my food, my clothing in a
non-market, non-state society, while working at my chosen professional as a
public radio professional?

     These are seemingly simple questions that are generally glossed over in
discussions about non-state, non-market societies. Since this has never been
attempted in the past, I think it prudent, at the very least, to give it
some thought before we overthrow the present society and toss capitalism on
the ash heap of history!

     Michael

Hayduke wrote:

>     What is the role of democracy in a non-market, ant-state society?

in an anti-state society, democracy is what bonds the people.

> How do we "facilitate democratic decision making in the absence of the
> state?

Wouldn't democracy naturally flourish if someone didn't interrupt it?

> How are non-market economic decisions made in a non-market economy.

Decisions are made by the producers rather than the capital owners who
wouldn't exist in a non-market economy.

>
>     Further, how do we achieve a democratic, grass roots organization of a
> non-market, anti-state society, living, as we do now, in a market
> economy in
> a centralized state government.

We realize this organization by taking over our workplaces and farms and
disobeying the law enforcers after coming together and learning how to
successfully do this and survive on our own.

>
>     Michael

What is the role of democracy in a non-market, ant-state society? How do
we "facilitate democratic decision making in the absence of the state? How
are non-market economic decisions made in a non-market economy.

     Further, how do we achieve a democratic, grass roots organization of a
non-market, anti-state society, living, as we do now, in a market economy in
a centralized state government.

     Michael

on 3/7/04 4:13 PM, Kete F. at kete_f@... wrote:

> An autocrat is someone who runs a government, not an e-mail list!

     Reaching two feet to my right to grasp the warm and warn cloth cover of
my venerable Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1976), we read:

     autocrat 1: a person ruling with unlimited authority; 2: one who has
undisputed influence or power.

     I understand how one might gain the impression from usage that autocrat
refers to a government official. As you can see, the application of the word
is much broader.

     Michael

--
"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world
is either a madman or an economist." Kenneth Boulding - 1910 - 1994

Hayduke wrote:

> on 3/7/04 11:09 AM, robbo203 at RRobincox@... wrote:
>
> I want to be sure I understand what you will not tolerate as autocrat
> of this list.

An autocrat is someone who runs a government, not an e-mail list!

on 3/7/04 11:09 AM, robbo203 at RRobincox@... wrote:

> Please note that mudslinging, flaming and generally
> unreasonable or unproductive behaviour will not be tolerated."

     Could you do me a big favor.? Would you define what you mean by
"mudslinging," "flaming" and "unproductive behavior?" I'm especially curious
about the "unproductive behavior" proscription as that seems not to have
anything to do with discussion on this list. I want to be sure I understand
what you will not tolerate as autocrat of this list.

> At the very first opportunity you are at it again, doing what you
> have been so severely criticised for before. Why? Why do you seem to
> have the irresistable urge to to incur the annoyance of others?

     Others? Have others expressed annoyance at my posts on this list?

     It says here: "This forum has been specifically set up for individuals
within and outside the non-market anti statist sector to exchange ideas that
might be relevant to our sector as a whole." So this forum is for everyone
in the world to talk about anything, if they consider their subject relevant
to our sector. That's a pretty big territory!

     I would think that democratic process, free speech, honesty and accuracy
would be of interest to our sector, would you not? Why are you annoyed when
I point out inaccuracies in your posts? Why do you immediately jump on me in
defensiveness rather than answer my charges?

> I can
> assure you I have no intention of denying you the right to express
> your political viewpoint but I can equally assure that as moderator I
> am not going to put up with the kind of behaviour that makes a
> mockery of free speech and reduces this forum to a bearpit.

     Ah, then would you please also define what kind of behavior makes a
mockery of free speech. I'm not aware of this concept. Free speech is free
speech. Either it is free or it is not. What makes a mockery of free speech?
What is a bearpit?

> So please, can we now get back to the business of discussing
> political ideas and not slinging mud. You have been politely asked to
> respect the ground rules of this forum.  Please do so.  I dont want
> to have to warn you yet again.

     Good! I'll be glad when you stop the mud slinging! I have been
discussing the political ideas of democracy, free speech, anarchism, honesty
and accuracy. Yes, let's get back to the discussion!

     I believe I asked you a couple of questions... answers forthcoming?

     Michael

Michael

> Thanks for the personal word of advice, Robin. It's good to know
> that your moderator duties will be performed objectively and
> impartially. A question about process: Do you, Robin, intend to
> continue censoring the archives by unilaterally removing posts you
> find objectionable?    I'm curious if your previous interest in
> democracy and free speech are
> to be extended to this forum? Do you intend to carefully craft your
> own version of history as we go along? Or will you summarily remove
> anyone who doesn't fit your previously determined mold of "right
speech?"


I have already explained what I propose to do as moderator in my
opening post. Let me repeat once again what I said: "I will try to
ensure that the discussion/debate remains cordial and
civilised. Please note that mudslinging, flaming and generally
unreasonable or unproductive behaviour will not be tolerated."

At the very first opportunity you are at it again, doing what you
have been so severely criticised for before. Why? Why do you seem to
have the irresistable urge to to incur the annoyance of others? I can
assure you I have no intention of denying you the right to express
your political viewpoint but I can equally assure that as moderator I
am not going to put up with the kind of behaviour that makes a
mockery of free speech and reduces this forum to a bearpit.


So please, can we now get back to the business of discussing
political ideas and not slinging mud. You have been politely asked to
respect the ground rules of this forum.  Please do so.  I dont want
to have to warn you yet again.

Thank you

Robin

on 3/7/04 10:55 AM, Julian Prior at joolsyp@... wrote:

> How can you
> say on the one hand that the tools we use in our struggle are
> irrelevant, and in the next breath say that revolution is fueled by
> human contact whether face to face or via the internet?

     Ah, a difference in interpretation. Irrelevant was a poor choice of
word.

     I meant that it doesn't matter which tools we use, or whether or not
they profit capitalists. The important thing, as you point out, is that we
use them!

     Thanks for the  clarification!

     Michael

--
"The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually
idiotic. He is, more likely, one who loves his country more than the rest of
us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it
debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen
driven to despair." -- H.L. Mencken

On 7 Mar 2004, at 18:24, Hayduke wrote:

>     Thanks for this article and the site reference.
>
>     The Struggle (c) goes on wherever we struggle. The tools we use in
> the
> struggle are irrelevant. There is no tool we can use, internet,
> computers,
> telephones, FAX machines, typewriters, monkeywrenches, shovels and
> rakes and
> implements of destruction, are all products of a capitalist economy and
> their manufacture and sale all go to support capitalists throughout
> the oil.
>
>     Get over it, leave it behind, forget about it. It doesn't matter.
>
>     All that matters is the struggle.

Michael - there is a huge hole in your argument I'm afraid. How can you
say on the one hand that the tools we use in our struggle are
irrelevant, and in the next breath say that revolution is fueled by
human contact whether face to face or via the internet? The 'tools' you
refer to have been created by us, real human beings in struggle and can
be appropriated by us for that very purpose despite (obviously) being
imbued with a capitalist character. Of course if the 'tools' become an
end in itself then you may have a point, but nobody is arguing that.
The internet and other technologies have become part of the very fabric
of our everyday lives and - as a means, for example, by which we can
link our experiences and struggles on a global level - are a crucial
component in helping to forge alternative ways of living beyond
capitalism.

JP



>
>     If we bind ourselves with hand wringing over the tools we use to
> oppose
> the state and the capitalist economy, we'll end up sitting in a dark
> room in
> the cold, naked and starving. We must move on in the struggle,
> organize real
> human beings wherever they are and by whatever means.
>
>     Revolution, the struggle, starts between the ears, not in some box
> full
> of diodes and wires (do computers have diodes?). Revolution is fueled
> by
> human contact, face to face, through letters, phone calls, faxes and
> yes,
> even over the internet. the fact that capitalists profit from our use
> of
> this tools is of no concern. Capitalists profit from everything. Our
> task is
> to bring this to an end, by whatever means.
>
>     Michael
>
> --
> "There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious,
> makes
> you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even
> passively
> take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon
> the
> wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to
> make it
> stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the
> people who
> own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from
> working
> at all!"   - Mario Savo, UC Berkely, 1963
>

Thanks for this article and the site reference.

     The Struggle (c) goes on wherever we struggle. The tools we use in the
struggle are irrelevant. There is no tool we can use, internet, computers,
telephones, FAX machines, typewriters, monkeywrenches, shovels and rakes and
implements of destruction, are all products of a capitalist economy and
their manufacture and sale all go to support capitalists throughout the oil.

     Get over it, leave it behind, forget about it. It doesn't matter.

     All that matters is the struggle.

     If we bind ourselves with hand wringing over the tools we use to oppose
the state and the capitalist economy, we'll end up sitting in a dark room in
the cold, naked and starving. We must move on in the struggle, organize real
human beings wherever they are and by whatever means.

     Revolution, the struggle, starts between the ears, not in some box full
of diodes and wires (do computers have diodes?). Revolution is fueled by
human contact, face to face, through letters, phone calls, faxes and yes,
even over the internet. the fact that capitalists profit from our use of
this tools is of no concern. Capitalists profit from everything. Our task is
to bring this to an end, by whatever means.

     Michael

--
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes
you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively
take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the
wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it
stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who
own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working
at all!"   - Mario Savo, UC Berkely, 1963

--- In WiCopendebate@yahoogroups.com, Hayduke <hayduke@r...> wrote:
>     ...and don't you think it just a bit disingenuous to attempt to pack the
> list with Commoner members "just to set the tone of the debate?"
>
>     Michael

That's right Michael - look out, the Central Committee are out to getcha ;-)

JP

It says here on the opening page of this discussion forum:

"We are a network of people committed to inspiring a vision of an
alternative way of living where all the world's resources are owned in
common and democratically controlled by communities on an ecologically
sustainable and socially harmonious basis. We believe such a society will no
longer require money, markets or states and can only be established
democratically from the bottom up without the intervention of politicians or
leaders."

     I like this. I like this a lot. I'd quibble with the "ownership" of
resources, since if all own them, no one owns them, but that's just a
semantic distinction.

     "Democratically controlled" means that decisions about resources are
made by all the people. In this forum, the resources are the ability to
participate and to read the archives. If one person, a self-proclaimed
"leader," decides who should participate and which archives are to expunged
from the record, then democracy does not live here. I ask for democracy in
this forum, as a place to discuss alternative views of society free from the
overweening oppression of a central authority. Think of it as practice: if
we can't do it here, how will we do it "after the Revolution(TM)?"

     Furthermore, I'd like to ask that this forum be established and
maintained "democratically from the bottom up without the intervention of
politicians or leaders." This would mean that the moderator responds to the
membership, rather than imposing authority from the top down.

     In American colloquialism, we call it "practicing what you preach."
Sorry for the religious metaphor.

     I fully expect to be banned from this group and my posts expunged from
the group history, in true Soviet tradition, for daring to raise the subject
of democracy as a topic of discussion. Inconvenient ideas often evoke such
knee jerk responses. I hope to be able to participate in a free and open
discussion in this forum, free from the autocracy of the thought police.

     Michael

Fantastic doctrines (like Christianity or Islam or Marxism) require
unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions.
Thus the fear and the hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the
gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward.  Ed Abbey

...and don't you think it just a bit disingenuous to attempt to pack the
list with Commoner members "just to set the tone of the debate?"

     Michael

Howdy Robin!

     Thanks for the welcome back. It's old home week here on "WiCopendebate,"
with you, Ken and me as the only members. Ken's been holding a grand
discussion on economics over on Commondiscussion, after you bailed out.
Perhaps some of it will spill over here as well.

> on 3/6/04 4:08 PM, robbo203 at RRobincox@... wrote:

> I will try to ensure that the discussion/debate remains cordial and
> civilised.

     Good! I trust this will extend to all (1.. 2..., uhm 3) members present.

> Please also bear in mind also that this forum belongs to the World in
> Common group and I have been nominated by the group to act as
> Moderator.

     May I cordially and in a civilized manner ask that we maintain a high
degree of honesty and accuracy here? Robin volunteered to be moderator for
this 3rd Forum and no one on the Commoner or World in Common group objected.

> What people want to debate on this forum is up to them - although it
> would be helpful if it could have some relevance to the political
> sector in which the World in Common Group operates.

     Although this is an entirely contradictory statement, the membership of
the group will indeed set the tone of the debate and the subjects discussed.
Since discussion has lapsed into virtual silence in the WiC and Commoner
forums, perhaps an influx of new ideas will help spur discussion there as
well. I trust then, that there will be no off-topic posts, no forbidden
subjects of discussion, no iron-fisted ideologues to ensure purity of
thought?

> Individuals who
> likewise belong to the non-market anti-statist sector might also wish
> to join our other forum at
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/worldincommon/ which is specifically
> for individuals belonging to this sector.

     I think it would be good to define the "non-market anti-statist sector"
in this general forum, perhaps even on the main web page and the invites. I
thought I belonged to this "sector," but five people on the other lists
disagreed with me and I was unceremoniously kicked off and banned from
participating. Definitions will help forestall such a sad eventuality here,
I hope.

     Looking for the best!

     Michael

on 3/7/04 5:45 AM, robbo203 at RRobincox@... wrote:

> I sincerely hope we are not going to start off on the wrong foot in
> this forum. Lets make this a constrcutive and friendly place to be
> in.  And yes if you want to import some of the discussion you were on
> about in commondiscussion by all means do so ;-)

     Thanks for the personal word of advice, Robin. It's good to know that
your moderator duties will be performed objectively and impartially.

     A question about process: Do you, Robin, intend to continue censoring
the archives by unilaterally removing posts you find objectionable? Of the 7
posts so far on this list, you have removed three, all of them,
coincidentally I'm sure, messages that I posted.

     I'm curious if your previous interest in democracy and free speech are
to be extended to this forum? Do you intend to carefully craft your own
version of history as we go along? Or will you summarily remove anyone who
doesn't fit your previously determined mold of "right speech?"

     In conviviality,

     Michael

Hi Folks

Something from the venemous butterfly page which looked interesting
(http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/vbutterfly.html).  What you think?

regards
Robin




THE INTERNET AND SELF-ORGANIZATION


    The current restructuring of capitalist social relations began to
develop with the rise of the "information age", largely due to the
growth of cybernetic and related technologies, so it is not
surprising that the resistance to capitalism makes use of these tools
for its own purposes. What is perhaps surprising, or at least
disturbing, is the extent to which these tools have been embraced
with no critical examination of the processes which produce these
technologies and those under which they operate, nor of the nature of
the sort of communication and organization they allow. In fact, it is
not uncommon, even in anarchist circles, to come across accolades to
the internet that leave the impression that this technology is what
has made the organization of current struggles possible, what has
allowed the present "anti-capitalist" movement to develop. At times,
this praise reaches such a level that it seems to transform the
internet into an icon, a symbol of the revolutionary struggle. But to
the chagrin of the radical techno-fetishists, the computer lacks the
romance of the machine gun, icon of so many revolutionaries of the
1970's.

    In any case, such effusive praise of one specific tool is
certainly peculiar, particularly when it is such an integral part of
the present social order. The internet has no connection whatsoever
to the development of self-organized, autonomous relationships, and
from an anarchist perspective, such relationships are central to the
struggle against this world. The internet is actually a system that
has been developed to serve specific requirements of capital and the
state, so it is delusional to think it allows free interaction and
association. Its form is conducive to the degradation of knowledge
into (much more marketable) bits of information, of thought into
binary logic, of relationships into virtual communication—just as the
machine gun is conducive to killing.

    This is not to deny that within the present social context the
internet can serve as a useful tool for anarchists. One can find
information about struggles, actions and state repression around the
world; one can avail oneself of relatively instantaneous
communication often at no cost that could provide a means for
coordinating specific initiatives. But this is meaningless outside
the context of a real ongoing struggle against the existing the
entire network of institutions that dominates our lives. As I see it,
this would mean a struggle against the kind of social relations that
produced the internet and the technological systems upon which it
depends.

    But those within anti-capitalist circles who have praised the
internet so effusively have seen it as far more than a tool. For
them, it is the basis for a global struggle that is non-hierarchical
and can lead to a "truly democratic" world. They ignore the
systematic control of relations inherent in the technology that makes
it hierarchical by nature. They ignore the hierarchy inherent in
democracy itself. But above all they ignore the history of the
struggle of the exploited against this reality. The internet is a
very recent technological innovation, not more than a generation old,
and there have been revolts against domination and exploitation from
the time the civilized order arose. In the heat of such struggles,
people have always been able to create ways to communicate with
others in struggle, ways which, though technically less instantaneous
than the internet, were far more immediate and truly autonomous. It
was self-organized communication, often face-to-face.

    As an integral part of cybernetic technological control, the
internet is not and cannot be an expression of self-organization. It
is qualitatively different from an autonomous assembly, an affinity
group or a roving group of insurgent proletarians going to meet with
other insurgents to coordinate struggles. The difference is simple to
explain. If we make the internet the basis for coordinating our
struggles, for communicating our projects, actions and dreams, then
our struggles, our projects and all that inspires them will become
the kind that can be communicated through the internet—that is,
projects, struggles and dreams that can be broken down into
interchangeable bits of information where people, their passions and
desires are of little importance except to the extent that they are
useful in producing marketable bytes. This is because the kind of
communication and coordination that can happen through the internet
has already been organized before we start to use it, and it has not
been organized in our interest, but rather in the interests of the
social order of domination. Dependence on that which has already been
organized by one's enemy has two significant negative effects on
one's struggle: it undermines one's own creative imagination and
practical intelligence—one's capacity for self-organization—and it
makes one dependent on one's enemy in the coordination of one's
struggle, this undermining one's ability to strike the enemy fiercely.

    Those of us who desire a world free of domination and
exploitation, and therefore seek to destroy the state, capital and
the entire ensemble of institutions that rule us, need to organize
our struggles autonomously. This means creating our own tools for
communicating and coordinating our struggles. It is necessary to
develop relationships of affinity based on real knowledge of each
other, of each person's projects, ideas, capacities, dreams and
desires. These relationships provide the basis for developing
projects of action and, on a larger scale, informal networks of
solidarity. Various encounters, discussions, periodicals and papers—
autonomously created projects—can hone our analyses and help us to
work out our methods of struggle and coordinate our activities. But
the specific details are not as important as the necessity of the
self-organization of our struggle. Only with this basis, can we know
how to grasp the tools at hand and turn them to our purpose—that of
destroying the present society and creating our lives in freedom. In
the context of such self-organized struggles, the internet may be a
useful tool, but no more than that, and only one among many—one that
I would say is destined to fall with the society that spawned it. And
in the midst of a real uprising, when immediate communication would
be essential, would we want to be sitting at a desk in front of a
screen? Or out where the real struggle is going on?

Hi folks

Just sat through a channel four documentary called status anxiety
presented by philosopher Alain de Botton. I dont know if anyone on
this list also saw it but I found it extremely interesting. I ve
posted a write up from the Channel 4 website below. If you can get
to see it dont miss it - I think its a 3 part series

Regards

Robin

-----------


Status Anxiety


Saturday 6th March 2004, 7pm


Philosopher and author Alain de Botton believes there's something the
vast majority of people desire even more than money. Whatever their
background or social class, whatever their age or country of origin,
what they desperately crave is status.

In this two-hour programme, as well as testing his theory in Britain,
De Botton travels to the United States, to investigate status
anxiety, asking why people are unable to curtail their painful
aspirations and whether those at the bottom of society merit their
position there as much as those at the top do theirs.

As well as examining the work of classical philosophers, de Botton
develops his theory with the help of a Washington DC restaurant
manager who considers himself destined to become a chat show host;
motivational speaker Les Brown; homeless lady Jenny Lamont; and
members of the Native American population.

De Botton's search for possible cures to status anxiety takes him to
churches on both sides of the Atlantic; the bohemian world of punks,
nudists and hippies who live by their own rules; and philosophers -
such as Schopenhauer - who believe that other people's opinions are
not always worthwhile.

Finally, he learns how a discovery of one's mortality can suddenly
put the constitute elements of status, such as careers, possessions,
appearance and fame, into perspective.

Find out more about Alain De Botton's theory of status anxiety

Michael

I sincerely hope we are not going to start off on the wrong foot in
this forum. Lets make this a constrcutive and friendly place to be
in.  And yes if you want to import some of the discussion you were on
about in commondiscussion by all means do so ;-)

Robin

Hi folks

This forum is now officially - if belatedly - declared open!

I will try to ensure that the discussion/debate remains cordial and
civilised.  Please note that mudslinging, flaming and generally
unreasonable or unproductive behaviour will not be tolerated.  It is
quite possible to have a useful and interesting debate between even
completely opposed viewpoints without resorting to such behaviour.
Please also bear in mind also that this forum belongs to the World in
Common group and I have been nominated by the group to act as
Moderator.


What people want to debate on this forum is up to them - although it
would be helpful if it could have some relevance to the political
sector in which the World in Common Group operates.  Individuals who
likewise belong to the non-market anti-statist sector might also wish
to join our other forum at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/worldincommon/ which is specifically
for individuals belonging to this sector.


All the best

Robin