Re: Deep Anarchy (was Re: The Machinery Of Freedom)

From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Thu Feb 17 2000 - 23:55:56 MST


Travas Gunnell wrote:
>
> >At 02:29 AM 2/17/00 -0500, "Michael S. Lorrey" <retroman@turbont.net>
> >wrote:
> >>upgrade wrote:
>
> >> > Anyone interested?
> >>
> >>Certainly, so long as it doesn't get inundated by anarchists who are
> >>closet socialists (the whole Eugene gang).
> >>
> >>Mike Lorrey
>
> I feel the need to butt in with my two cents worth here. In "left"
> anarchist thought, two very different definitions of socialism are
> recognized. The first, "state socialism", is the familiar authoritarian
> Marxist kind that we're all familiar with, and the second (in opposition to
> the first),
> " . . . To quote Peter Kropotkin, Anarchism is 'the no-government system of
> socialism.' [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 46]. In other words,
> 'the abolition of exploitation and oppression of man by man, that is the
> abolition of private property [i.e. capitalism] and government.' [Errico
> Malatesta, 'Towards Anarchism,' in Man!, M. Graham (Ed), p. 75]"

Vague pronouncements without thinking things through to their proper
conclusion. Property are real goods acquired by an individual in
exchange for the labor of the individual. Abolishing property abolishes
the principle that an individual has a right to be paid for his labor,
which results in slavery.

>
> "Anarchism, therefore, is a political theory that aims to create a society
> which is without political, economic or social hierarchies. Anarchists
> maintain that anarchy, the absence of rulers, is a viable form of social
> system and so work for the maximisation of individual liberty and social
> equality. They see the goals of liberty and equality as mutually
> self-supporting. Or, in Bakunin's famous dictum:
>
> 'We are convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and
> injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality.'
> [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 269]"

Pure double speak. As noted above, the abolition of property is the
enslavement of the individual, therefore, socialism is a state of a lack
of freedom of the individual. Freedom and socialism cannot co-exist,
revealing why the term 'anarcho-socialism' is an oxymoron.

>
> " . . . rather than being purely anti-government or anti-state, anarchism is
> primarily a movement against hierarchy. Why? Because hierarchy is the
> organisational structure that embodies authority. Since the state is the
> "highest" form of hierarchy, anarchists are, by definition, anti-state; but
> this is not a sufficient definition of anarchism. This means that real
> anarchists are opposed to all forms of hierarchical organisation, not only
> the state. . . ."

Fine and good. Rather than a heirarchy, have an economic system
structured on networks rather than heirarchies. How are individuals to
be rewarded for their labor, and how are individuals to be able to save
the fruit of their labor without the concept of property? If anyone has
the right to go and take the property savings of an individual, how is
the individual to be motivated to produce at a rate greater than a mere
subsistence level?

These are the questions that pie eyed 'socialists' refuse to answer
because it exposes that their plan has no clothes.

Mike Lorrey



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