Of course, left-right is very reductionnist way of thinking. I personnaly=
don't share most of the philosophical or artistical values of my
"left-winged" friends. I always found Sartre, Foucault or Derrida boring =
to
the utmost! But people think with packages. for instance, most
"free-market" people hate abortion, women's lib, drug use, and are
(frequently) christian fundamentalists and creationists. Our first attemp=
t
must be to go behind these "packages". I think the core "socialist values=
"
can be freed from their depressive thinking, as the core "capitalist
values" can be freed from social and political conservatisms. In this pos=
t
, for the clarity of discussion,( and avoiding flames!) I'll continue to=
use the terms "left" and "right" to design the "core" values. =
>If one says that they think that government should be abolished, obvious=
ly
>they are anarchists; if their reason is because the government has done
>virtually nothing to feed the starving and homeless, then their position=
is
>pretty obvious.
I'd prefer to ask: since the governement exists, and we cannot destroy it=
next sunday after lunch, how to use it ? I prefer to see it feed the
homeless rather than using my money for army or making gifts to big
corporations....
The "Free marketer" wrote :
>Hitler was an outstanding example of a "left wing extremist" even
>though he's portrayed by the "left" today as a "right wing
>extremist". Such cult-like dichotomies do nothing to further
>progress.
Uh, really ? don't you do the same cult-like dichotomy by saying Hitler w=
as
a left-wing extremist ? I lurk this list since several weeks, and I thoug=
ht
that since a clever post by Hagbard/Keith, nobody here would dare to put
the Hitler card on the desk, especially so quickly....
Damien Sullivan wrote :
>This, of course, begs the question. The anarcho-(socialist,
>syndicalist, communist) claim is that property, such as owning a car
>which isn't used 90% of the time, or land you've never even visited when=
>there are landless peasants starving in megacity slums, is theft and
>coercion. So they would say "the 'right' wouldn't survive without
>utilizing coercion (oxymoron!), or adapting socialist techniques."
Exactly. Every act of privatization begins by an enclosure act ("this is
mine: I will kill anybody who enter here") which is an act of cercion. =
The main difference between (sorry for the crude terms) left anarchy and
right anarchy is that the second see "The state" and "the Market" as
opposing entities, and that the first sees the State as simple
superstructure used by the wealthies to protect their rights against the
"have-not". They are therefore allies, more: state is just the
institutional representation of the property system. =
An other difference is more semantic. I suspect right-anarchist to use th=
e
term "market" as a model of any kind of free interaction, as the left
anarchists see in "market" only one kind of interaction. "Free markets",
according to this definition, is therefore, to use Bateson's terms, a
"maximisation of one variable", which can be disastrous to the whole
system, built on many variables. =
We all use everyday an anarcho-socialist system which works quite well: t=
he
internet. Here, most of the informations are given for free, and everybod=
y
understand that for the system to work, they must give information as muc=
h
as they take. When you go to a site where there is some valuable
information that you must pay (I grant you an exclusive license, blah,
blah, etc), do you immediately give your Visa Card number, or do you go
back to Alta vista or Excite to see if somebody doesn't offer you the sam=
e
information for free? =
Anarcho-socialism works pretty well like the iterated prisonner's dilemna=
=2E
I will share my goods if i know that, on the long run, I will beneficiate=
of the others goods.Of course the benefit must be higher than the "price"=
of my contribution, otherwise the system would not work (And this implies=
,
IMO, a high technological level, such as the Culture's). In the realm o=
f
Internet we see that most companies such as Microsoft or Sun found
necessary to give for free a big amount of their products simply to be ab=
le
to sell some.(See internet Explorer or the JDK). To save the capitalist
system, they are therefore compelled to cope with a "socialist" way of
exchange. Here we see that things are never completely opposites, like i=
n
a chess game. We are here in a very complex game of Go. =
>>"Left" anarchy is nothing more than intellectual masturbation for
> >socialist and communist ideological refugees, particulary in the
>Ideological refugees? Anarcho-communism is at least as old as Marxism.
Of course. Bakounin participated with Marx at the 1st Internationale, and=
he was the fist to predict that Marxist ideas would be dangerous to
freedom. Since, communists killed enough anarchists (especially during th=
e
Spain war, where they were officially allies) to demonstrate their
ideological differences..
Bye
Remi