Total Liberty

TOTAL LIBERTY Winter 2006 is out. A fine English anarchist publication. In “The Strange Case of Kropotkin's Chair...” Christopher Draper explores the state of Britain's labour history museums and the various forms of anarchist iconography (including a Brighton city bus named after Peter Kropotkin!) Steve Cullen examines three different examples of free association overlooked in daily life, Nigel Meek goes after the chain stores, Yours truly outlines the world-wide rebirth of anarchism and Richard Hebden asks “Can There Be Such A Thing As A Christian Anarchist?” Joe Peacott spills the beans on Alaska in “The Last Frontier”. Book reviews and letters, 16 pages 1L (a bargain!) from 47 High St. Belper, Derby, DE56 1GF UK or http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/total_liberty1/index.jhtml

Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson, anarchist philosopher, humorist, and essayist, is sadly no longer with us as of yesterday. He will be deeply missed by freedom-lovers everywhere. This information thanks to the Void

http://johnnyvoid.blogspot.com/2007/01/all-hail-eris.html

Robert Anton Wilson probably did more to popularize anarchism in the English speaking world than probably any other contemporary person. His humourous novels, the most famous of which was the Illuminatus Trilogy, co-authored with the late Bob Shea, as well as a series of other novels such as Cosmic Trigger were read by hundreds of thousands of people. Not only did he populate his books with anarchists, Wobblies and all sorts of other freedom-seeking folk, but he made the reader aware of their ideas. But he did not stop with anarchism as a political or social ideal, but created his own distinct anarchist philosophy based upon his study of Semantics, psychology and the functioning of the human brain. He did this at a time when most anarchists remained trapped within 19^th Century philosophies and a minority rejected scientific rationalism altogether. Wilson avoided both New Age irrationalism and the vulgar rationalism of the pseudo-skeptic. In his anti-dogmatic and thus genuine scientific viewpoint, almost anything was possible, but possibility did not mean that an alleged phenomenon necessarily existed. Wilson was open to the Marvelous, to Freedom, yet did not dance off the edge of the cliff.

Marxism, Anarchism and the State

Larry, I fully agree that whatever mass enterprises exist need to be worker-controlled. But I still think there's a role for a proletarian state in the transition, which is where we probably differ. "Victor Serge" of Monuments Are For Pigeons Blog

http://www.orangepolyester.blogspot.com/

Yes, Victor, we differ on this issue, but the real question is why and to what extent? Don't worry, I am not about to feed you the usual anarchist dogmas about Marxists.

I would like to make it clear, however, that while social anarchists are opposed to the state in any form, we are not opposed to organization. For social anarchists there is a major difference between the state and the form of organization during and immediately after the revolution. Kropotkin says it well;

On the other hand the State has also been confused with Government. Since there can be no State without government, it has sometimes been said that what one must aim at is the absence of government and not the abolition of the State. However, it seems to me that State and government are two concepts of a different order. The State idea means something quite different from the idea of government. It not only includes the existence of a power situated above society, but also of a territorial concentration as well as the concentration in the hands of a few of many functions in the life of societies. The State: Its Historic Role, Peter Kropotkin

Nor do we think we can leap to full-blown libertarian socialism in one bound without an intervening period of transition. The archetypal models for this transition are found with the Paris Commune and the workers councils in Russia and Germany. You would agree, no doubt, but might well say, "Yes, but the Paris Commune and the workers councils are EXAMPLES of the worker's state."

So what you call a workers' state, we call a workers' non-state? Is this a case of "You say tomato, I say tomahto?"

I believe that the root cause of the distinction between anarchists and marxists over the state or non-state nature of the transition lies in Hegelian philosophy. The anarchist describes the real, empirical, existing state, whereas Hegel is searching for the ontological essence of the state. For Hegel,

A multiplicity of human beings can only call itself a state if it be united for the common defense... of its property... state authority is basic, necessary, minimal. HEGEL'S THEORY OF THE MODERN STATE, Schlomo Avirneri 40, 47

For Hegel the state is not a particular thing, a structure, but exists in the unity of the universal and the particular, the universal being those common agreements and defense that people engage in, and the particular being civil society.(1) Hegel saw the Athenian polis as the "eternal model", and an "unsurpassed paradigm for a contemporary revolution." (2)

The flaw in Hegel's thinking should be obvious. By his reasoning, any non-statist Aboriginal tribe defending its territory and possessing a council which engages in common agreements is a state. Not a single contemporary social scientist would agree.

The Paris Commune and the workers councils existed to defend the revolution. In their direct democratic and assemblyist aspects they were modern versions of the polis. For Hegel, these revolutionary organizations would have been examples of a state. Marx and Engels undoubtedly got their ontological view of the state from studying Hegelian philosophy. One could leave the discussion at this point, but the question of state or no state during the transition in Marxist theory is a good deal more complicated.

Marx and Engels did not chain themselves in perpetuity to the Hegelian ontological concept of the state. The living practice of the working class seems to have changed their minds and they rejected the notion of a workers' state in favor of a workers' commune, structurally based upon the direct democratic Paris Commune.

The whole talk about the state should be dropped, especially since the Commune, which was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word. The "peoples state" has been thrown in our faces by the anarchists too long, although Marx...directly declare[d] that with the introduction of the socialist order of society the state will dissolve of itself and disappear. As, therefore, the "state" is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the revolution to hold down adversaries by force, it is pure nonsense to talk of a "free peoples state"... We would therefore propose to replace the word "state" everywhere by the word Gemeinenwesen (community) , a good old German word which can very well represent the French commune. Engels, Selected Correpondance p.336

Such a pity their followers didn't take them up on this!

1. Joachim Ritter, "Hegel and the French Revolution", p. 25

2. Georg Lukacs, "The Young Hegel", p 4.

Lies And Exaggeration

Cynics say that left and right are the same, both a bunch of liars. Not really true, I say. Yes, there are left-wingers who can be dishonest – usually while on their way to a career on the right, and there are some honest conservatives, but I am referring to the general tendency. You see, the right-winger starts off at a distinct disadvantage. Exploitation, oppression and imperialist wars really do exist and it becomes well neigh impossible to deny their existence. Furthermore, unless one goes all the way over to out and out fascism, exploitation, oppression and imperialism are decidedly a-moral. The corporate state system that the right winger loves and admires continually produces these amoral products, indeed, as the left will point out, is based upon them. All the left need do is report the facts of the situation, nothing else.

These facts place the right in the same position as a child caught with its hand in the cookie jar – blubbering a whole lot of weak excuses. In order to see themselves as moral, rightists have to disguise or white wash these facts. Not to do so means admitting the truth and then one would be forced to adjust one's practices accordingly. But disguising reality is not enough, in order to see oneself as morally superior, rightists must degrade and besmirch the left. The left has to be converted into a gruesome tapestry of monsters against which the whitewashed corporate system and its ideological standard bearers stand sharp and clear in all their virtuous finery.

To degrade the left it must lie. (It is hard otherwise to knock people who are against exploitation, oppression and war.) The right has systematically told lies about the left ever since the notion of right vs. left came to be 220 years ago. These lies are repeated from generation to generation, as though they lack sufficient imagination to create new ones. Sometimes the names are changed but the falsehood is the same. Pacifists in WW1 were called “pro-German”, in the Cold War, “communist” and in the Iraq war, “Saddam-lovers”. Often the lies are identical to the originals. The US women's emancipation movement of 1850 was sneered at as being a group of women who “want to be like men”, and are “unattractive and hence bitter against men.” I read this nonsense in the 1970's attacks on feminism. Unrest is still the work of “outside agitators” and counter-cultural groups all the way back to the 1840's Bohemians, are castigated as criminals, drug addicts and sex perverts. Some of the most courageous and ethical individuals are demonized. Victoria Woodhull, pioneer socialist and feminist was re-named “Mrs. Satan.” Emma Goldman, Gandhi, M.L. King all suffered at the hands of right-wing mud throwers during their time upon this earth. Those demonized today have names like Chavez, Sheehan, and Moore.

I have a personal recollection on the criminalization of leftists. Back in 1965, I was involved in a sit-down in front of the gates of the Comox Air Base as a protest against nuclear weapons. I knew one of the airmen and he criticized me for hanging out with nuts, commies and criminals and pointed at one person in our group. “See that guy there, he is a known criminal!” The person in question being Scott Lawrence, a Vancouver poet and one of the least criminal people on the planet.

And what about the left? Yes, a minority of the left, now almost extinct thankfully, did engage in systematic lies. These lies and vilification were not aimed at the right, but other leftists. Stalinists engaged in a campaign of slander and lies against the Trotskyists and anarchists that would turn Ann Coulter green with envy. They also engaged in a cover-up campaign for Stalin's monstrous crimes. Anyone who brought up the Ukrainian famine or the purges was attacked as a Gestapo agent. (Once again Ms. Coulter is green with envy) But the Stalinist Communist Party DID NOT lie about the dangers of fascism, lynching in the South, the need to support the workers against the Black Legion attacks etc. All the CP had to do was report the evils of the system.

However, the left has exaggerated, and may still do, for all I know. The great bout of exaggeration occurred in the early 1990's with “political correctness”. But the PC era seems to have passed, and indeed, its incidence was largely exaggerated by the right anyway. The left has no need to stretch the truth. The truth is horrible enough as it is.

Foxwoods Conn. 9000 Year Old Village

Taken fron the Sun Journal

"What looks like a simple, small black stain on a sandy hill at the Mashantucket Pequot reservation has changed the way archaeologists in this region look for dig sites. Archaeologists are excavating dozens of pit houses -- structures built into a hill and supported by timbers -- on a hill next to the Great Cedar parking garage behind Foxwoods Resort Casino. The find wouldn't be all that unique, except these houses were built about 8,000 years before researchers thought people settled into semi-permanent structures.

"Usually we see (native people) as wandering around the landscape (9,000 years ago)," said Kevin McBride, director of research at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. "You don't check hillsides, because who's going to live on a hillside? This is probably the most important site in East North America."

Just this week, the state released information it uncovered more than 8,100 Indian artifacts at a dig on the former Norwich Hospital property in Preston. A $1.6 billion movie studio and theme park is proposed for the site. McBride explained American Indians 9,000 years ago didn't have agriculture, and the running theory was they were nomadic hunters. Evidence at Mashantucket suggests these people used the Great Cedar Swamp's ecosystem to gather roots and tubers as their primary nutrition and lived in the pit houses for months on end.

"We though they were staying in one place for a few days or a week and moving on," McBride said.

Archaeologists didn't have many sites that dated back to 9,000 years ago and thought that meant there were few people living here at the time. Now, they are re-thinking that and looking at other sites to determine who lived here, what they ate and how they lived.

"It was assumed everyone was hunting whitetail deer and turkeys," said Dan Forrest, senior archaeologist at the Public Archaeology Survey Team, which is working at Mashantucket.

Forrest said there is evidence the people who lived in the pit houses didn't live there all year, because they left several tools behind in places they could be found when the people returned. He said the challenge his team is facing now is determining where they went, how long they stayed here and what they did when they went away.

"When they move off this site, it suggests they're doing something different altogether, like fishing," Forrest said.

Forrest said he is looking for links between people from Mashantucket and settlements found in the north, such as Maine. He said making that link could show the Northeast was a more populated and interconnected region than first thought.

"It always looked like New England was not such a great place to live," Forrest said. "Instead of seeing the Northeast as marginal, we're seeing more of a central core here."

http://www.sunjournal.com/news/ne/20060910014.php

Anarchists In Action

Here are a number of different anarchist groups. They show the different projects and actions anarchists are involved in. They represent only a tiny part of the growing world-wide anarchist and libertarian socialist movement.

Phoenix AZ Anarchist Coalition

http://www.phoenixanarchist.org/

Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland )

http://www.wsm.ie/front_page

Pittsburgh Organizing Group

http://www.organizepittsburgh.org/index.php

South African Anarchists

http://www.zabalaza.net/index02.htm

Amsterdam Anarchist Group

http://agamsterdam.wordpress.com/engels-links/#comment-18

South Wales Anarchist paper, “Gagged”

https://lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/gagged/

Quebec Solidaire – The future of social democracy?

Most social democrats these days – well, unless you are Hugo Chavez, are little more than the smiley face of corporate capitalism. Yes, it is good the NDP is against the Gringo's wars, and I will never forget that, but what about some policies that will really help people, rather than nibbling round the edges of the system? But there is one party that does deliver, and that is Quebec Solidaire.

Don't believe me? Look at my summation of a portion of their new 25 point program:

* Support for the social economy, based in part on trade union investment funds, government institutions to buy their products and services.

* Lengthen vacations to 5 weeks and begin debate on shortening the work week.

* Change the sales tax in the direction of a tax on “bads” rather than goods, i.e. tax the ecologically destructive. Less tax on necessities, higher tax on luxuries.

* Nationalize windmill power generation, to be run democratically by the regions and FN peoples. Quebec Hydro to prioritize the needs of ordinary Quebecois.

* Public forests to be run by local non-profit societies. To be managed in an environmental manner and to allow for the maximization of value added production.

* Water to become a permanent “public good”.

* Moratorium on GM food. Support for farmers to change to organic methods.

* A law forbidding the use of abusive law suits by corporations and governments against the public.

* Abolish all anti-trade union laws, encourage unionization of women.

* To support community organizations, to recognize their importance and respect their autonomy.

* The right of self-determination of Aboriginal peoples with the resources to allow them to re-gain their autonomy.

* The election of a constituent assembly which will engage the population in a democratic process of consultation for both the political future of Quebec and the nature of its political institutions. The goal a Quebec Constitution.

*The adoption of certain proportional ballot measures plus guarantee of gender parity and a great involvement of minorities in the political process.

Note that all of these points, either directly or indirectly, are measures that empower the ordinary person.