REVOLT IN SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS, MÉXICO ON EVENING OF 7TH MARCH 2002
Large crowds repel police, set police vehicles on fire, and loot supermarket and big shops. A carnival atmosphere prevails as crowds control the streets for over 3 hours. Later police enter area, fire tear gas and make a reported 50 arrests The conflict occurred in the area around the public market, a poor area where many indigenous people live and work, and followed a police operation against sellers of pirated merchandise. On the morning of 8 March police with riot gear cordon off an area around the public market.
This is an incomplete report written a few hours after the events from eye witness reports, and info in the local press and radio. More info hopefully to follow. Feel free to circulate but please remove e mail address.
A major revolt with thousands on the streets engulfed the area around the public market in San Cristobal de Las Casas on the evening of 7 March. Large crowds broke into at least 3 big stores, including a supermarket and department store. In a festive atmosphere men, women and children joyfully carted off large amounts of food, drink, clothes and furniture over a period of over 2 hours. Onlookers, including women with babies, elderly people and children watched with interest, and some shouted advice to the looters about the best route to take to avoid the police.
Two police vehicles were set on fire and burnt in the middle of the street. The crowd repulsed an attempt by the police to enter the area, hurling missiles. A shop was set alight and the fire was still burning at midnight.
From before 7pm till after 10pm thousands were on the streets, and the police seemed to have little or no presence an no control over the situation.
The conflict reportedly started at 6pm after a police operation to arrest sellers of pirated CDs etc.. Local newspaper La Foja reports that a police attempt to enter the area around this time was repulsed by the crowd throwing missiles.
By 7pm a police vehicle was ablaze in the street by the public market, hundreds, if not thousands were in the streets and police were not to be seen. Around 8pm missiles were seen being hurled, and slightly later a line of riot police were formed across the road behind Santo Domingo church.
Around 8pm the crowd began to break into large shops by the market, breaking plate glass windows and tearing off iron grilles on the entrances. Tela de Mexico, Alamanecenes Grandes, and then the supermarket which is opposite the last named, on a side street by the market, were all sacked. Around the same time another fire was burning in the street by the market, reportedly a second police car ablaze.
Large crowds of men, women and children carried off bags and boxes of food and groceries, sacks of rice or beans, bottles of wine and spirits, mattresses, sofas and much more. Eye witnesses reported a joyful and excited atmosphere. There were few vehicles in the area, but taxis and cars that strayed into the area were allowed to pass unhindered.
Around 10.15pm a large fire was seen burning near the market, reportedly a shop. Around 10.- 10.30pm police, some armed and some with riot shields and helmets, entered the area, charged the crowd and made arrests. According to local radio 50 men, women and children were arrested. La Foca paper reports the use of ?an excessive use of force? by the police when making arrests. Police fired tear gas on more than one occasion, and tear gas swept down nearby streets, causing discomfort to inhabitants of houses. Fire fighters entered the area to combat the fires.
By 11.30 pm police appeared to have regained control of the situation, though there were still crowds in the street, the shop continued to burn and there were remnants of a fire in the street. Local radio reports 6 police received hospital treatment. It is not known how many civilians were injured by the police violence.
Reports in the media that some of the crowd applauded the entry of the police into the area were not confirmed by eye witnesses who reported instead mass participation in looting, and many onlookers observing without any worries. The reactions observed to the arrival of the police were either resistance or flight.
At 9am the next morning, 8 March, an area around the public market was cordoned off by police with riot gear who were preventing entry by the public.
More news may follow, and there may be reports on Indymedia Chiapas (this report is not however from Indymedia Chiapas or any organization)
Note San Cristobal de Las Casas in Chiapas, southern Mexico has a population of over 130,000, many of whom live in poverty, many lack basic services such as electricity, piped water and drainage in their houses. A large proportion of the population are indigenous people, the majority Tzotziles, and suffer racist discrimination.
I am heartened to see someone else knows about the dangers of Libertarianism.
Ayn Rand and the perversion of libertarianism
The political controversy of the late 19th century was:
whether socialists (all those who believed in the individual's right to possess what he or she produced) should engage in the political process, seize control of the state, and use the state apparatus to achieve liberation; or, whether a worker's state was inherently contradictory, counter revolutionary, and would only lead to the creation of a new ruling class whose interests would still clash with those of the ruled - that the state should be abolished allowing for no transitional stage of any kind during which power may have the chance to reconsolidate itself.
The situation has recreated itself with amazing similarity almost exactly a century later. Non-libertarian parties the world over (those who see authoritarian centralization as the bulwark of civilization) are bankrupt, economically and intellectually. The only viable intellectual current today falls under that ambiguous term - "libertarian."
Today there exist beneath this umbrella as many splinter groups as there were a hundred years ago under the umbrella of socialism. Two distinct trends, a right and a left if you will, are clearly discernible. One group, clearly the largest with a hierarchical organization modeled on the other political parties, believes, like most Marxists, in constitutional parliamentary republican democracy. They believe that the state is a necessary guarantor of individual safety and the product of the individual's labor, and in gradual progress toward a free society through participation in the political process. The other group, much smaller and far more splintered, rejects the state as necessarily a tool of class domination and exploitation. This group believes that what Bakunin said a hundred years ago is as true today, "If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Czar himself."
The first group is in all fairness a direct inheritor of the ideals of the American Revolution. In modern times, however, it has only two roots: (1) the Austrian school of economics represented by Ludwig Von Mises; (2) the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Von Mises never considered the libertarians. He answered the Marxists and the Keynesians and defended laissez-faire capitalism at a time when no one else would. His justification for capitalism was empirical - the greatest good for the greatest number. Ayn Rand, however, attempted to offer a moral justification of capitalism by substituting the word `capitalism' for the libertarian meaning of the word "socialism." She then attributed all of the ills of capitalism to government interference with the market and all of the world's wealth to the minds of the men whom the world considered the robber barons.
The contrast between Ayn Rand's "Objectivism" and libertarianism is deeper than mere substitution of terminology, however. Several of her propositions or axioms place her clearly outside of the libertarian tradition. Her justification of the state is derived from a Hobbesian state of nature theory:
... a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipitate it into chaos and gang warfare.... [The Virtue of Selfishness, 152; pb 112]
If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door - or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of society into the chaos of gang rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into perpetual warfare of prehistoric savages. [Ibid., 146; pb 108]
Ayn Rand's belief in the inherent depravity of human nature which renders us forever incapable of living without rulers and not descending to the level of `savages', clearly places her outside of the libertarian tradition which views human nature as essentially good, capable of indefinite improvement through the experience of freedom and the exercise of reason. Her knowledge of anthropology is as embarrassing as her understanding of history. For example, in regards to her conception of who are the savages, she describes America as, "...a superlative material achievement in the midst of an untouched wilderness, against the resistance of savage tribes." [For The New Intellectual, 58; pb 50]
To Rand, the essential characteristic of the state is that it possesses a monopoly on the use of retaliatory force. How does she justify this monopoly or national sovereignty? She accepts it as a given, something not requiring a justification, and demands that an-archy, the negation of the proposition, justify itself. Her concept of national sovereignty is then something transcendental, existing separate and apart from individuals, and beyond the right of the individual to accept or reject according to his or her own reason. These propositions clearly place Ayn Rand's philosophy closer to Hobbes, Hegel, and Marx, than to libertarianism.
The state, according to Miss Rand, must hold a monopoly on the enforcement of contracts and the settling of disputes between individuals, at least whenever this arbitration is not accepted by both sides voluntarily. She fails to consider that the enforcement of contracts by the state fundamentally alters the nature of free agreements. Agreements are made on terms which otherwise might not be, because they are justiciable.
The terms of "free agreements" under law are titled in favor of lenders over debtors, landlords over tenants, employers over employees, in a way which would not exist in a "free market." This leveraging of power is not `objective' at all. Depending purely on legal convention, creditors may have debtors imprisoned, tenants may be evicted without notice and their effects confiscated, one human being may own another or the land on which another lives and works, all to varying degrees.
To understand Ayn Rand's psychology it is helpful to know her background. She was born to a wealthy St. Petersburg family in 1905. The position of her family in Czarist society must have been considerable. At a time when the lives of most Russians had changed little since feudalism, her family was wealthy enough to afford a French Governess and take regular vacations to the Crimea.
It should be noted that wealth in Czarist society was almost wholly a measure of one's favor with the government. There were few if any Horatio Alger stories about individuals who lifted themselves out of serfdom without the patronage of the Czar.
At the age of twelve, she must have been very upset when those nasty workers took over her father's business. Her family fled St. Petersburg for the Crimea and the protection of the White Army. This experience rendered her forever incapable of seeing land reform or any struggle of oppressed and exploited people as anything more than hatred for the good and lust for the unearned.
She shared with Marx the bourgeois ideology that only a few people were capable of running things. The masses ought to be happy to have a job working for bosses. Any suggestion that an enterprise could be run by the employees without having someone in charge was to her absurd.
She shared with Godwin and Kropotkin the belief that the individual is born tabula rasa - a blank slate, and all human knowledge is derived from sense experience. She then proceeded, however, to completely dismiss environment and socialization as the determining factor in the development of character.
People were to her good or evil, brilliant or indolent, depending solely on their volition. People should be judged by their actions with equal severity regardless of their condition. Though she insisted that the United States was not and never had been a completely free country, she granted no such thing as extenuating circumstances when judging an individual and had no qualms upholding the power of the state to inflict capital punishment.
A far more sinister legacy of Ayn Rand to libertarianism is that of a moralizing autocrat who gathered about her an inner circle which she ironically called, "The collective." Outwardly, this collective professed egoism and individuality. They were to be the vanguard of an intellectual renaissance. The price of admission to this group, however, was slavish conformity of one's life and professed philosophy to Ayn Rand's whims and eccentricities. For example, she did not like men who wore facial hair or listened to Mozart, and if you didn't give them up you were unfit for Rand's inner circle. This is particularly sinister if one considers that Karl Marx, believed by millions to be the very symbol of liberation, was also an autocrat who, though professed to be the ultimate champion of democracy, resorted to extraordinary means to maintain control of the International Workingmen's Association. He even moved its headquarters to New York to exclude the libertarian influence.
Today Ayn Rand is gone, but like Marx a century ago, hers is the primary influence on the largest libertarian organization existing. Even the pledge which all Libertarian Party members must sign is taken directly from her admonition, "I hereby certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals." In spite of their pledge to non-violence, many libertarians are frustrated with election laws and media censorship. An argument which circulates among libertarians of the right is that, if they were more threatening, the government may take steps to accommodate them as it did the black civil rights movement.
Ayn Rand's writings are not entirely consistent on the point of non-violence either. In The Fountainhead, Howard Roark resorts to the use of dynamite. In Atlas Shrugged, Ragnar Danneskjold engages in piracy on the high seas and even shells a factory which has been nationalized. In a clandestine rescue mission, Dagny Taggart shoots a guard who stood in the way of her desired end.
In the event of economic upheaval, ruined by unemployment and inflation, tenants and home owners may refuse to make rent and mortgage payments. The unemployed may seize vacant land and begin to farm, and factory workers may realize they can run things without stock holders. It would not be at all surprising if there were to emerge within the libertarian right, groups committed to direct action and counter revolutionary violence, even a coup d'etat.
Imagine a charismatic and autocratic personality at the center of such a group and you have the Objectivist Lenin. Like the Marxists and right libertarians, Lenin and the Objectivists are professed republican democrats. Lenin and the Bolsheviks promised that if given power, they would immediately convoke a constituent assembly. When they realized, however, they would not hold a majority in such an assembly they turned against the idea of such an assembly.
Can anyone doubt that the cultist mentality which characterizes most of Miss Rand's followers could lead to the creation of a group of self-appointed avengers of the capitalist class? That they would suppress strikes, demonstrations, and factory take overs? That they would not execute people for crimes against the libertarian state?
Ayn Rand believed in a republican form of government with a cleverly constructed constitution which would deny the majority of the power to infringe on the rights of a minority as she conceived them. If the majority supported a general strike against rents and mortgages and supported the factory takeovers, would not the clandestinely organized Objectivist libertarian party be tempted to dispense with democracy in order to enforce what they conceived of as the rights of the dispossessed bourgeoisie?
In all fairness it must be admitted that Ayn Rand herself would never sanction such actions, but the same argument is made everyday by western Marxists that Marx would probably not have sanctioned many of Lenin's actions and would certainly not take credit for the Soviet Union.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks won power by promising, "Land to the peasants!" "Factories to the workers!" When they took power, however, they immediately set about liquidating the factory committees and nationalizing the land. They crushed work place democracy by installing armed guards in the factories, and even returned former owners to their positions as employees of the worker's state. Leon Trotsky stopped the practice of soldiers electing their officers from their ranks and even restored former Czarist officers to their ranks in the Red Army.
When the Russian Revolution began few people clearly understood the gulf which separated the state socialists from the libertarians. Many dedicated libertarians like Alexander Berkman, rallied to the Bolshevik cause, willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in hopes that seizing state power would only be a transitional stage toward the development of the stateless/classless society.
Many sincere lovers of liberty now flock to the standard of the Libertarian Party, as they did the Bolsheviks, completely ignorant of the history of the last century. As Santayana said: "Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them."
What should be done? It should be obvious that government enforcement of private contracts is not libertarian any more than is taking state power to set people free. Libertarianism is and always will mean socialism - the self-emancipation of working people.
Libertarians must stop courting the Republican right and return to their intellectual roots. By standing outside of the political process we deny the state legitimacy, and like the state torturers in Atlas Shrugged, they will come and beg for libertarians to take over.
Remembering the experience of the Spanish libertarians, and heeding the advice of John Galt, libertarians must refuse state power even when begged. The state can never be a tool of liberation. Only its complete and utter collapse will allow for the emergence of non-statist institutions, libertarian co-ops, communes, and free markets, to flourish and displace the political state once and for all.
Gnome started for one reason and one reason only: RMS didn't agree with the KDE developers' interpretation of the GPL wrt the QT library. Gnome was set up with the intention of creating FUD to delay the uptake of the best thing to ever happen to desktop Linux and to bluff and bully the KDE crowd into getting the QT licencing changed.
Yes, you heard it right, Gnome was *deliberately* started to be "bickering, competing and incompatible" and to stop Linux having a single desktop standard if that standard was to be KDE.
The licence issue is *long* in the past. That out of the way, the Gnome crowd should have had to decency to either scrap Gnome completely (as did those working on the Harmony project, which was developing a GPL QT clone) so we could unite behind KDE or keep Gnome going as a low key longer-term hacker R&D project like Enlightenment. But no, we had to keep the ball rolling didn't we.
Why, given the adverse impact this has had on Linux and other target platforms?
NIH syndrome partly; a lot of big egos (many in the US) were beaten to the punch by a bunch of (mainly) German students.
And the fact that it relies on an existing library means that big egos who want to reinvent the universe can't develop their own object library; they have to do something useful.
But the main reason, irony of ironies, is that it is LGPL rather than KDE's GPL; yes folks, the desktop that began as *THE* GNU free desktop now boasts that it is more commercial-friendly. That's why Sun and HP are putting money into it. Guarantees success? Ah, look at CDE...
Gnome is an expensive, deliberately divisive vapourware project that should have been scrapped after the QT licence changes if the principals involved had any sense of decency or any *REAL* committment to free software. It continues because a bunch of pricks can't admit that they were wrong and continue to put their own giant egos ahead of the development of desktop Unix.
Meanwhile KDE continues to release in its usual methodical fashion while Gnome 2 stays as FUD. ("You may think KDE's kewl, but wait till you see Gnome 2!") Pardon me while I puke...
Gnome and the bastards who've hyped this piece of vapourware and tried to sabotage KDE for the last five years can go to Hell! Who needs Microsoft trying to pull the rug from under the free Unix's when you've got this lot! (Yes, that includes RMS, who is responsible for initiating and encouraging this debacle).
To paraphrase the end of RMS's infamous letter of "forgiveness" to the KDE developers: Go KDE!!!
Neil Stevens is a professional bitcher. I am surprised slashdot and newsforge gave that lunatic Libertarian a platform to whine. Maybe he can proclaim that the KDE team "doesn't get it".
Oh rubbish. When are people going to wake up and see that Miguel is a charlatan? Big promises, haphazard designs, more big promises, leaving a trail of half-completed projects and ideas behind him.
I don't understand the continual Slashdot love-in for Miguel. Were it ANYONE ELSE espousing their eternal love for.NET and Microsoft designs, YOU PEOPLE WOULD BE SCREAMING FOR BLOOD. But since Miguel does it, he's "daring", going where "few fear to tread" (which is nonsense, since there are plenty of people in Windows-land lining up around the block to jump on the.NET bandwagon).
(And note, I haven't said a thing about KDE and Gnome. Ptttbbbttgttt.)
Gnome started for one reason and one reason only: RMS didn't agree with the KDE developers' interpretation of the GPL wrt the QT library. Gnome was set up with the intention of creating FUD to delay the uptake of the best thing to ever happen to desktop Linux and to bluff and bully the KDE crowd into getting the QT licencing changed.
Yes, you heard it right, Gnome was *deliberately* started to be "bickering, competing and incompatible" and to stop Linux having a single desktop standard if that standard was to be KDE.
The licence issue is *long* in the past. That out of the way, the Gnome crowd should have had to decency to either scrap Gnome completely (as did those working on the Harmony project, which was developing a GPL QT clone) so we could unite behind KDE or keep Gnome going as a low key longer-term hacker R&D project like Enlightenment. But no, we had to keep the ball rolling didn't we.
Why, given the adverse impact this has had on Linux and other target platforms?
NIH syndrome partly; a lot of big egos (many in the US) were beaten to the punch by a bunch of (mainly) German students.
And the fact that it relies on an existing library means that big egos who want to reinvent the universe can't develop their own object library; they have to do something useful.
But the main reason, irony of ironies, is that it is LGPL rather than KDE's GPL; yes folks, the desktop that began as *THE* GNU free desktop now boasts that it is more commercial-friendly. That's why Sun and HP are putting money into it. Guarantees success? Ah, look at CDE...
Gnome is an expensive, deliberately divisive vapourware project that should have been scrapped after the QT licence changes if the principals involved had any sense of decency or any *REAL* committment to free software. It continues because a bunch of pricks can't admit that they were wrong and continue to put their own giant egos ahead of the development of desktop Unix.
Meanwhile KDE continues to release in its usual methodical fashion while Gnome 2 stays as FUD. ("You may think KDE's kewl, but wait till you see Gnome 2!") Pardon me while I puke...
Gnome and the bastards who've hyped this piece of vapourware and tried to sabotage KDE for the last five years can go to Hell! Who needs Microsoft trying to pull the rug from under the free Unix's when you've got this lot! (Yes, that includes RMS, who is responsible for initiating and encouraging this debacle).
To paraphrase the end of RMS's infamous letter of "forgiveness" to the KDE developers: Go KDE!!!
"I will reverse that. Popular sovereignty, sir judges, is when molotov cocktails and stones are thrown at the police, when state cars, banks, shopping centers and luxury stores are burnt down.... This is how the people react. History itself has proven that this is the way people react. This is popular sovereignty. When Maziotis goes and places a bomb in the ministry of Industry and Development, in solidarity with the struggle of the people in Strymonikos. This is the real popular sovereignty and not what the Constitution says..."
"I will contradict my brother who said before, that he didn't want the guns in order to make war. They were for war. Maybe they were just kept there. But guns are for war, you don't just have them to keep them at home. I might have kept them as they were, but they are to make war and I make war... The bomb in the ministry was an act of war."
"There are three kinds of political violence. Terrorism of the state, which is the most usual and most organised, as the state possesses the monopoly of violence; the "revolutionary terrorism" of organisations with Marxist-Leninist ideology, that through their hierarchical structure reproduce the structures of the state and are a state in miniature; and there is the liberating violence."
"Generally, wherever there are disturbances, there are conflicts we[anarchists] want to be in. To subvert things. For us, this is not a crime. In a real sense, these disturbances are the 'popular sovereignty' that professional politicians keep talking about. That's where freedom is expressed.."
"If theoretically terrorism is exercising violence against citizens and unarmed population, that goes exclusively for the state. Only the state attacks civilians. That's what the repression mechanisms are for: the riot police, special police units, the army, special forces...mechanisms that also rob the people. They finance armed professionals, policemen. Aren't they trained to shoot real targets? Aren't the riot police armed with chemical gas? To use them where? On citizens, in demonstrations and in manifestations. So, only the state exercises violence against citizens."
In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey butane in my veins so i'm out to cut the junkie with the plastic eyeballs, spray paint the vegetables dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose kill the headlights and put it in neutral stock car flamin' with a loser and the cruise control baby's in Reno with the vitamin D got a couple of couches sleep on the love seat someone keeps sayin' I'm insane to complain about a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt don't believe everything that you breathe you get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve so shave your face with some mace in the dark savin' all your food stamps and burnin' down the trailer park
(yo cut it) Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me? (double-barrel buckshot) Soy un perdedor i'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
Forces of evil in a bozo nightmare banned all the music with a phony gas chamber 'cuz one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag one's got on the pole shove the other in a bag with the rerun shows and the cocaine nose job the daytime crap with the folksinger slop he hung himself with a guitar string slap the turkey neck and it's hangin' on a pigeon wing you can't write if you can't relate trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate and my time is a piece of wax fallin' on a termite who's chokin' on the splinters
Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me? (get crazy with the cheeze whiz) Soy un perdidor I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me? (drive-by body pierce) (yo bring it on down) soooooooyy.... (I'm a driver I'm a winner things are gonna change I can feel it) Soy un perdidor I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me? (I can't believe you) Soy un perdidor I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me? Soy un perdidor I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me? [repeat] (Sprechen sie Deutches, baby Soy un perdidor I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me? (Know what I'm sayin'?)
We do not recognize the right of the majority to impose the law on the minority, even if the will of the majority in somewhat complicated issues could really be ascertained. The fact of having the majority on one's side does not in any way prove that one must be right. Indeed, humanity has always advanced through the initiative and efforts of individuals and minorities, whereas the majority, by its very nature, is slow, conservative, submissive to superior force and to established privileges.
But if we do not for one moment recognize the right of majorities to dominate minorities, we are even more opposed to domination of the majority by a minority. It would be absurd to maintain that one is right because one is in a minority. If at all times there have been advanced and enlightened minorities, so too have there been minorities which were backward and reactionary; if there are human beings who are exceptional, and ahead of their times, there are also psychopaths, and especially are there apathetic individuals who allow themselves to be unconsciously carried on the tide of events.
In any case it is not a question of being right or wrong; it is a question of freedom, freedom for all, freedom for each individual so long as he does not violate the equal freedom of others. No one can judge with certainty who is right and who is wrong, who is closer to the truth and which is the best road to the greatest good for each and everyone. Experience through freedom is the only means to arrive at the truth and the best solutions; and there is no freedom if there is not the freedom to be wrong.
In our opinion, therefore, it is necessary that majority and minority should succeed in living together peacefully and profitably by mutual agreement and compromise, by the intelligent recognition of the practical necessities of communal life and of the usefulness of concessions which circumstances make necessary.
As well as their reason and experience telling them that in spite of using all the alchemy of elections and parliament one always ends up by having laws which represent everything but the will of the majority, anarchists do not recognize that the majority as such, even if it were possible to establish beyond all doubt what it wanted, has the right to impose itself on the dissident minorities by the use of force.
Apart from these considerations, there always exists the fact that in a capitalist regime, in which society is divided into rich and poor, into employers and employees whose next meal depends on the absolute power of the boss, there cannot be really free elections.
REFORMISM
The fundamental error of the reformists is that of dreaming of solidarity, a sincere collaboration, between masters and servants, between proprietors and workers which even if it might have existed here and there in periods of profound unconsciousness of the masses and of ingenuous faith in religion and rewards, is utterly impossible today.
Those who envisage a society of well stuffed pigs which waddle contentedly under the ferule of a small number of swineherd; who do not take into account the need for freedom and the sentiment of human dignity; who really believe in a God that orders, for his abstruse ends, the poor to be submissive and the rich to be good and charitable-can also imagine and aspire to a technical organisation of production which assures abundance to all and is at the same time materially advantageous both to the bosses and to the workers. But in reality " social peace" based on abundance for all will remain a dream, so long as society is divided into antogonistic classes, that is employers and employees. And there will be neither peace nor abundance.
The antogonism is spiritual rather than material. There will never be a sincere understanding between bosses and workers for the better exploitation of the forces of nature in the interests of mankind, because the bosses above all want to remain bosses and secure always more power at the expense of the workers, as well as by competition with other bosses, whereas the workers have had their fill of bosses and don't want more! '
[Our good friends] are wasting their time when they tell us that a little freedom is better than a brutal and unbridled tyranny; that n reasonable working day, a wage that allows people to live better than animals, and protection of women and children, are preferable to the exploitation of human labour to the point of human exhaustion; or that the State school, bad as it is, is always better, from the point of view of the child's moral development, than schools run by priests and monks . . . for we are in complete agreement. And we also agree that there may be circumstances in which the Election results, national or local, can have good or bad consequences and that this vote might be determined by the anarchists' votes if the strength of the rival parties were equally balanced.
In most cases it is an illusion; when elections are tolerably free, the only value they have is symbolic: they indicate the state of public opinion, which would have imposed itself by more efficacious means, and with more far reaching results, if it had not been offered the outlet of elections. But no matter; even if some minor advances were the direct result of an electoral victory, anarchists should not flock to the polling booths or cease to preach their methods of struggle.
Since no one can do everything in this world, one must choose one's own line of conduct.
There is always an element of contradiction between minor improvements, the satisfaction of immediate needs and the struggle for a society which is really better than the existing one. Those who want to devote themselves to the erection of public lavatories and drinking fountains where there is a need for them, or who use their energies for the construction of a road, or the establishment of a municipal school, or for the passing of some minor law to protect workers or to get rid of a brutal policeman, do well, perhaps, to use the* ballot paper in favour of this or that influential personage. But then - since one wants to be "practical" one must go the whole hog - so, rather than wait for the victory of the opposition party, rather than vote for the more kindred party, it is worth taking a short cut and support the dominant party, and serve the government already in office, and become the agent of the Prefect or the Mayor. And in fact the neo-converts we have in mind did not in fact propose voting for the most " progressive " party, but for the one that had the greater chance of being elected . . But in that case where does it all end? . ..
In the course of human history it is generally the case that the malcontents, the oppressed, and the rebels, before being able to conceive and desire a radical change in the political and social institutions, restrict their demands to partial changes, to concessions by the rulers, and to improvements. Hopes of obtaining reforms as well as in their efficacy, precede the conviction that in order to destroy the power of a government or of a class, it is necessary to deny the reasons for that power, and therefore to make a revolution.
In the order of things, reforms are then introduced or they are not, and once introduced either consolidate the existing regime or undermine it; assist the advent of revolution or hamper it and benefit or harm progress in general, depending on their specific characteristic, the spirit in which they have been granted, and above all, the spirit in which they are asked for, claimed or seized by the people.
Governments and the privileged classes are naturally always guided by instincts of self preservation, of consolidation and the development of their powers and privileges; and when they consent to reforms it is either because they consider that they will serve their ends or because they do not feel strong enough to resist, and give in, fearing what might otherwise be a worse alternative.
The oppressed, either ask for and welcome improvements as a benefit graciously conceded, recognise the legitimacy of the power which is over them, and so do more harm than good by helping to slow down, or divert and perhaps even stop the processes of emancipation. Or instead they demand and impose improvements by their action, and welcome them as partial victories over the class enemy, using them as a spur to greater achievements, and thus they are a valid help and a preparation to the total overthrow of privilege, that is, for the revolution. A point is reached when the demands of the dominated class cannot be acceded to by the ruling class without compromising their power. Then the violent conflict inevitably occurs.
It is not true to say therefore, that revolutionaries are systematically opposed to improvements, to reforms. They oppose the reformists on the one hand because their methods are less effective for securing reforms from governments and employers, who only give in through fear, and on the other hand because very often the reforms they prefer are those which not only bring doubtful immediate benefits, but also serve to consolidate the existing regime and to give the workers a vested interest in its continued existence. Thus, for instance, State pensions, insurance schemes, as well as profit sharing schemes in agricultural and industrial enterprises, etc.
Apart from the unpleasantness of the word which has been abused and discredited by politicians, anarchism has always been, and can never be anything but, reformist. We prefer to say reformative in order to avoid any possible confusion with those who are officially classified as " reformists " and seek by means of small and often ephemeral improvements to make the present system more bearable (and as a result help to consolidate it); or who instead believe in good faith that it is possible to eliminate the existing social evils by recognising and respecting, in practice if not in theory, the basic political and economic institutions which are the cause of. as well as the prop that supports these evils. But in any case it is always a question of reforms, and the essential difference lies in the kind of reform one wants and the way one thinks of being able to achieve it. Revolution means, in the historical sense of the word, the radical reform of institutions, achieved rapidly by the violent insurrection of the people against existing power and privileges; and we are revolutionaries and insurrectionists because we do not just want to improve existing institutions but to destroy them completely, abolishing every form of domination by man over man, and every kind of parasitism on human labour; and because we want to achieve this as quickly as possible, and because we believe that institutions born of violence are maintained by violence and will not give way except to an equivalent violence. But the revolution cannot be made just when one likes. Should we remain inactive, waiting for the situation to mature with time?
And even after a successful insurrection, could we over night realise all our desires and pass from a governmental and capitalist hell to a libertarian-communist heaven which is the complete freedom of man within the wished for community of interests with all men?
These are illusions which can take root among authoritarians who look upon the masses as the raw material which those who have power can, by decrees, supported by bullets and handcuffs, mold to their will. But these illusions have not taken among anarchists. We need the people's consensus, and therefore we must persuade by means of propaganda and example, we must educate and seek to change the environment in such a way that this education may reach an ever increasing number of people....
We are reformers today in so far as we seek to create the most favourable conditions and as large a body of enlightened militants so that an insurrection by the people would be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. We shall be reformers tomorrow, after a triumphant insurrection, and the achievement of freedom, in that we will seek with all the means that freedom permits, that is by propaganda, example and even violent resistance against anyone who should wish to restrict our freedom in order to win over to our ideas an ever greater number of people.
But we will never recognise the institutions; we will take or win all possible reforms with the same spirit that one tears occupied territory from the enemy's grasp in order to go on advancing, and we will always remain enemies of every government, whether it be that of the monarchy today, or the republican or bolshevik governments of tomorrow.
ORGANIZATION
ORGANISATION which is, after all, only the practice of co-operation and solidarity, is a natural and necessary condition of social life; it is an inescapable fact which forces itself on everybody, as much on human society in general as on any group of people who are working towards a common objective. Since man neither wishes to, nor can, live in isolation-indeed being unable to develop his personality, and satisfy his physical and moral needs outside society and without the co- operation of his fellow beings-it is inevitable that those people who have neither the means nor a sufficiently developed social conscience to permit them to associate freely with those of a like mind and with common interests, are subjected to organisation by others, generally constituted in a class or as a ruling group, with the aim of exploiting the labour of others for their personal advantage. And the age-long oppression of the masses by a small privileged group has always been the result of the inability of most workers to agree among themselves to organise with others for production, for enjoyment and for the possible needs of defence against whoever might wish to exploit and oppress them. Anarchism exists to remedy this state of affairs....
There are two factions among those who call themselves anarchists, with or without adjectives: supporters and opponents of organisation. If we cannot succeed in agreeing, let us, at least, try to understand each other.
And first of all let us be clear about the distinctions since the question is a triple one: organisation in general as a principle and condition of social life today and in a future society; the organisation of the anarchist movement; and the organisation of the popular forces and especially of the working masses for resistance to government and capitalism....
The basic error committed by those opposed to organisation is in believing that organization is not possible without authority.
Now, it seems to us that organisation, that is to say, association for a specific purpose and with the structure and means required to attain it, is a necessary aspect of social life. A man in isolation cannot even live the life of a beast, for he is unable to obtain nourishment for himself except in tropical regions or when the population is exceptionally sparse; and he is, without exception, unable to rise much above the level of the animals. Having therefore to join with other humans, or more accurately, finding himself united to them as a consequence of the evolutionary antecedents of the species, he must submit to the will of others (be enslaved} or subject others to his will (be in authority) or live with others in fraternal agreement in the interests of the greatest good of all (be an associate). Nobody can escape from this necessity; and the most extreme anti-orgnisers not only are subject to the general organisation of the society they live in, but also in the voluntary actions in their lives, and in their rebellion against organisation, they unite among themselves, they share out their tasks, they organize with whom they are in agreement, and use the means that society puts at their disposal. ..
Admitting as a possibility the existence of a community organised without authority, that is without compulsion-and anarchists must admit the possibility, or anarchy would have no meaning-let us pass on to discuss the organisation of the anarchist movement.
In this case too, organisation seems useful and necessary. If movement means the whole-individuals with a common objective which they exert themselves to attain-it is natural that they should agree among themselves, join forces, share out the tasks and take all those steps which they think will lead to the achievement of those objectives. To remain isolated, each individual acting or seeking to act on his own without co-ordination, without preparation, without joining his modest efforts to a strong group, means condemning oneself to impotence, wasting one's efforts in small ineffectual action, and to lose faith very soon in one's aims and possibly being reduced to complete inactivity....
A mathematician, a chemist, a psychologist or a sociologist may say they have no programme or are concerned only with establishing the truth. They seek knowledge, they are not seeking to do something. But anarchy and socialism are not sciences; they are proposals, projects, that anarchists and socialists seek to realise and which, therefore need to be formulated as definite programmes....
If it is true that [organisation creates leaders]; if it is true that anarchists are unable to come together and arrive at agreement without submitting themselves to an authority, this means that they are not yet very good anarchists, and before thinking of establishing anarchy in the world they must think of making themselves able to live anarchistically. The remedy does not lie in the abolition of organisation but in the growing consciousness of each individual member.... In small as well as large societies, apart from brute force, of which it cannot be a question for us, the origin and justification for authority lies in social disorganisation.
When a community has needs and its members do not know how to organise spontaneously to provide them, someone comes forward, an authority who satisfies those needs by utilising the services of all and directing them to his liking. If the roads are unsafe and the people do not know what measures to take, a police force emerges which in return for whatever services it renders expects to be supported and paid, as well as imposing itself and throwing its weight around; if some article is needed, and the community does not know how to arrange with the distant producers to supply it in exchange for goods produced locally, the merchant will appear who will profit by dealing with the needs of one section to sell and of the other to buy, and impose his own prices both on the producer and the consumer. This is what has happened in our midst; the less organised we have been the more prone are we to be imposed on by a few individuals. And this is understandable.
So much so that organisation, far from creating authority, is the only cure for it and the only means whereby each one of us will get used to taking an active and conscious part in collective work, and cease being passive instruments in the hands of leaders....
But an organisation, it is argued, presupposes an obligation to co-ordinate one's own activities with those of others; thus it violates liberty and fetters initiative. As we see it, what really takes away liberty and makes initiative impossible is the isolation which renders one powerless. Freedom is not an abstract right but the possibility of acting: this is true among ourselves as well as in society as a whole. And it is by co-operation with his fellows that man finds the means to express his activity and his power of initiatives
An anarchist organisation must, in my opinion [allow for] complete autonomy, and independence, and therefore full responsibility, to individuals and groups; free agreement between those who think it useful to come together for co-operative action, for common aims; a moral duty to fulfill one's pledges and to take no action which is contrary to the accepted programme. On such bases one then introduces practical forms and the suitable instruments to give real life to the organisation. Thus the groups, the federation of groups, the federations of federations, meetings, congresses, correspondence committees and so on. But this also must be done freely, in such a way as not to restrict the thought and the initiative of individual members, but only to give greater scope to the efforts which in isolation would be impossible or ineffective. Thus for an anarchist organisation congresses, in spite of all the disadvantages from which they suffer as representative bodies . . . are free from authoritarianism in any shape or form because they do not legislate and do not impose their deliberations on others. They serve to maintain and increase personal contacts among the most active comrades, to summarise and encourage programmatic studies on the ways and means for action; to acquaint everybody with the situation in the regions and the kind of action most urgently needed; to summarise the various currents of anarchist opinions at the time and to prepare some kind of statistics therefrom. And their decisions are not binding but simply suggestions, advice and proposals to submit to all concerned, and they do not become binding and executive except for those who accept them and for as long as they accept them. The administrative organs they nominate - Correspondence Commissions, etc.-have no directive powers, do not take initiatives except for those who specifically solicit and approve of them, and have no authority to impose their own views, which they can certainly hold and propagate as groups of comrades, but which cannot be presented as the official views of the organisation. They publish the resolutions of the congresses and the opinions and proposals communicated to them by groups and individuals; and they act for those who want to make use of them, to facilitate relations between groups, and co-operation between those who are in agreement on various initiatives; each is free to correspond with whoever he likes direct, or to make use of other committees nominated by specific groupings
In an anarchist organisation individual members can express any opinion and use every tactic which is not in contradiction with the accepted principles and does not interfere with the activities of others. In every case a particular organisation lasts so long as the reasons for union are superior to those for dissension: otherwise it disbands and makes way for other, more homogenous groupings.
Certainly the life and permanence of an organisation is a condition for success in the long struggle before us, and besides, it is natural that every institution should by instinct aim at lasting indefinitely. But the duration of a libertarian organisation must be the result of the spiritual affinity of its members and of the adaptability of its constitution to the continually changing circumstances. When it can no longer serve a useful purpose it is better that it should die.
We would certainly be happy if we could all get along well together and unite all the forces of anarchism in a strong movement; but we do not believe in the solidity of organisations which are built up on concessions and assumptions and in which there is no real agreement and sympathy between members.
Better disunited than badly united. But we would wish that each individual joined his friends and that there should be no isolated forces, or lost forces.
It remains for us to speak of the organisation of the working masses for resistance against both the government and the employers.
. . . Workers will never be able to emancipate themselves so long as they do not find in union the moral, economic and physical strength that is needed to subdue the organised might of the oppressors.
There have been anarchists, and there are still some, who while recognising the need to organise today for propaganda and action, are hostile to all organisations which do not have anarchism as their goal or which do not follow anarchist methods of struggle.... To those comrades it seemed that all organised forces for an objective less than radically revolutionary, were forces that the revolution was being deprived of. It seems to us instead, and experience has surely already confirmed our view, that their approach would condemn the anarchist movement to a state of perpetual sterility. To make propaganda we must be amongst the people, and it is in the workers' associations that workers find their comrades and especially those who are most disposed to understand and accept our ideas. But even when it were possible to do as much propaganda as we wished outside the associations, this could not have a noticeable effect on the working masses. Apart from a small number of individuals more educated and capable of abstract thought and theoretical enthusiasms, the worker cannot arrive at anarchism in one leap. To become a convinced anarchist, and not in name only, he must begin to feel the solidarity that joins him to his comrades, and to learn to cooperate with others in the defence of common interests and that, by struggling against the bosses and against the government which supports them, should realise that bosses and governments are useless parasites and that the workers could manage the domestic economy by their own efforts. And when the worker has understood this, he is an anarchist even if he does not call himself such.
Furthermore, to encourage popular organisations of all kinds is the logical consequence of our basic ideas, and should therefore be an integral part of our programme.
An authoritarian party, which aims at capturing power to impose its ideas, has an interest in the people remaining an amorphous mass, unable to act for themselves and therefore always easily dominated. And it follows, logically, that it cannot desire more than that much organisation, and of the kind it needs to attain power: Electoral organisations if it hopes to achieve it by legal means; Military organisation if it relies on violent action.
But we anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves. We do not believe in the good that comes from above and imposed by force; we want the new way of life to emerge from the body of the people and correspond to the state of their development and advance as they advance. It matters to us therefore that all interests and opinions should find their expression in a conscious organisation and should influence communal life in proportion to their importance.
We have undertaken the task of struggling against existing social organisation, and of overcoming the obstacles to the advent of a new society in which freedom and well being would be assured to everybody. To achieve this objective we organise ourselves in a party and seek to become as numerous and as strong as possible. But if it were only our party that was organised; if the workers were to remain isolated like so many units unconcerned about each other and only linked by the common chain; if we ourselves besides being organised as anarchists in a party, were not as workers organised with other workers, we could achieve nothing at all, or at most, we might be able to impose ourselves . . . and then it would not be the triumph of anarchy but our triumph. We could then go on calling ourselves anarchists, but in reality we should simply be rulers, and as impotent as all rulers are where the general good is concerned.'
Slashdot Mirror
then they laugh at you,
they they fight you,
then Miquel sells out...
Miquel thinks he can ride the tiger.
He will find too late, that he cannot.
Miquel's obsession is a gift to Microsoft.
I read the interview, and frankly his comments
about MS disgusted me.
Oh and by the way this isn't your anticipated
KDE troll, it's the just the way I feel.
If anyone is trolling here it is Miquel .
Nice anecdotal evidence. Can you produce any more logical fallacies that 'prove' GNOME is better?
Did you read my post. I agree with that, but Gnome should have stepped down and dissolved after the licensing issue was resolved regarding QT.
You sir, are an idiot!
Dear Troll,
We are plesed to inform you that, after careful consideration , we have accepted your troll into the Troll Library.
You show a masterful skill at trolling.
Thank you for your time and your contribution.
Download the whole fucking directory and shut up.
REVOLT IN SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS, MÉXICO ON EVENING OF 7TH
MARCH 2002
Large crowds repel police, set police vehicles on fire, and loot supermarket
and big shops.
A carnival atmosphere prevails as crowds control the streets for over 3
hours.
Later police enter area, fire tear gas and make a reported 50 arrests
The conflict occurred in the area around the public market, a poor area
where many indigenous people live and work, and followed a police operation
against sellers of pirated merchandise.
On the morning of 8 March police with riot gear cordon off an area around
the public market.
This is an incomplete report written a few hours after the events from eye
witness reports, and info in the local press and radio. More info hopefully
to follow. Feel free to circulate but please remove e mail address.
A major revolt with thousands on the streets engulfed the area around the
public market in San Cristobal de Las Casas on the evening of 7 March.
Large crowds broke into at least 3 big stores, including a supermarket and
department store. In a festive atmosphere men, women and children joyfully
carted off large amounts of food, drink, clothes and furniture over a period
of over 2 hours. Onlookers, including women with babies, elderly people and
children watched with interest, and some shouted advice to the looters about
the best route to take to avoid the police.
Two police vehicles were set on fire and burnt in the middle of the street.
The crowd repulsed an attempt by the police to enter the area, hurling
missiles. A shop was set alight and the fire was still burning at midnight.
From before 7pm till after 10pm thousands were on the streets, and the
police seemed to have little or no presence an no control over the
situation.
The conflict reportedly started at 6pm after a police operation to arrest
sellers of pirated CDs etc.. Local newspaper La Foja reports that a police
attempt to enter the area around this time was repulsed by the crowd
throwing missiles.
By 7pm a police vehicle was ablaze in the street by the public market,
hundreds, if not thousands were in the streets and police were not to be
seen. Around 8pm missiles were seen being hurled, and slightly later a line
of riot police were formed across the road behind Santo Domingo church.
Around 8pm the crowd began to break into large shops by the market, breaking
plate glass windows and tearing off iron grilles on the entrances. Tela de
Mexico, Alamanecenes Grandes, and then the supermarket which is opposite
the last named, on a side street by the market, were all sacked. Around the
same time another fire was burning in the street by the market, reportedly a
second police car ablaze.
Large crowds of men, women and children carried off bags and boxes of food
and groceries, sacks of rice or beans, bottles of wine and spirits,
mattresses, sofas and much more. Eye witnesses reported a joyful and
excited atmosphere. There were few vehicles in the area, but taxis and cars
that strayed into the area were allowed to pass unhindered.
Around 10.15pm a large fire was seen burning near the market, reportedly a
shop. Around 10.- 10.30pm police, some armed and some with riot shields and
helmets, entered the area, charged the crowd and made arrests. According to
local radio 50 men, women and children were arrested. La Foca paper reports
the use of ?an excessive use of force? by the police when making arrests.
Police fired tear gas on more than one occasion, and tear gas swept down
nearby streets, causing discomfort to inhabitants of houses. Fire fighters
entered the area to combat the fires.
By 11.30 pm police appeared to have regained control of the situation,
though there were still crowds in the street, the shop continued to burn and
there were remnants of a fire in the street. Local radio reports 6 police
received hospital treatment. It is not known how many civilians were
injured by the police violence.
Reports in the media that some of the crowd applauded the entry of the
police into the area were not confirmed by eye witnesses who reported
instead mass participation in looting, and many onlookers observing without
any worries. The reactions observed to the arrival of the police were
either resistance or flight.
At 9am the next morning, 8 March, an area around the public market was
cordoned off by police with riot gear who were preventing entry by the
public.
More news may follow, and there may be reports on Indymedia Chiapas (this
report is not however from Indymedia Chiapas or any organization)
Note San Cristobal de Las Casas in Chiapas, southern Mexico has a
population of over 130,000, many of whom live in poverty, many lack basic
services such as electricity, piped water and drainage in their houses. A
large proportion of the population are indigenous people, the majority
Tzotziles, and suffer racist discrimination.
Dear Troll,
We are sad to inform you that, after careful consideration , we have rejected your troll submission to the Troll Library.
You show a a poor skill at trolling. Please go read Troll Howto, and try again. Either that, or stick to adequacy.
I am heartened to see someone else knows about the dangers of Libertarianism.
Ayn Rand and the perversion of libertarianism
The political controversy of the late 19th century was:
whether socialists (all those who believed in the individual's right to possess what he or she produced) should engage in the political process, seize control of the state, and use the state apparatus to achieve liberation;
or, whether a worker's state was inherently contradictory, counter revolutionary, and would only lead to the creation of a new ruling class whose interests would still clash with those of the ruled - that the state should be abolished allowing for no transitional stage of any kind during which power may have the chance to reconsolidate itself.
The situation has recreated itself with amazing similarity almost exactly a century later. Non-libertarian parties the world over (those who see authoritarian centralization as the bulwark of civilization) are bankrupt, economically and intellectually. The only viable intellectual current today falls under that ambiguous term - "libertarian."
Today there exist beneath this umbrella as many splinter groups as there were a hundred years ago under the umbrella of socialism. Two distinct trends, a right and a left if you will, are clearly discernible. One group, clearly the largest with a hierarchical organization modeled on the other political parties, believes, like most Marxists, in constitutional parliamentary republican democracy. They believe that the state is a necessary guarantor of individual safety and the product of the individual's labor, and in gradual progress toward a free society through participation in the political process. The other group, much smaller and far more splintered, rejects the state as necessarily a tool of class domination and exploitation. This group believes that what Bakunin said a hundred years ago is as true today, "If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Czar himself."
The first group is in all fairness a direct inheritor of the ideals of the American Revolution. In modern times, however, it has only two roots: (1) the Austrian school of economics represented by Ludwig Von Mises; (2) the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Von Mises never considered the libertarians. He answered the Marxists and the Keynesians and defended laissez-faire capitalism at a time when no one else would. His justification for capitalism was empirical - the greatest good for the greatest number. Ayn Rand, however, attempted to offer a moral justification of capitalism by substituting the word `capitalism' for the libertarian meaning of the word "socialism." She then attributed all of the ills of capitalism to government interference with the market and all of the world's wealth to the minds of the men whom the world considered the robber barons.
The contrast between Ayn Rand's "Objectivism" and libertarianism is deeper than mere substitution of terminology, however. Several of her propositions or axioms place her clearly outside of the libertarian tradition. Her justification of the state is derived from a Hobbesian state of nature theory:
... a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipitate it into chaos and gang warfare.... [The Virtue of Selfishness, 152; pb 112]
If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door - or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of society into the chaos of gang rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into perpetual warfare of prehistoric savages. [Ibid., 146; pb 108]
Ayn Rand's belief in the inherent depravity of human nature which renders us forever incapable of living without rulers and not descending to the level of `savages', clearly places her outside of the libertarian tradition which views human nature as essentially good, capable of indefinite improvement through the experience of freedom and the exercise of reason. Her knowledge of anthropology is as embarrassing as her understanding of history. For example, in regards to her conception of who are the savages, she describes America as, "...a superlative material achievement in the midst of an untouched wilderness, against the resistance of savage tribes." [For The New Intellectual, 58; pb 50]
To Rand, the essential characteristic of the state is that it possesses a monopoly on the use of retaliatory force. How does she justify this monopoly or national sovereignty? She accepts it as a given, something not requiring a justification, and demands that an-archy, the negation of the proposition, justify itself. Her concept of national sovereignty is then something transcendental, existing separate and apart from individuals, and beyond the right of the individual to accept or reject according to his or her own reason. These propositions clearly place Ayn Rand's philosophy closer to Hobbes, Hegel, and Marx, than to libertarianism.
The state, according to Miss Rand, must hold a monopoly on the enforcement of contracts and the settling of disputes between individuals, at least whenever this arbitration is not accepted by both sides voluntarily. She fails to consider that the enforcement of contracts by the state fundamentally alters the nature of free agreements. Agreements are made on terms which otherwise might not be, because they are justiciable.
The terms of "free agreements" under law are titled in favor of lenders over debtors, landlords over tenants, employers over employees, in a way which would not exist in a "free market." This leveraging of power is not `objective' at all. Depending purely on legal convention, creditors may have debtors imprisoned, tenants may be evicted without notice and their effects confiscated, one human being may own another or the land on which another lives and works, all to varying degrees.
To understand Ayn Rand's psychology it is helpful to know her background. She was born to a wealthy St. Petersburg family in 1905. The position of her family in Czarist society must have been considerable. At a time when the lives of most Russians had changed little since feudalism, her family was wealthy enough to afford a French Governess and take regular vacations to the Crimea.
It should be noted that wealth in Czarist society was almost wholly a measure of one's favor with the government. There were few if any Horatio Alger stories about individuals who lifted themselves out of serfdom without the patronage of the Czar.
At the age of twelve, she must have been very upset when those nasty workers took over her father's business. Her family fled St. Petersburg for the Crimea and the protection of the White Army. This experience rendered her forever incapable of seeing land reform or any struggle of oppressed and exploited people as anything more than hatred for the good and lust for the unearned.
She shared with Marx the bourgeois ideology that only a few people were capable of running things. The masses ought to be happy to have a job working for bosses. Any suggestion that an enterprise could be run by the employees without having someone in charge was to her absurd.
She shared with Godwin and Kropotkin the belief that the individual is born tabula rasa - a blank slate, and all human knowledge is derived from sense experience. She then proceeded, however, to completely dismiss environment and socialization as the determining factor in the development of character.
People were to her good or evil, brilliant or indolent, depending solely on their volition. People should be judged by their actions with equal severity regardless of their condition. Though she insisted that the United States was not and never had been a completely free country, she granted no such thing as extenuating circumstances when judging an individual and had no qualms upholding the power of the state to inflict capital punishment.
A far more sinister legacy of Ayn Rand to libertarianism is that of a moralizing autocrat who gathered about her an inner circle which she ironically called, "The collective." Outwardly, this collective professed egoism and individuality. They were to be the vanguard of an intellectual renaissance. The price of admission to this group, however, was slavish conformity of one's life and professed philosophy to Ayn Rand's whims and eccentricities. For example, she did not like men who wore facial hair or listened to Mozart, and if you didn't give them up you were unfit for Rand's inner circle. This is particularly sinister if one considers that Karl Marx, believed by millions to be the very symbol of liberation, was also an autocrat who, though professed to be the ultimate champion of democracy, resorted to extraordinary means to maintain control of the International Workingmen's Association. He even moved its headquarters to New York to exclude the libertarian influence.
Today Ayn Rand is gone, but like Marx a century ago, hers is the primary influence on the largest libertarian organization existing. Even the pledge which all Libertarian Party members must sign is taken directly from her admonition, "I hereby certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals." In spite of their pledge to non-violence, many libertarians are frustrated with election laws and media censorship. An argument which circulates among libertarians of the right is that, if they were more threatening, the government may take steps to accommodate them as it did the black civil rights movement.
Ayn Rand's writings are not entirely consistent on the point of non-violence either. In The Fountainhead, Howard Roark resorts to the use of dynamite. In Atlas Shrugged, Ragnar Danneskjold engages in piracy on the high seas and even shells a factory which has been nationalized. In a clandestine rescue mission, Dagny Taggart shoots a guard who stood in the way of her desired end.
In the event of economic upheaval, ruined by unemployment and inflation, tenants and home owners may refuse to make rent and mortgage payments. The unemployed may seize vacant land and begin to farm, and factory workers may realize they can run things without stock holders. It would not be at all surprising if there were to emerge within the libertarian right, groups committed to direct action and counter revolutionary violence, even a coup d'etat.
Imagine a charismatic and autocratic personality at the center of such a group and you have the Objectivist Lenin. Like the Marxists and right libertarians, Lenin and the Objectivists are professed republican democrats. Lenin and the Bolsheviks promised that if given power, they would immediately convoke a constituent assembly. When they realized, however, they would not hold a majority in such an assembly they turned against the idea of such an assembly.
Can anyone doubt that the cultist mentality which characterizes most of Miss Rand's followers could lead to the creation of a group of self-appointed avengers of the capitalist class? That they would suppress strikes, demonstrations, and factory take overs? That they would not execute people for crimes against the libertarian state?
Ayn Rand believed in a republican form of government with a cleverly constructed constitution which would deny the majority of the power to infringe on the rights of a minority as she conceived them. If the majority supported a general strike against rents and mortgages and supported the factory takeovers, would not the clandestinely organized Objectivist libertarian party be tempted to dispense with democracy in order to enforce what they conceived of as the rights of the dispossessed bourgeoisie?
In all fairness it must be admitted that Ayn Rand herself would never sanction such actions, but the same argument is made everyday by western Marxists that Marx would probably not have sanctioned many of Lenin's actions and would certainly not take credit for the Soviet Union.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks won power by promising, "Land to the peasants!" "Factories to the workers!" When they took power, however, they immediately set about liquidating the factory committees and nationalizing the land. They crushed work place democracy by installing armed guards in the factories, and even returned former owners to their positions as employees of the worker's state. Leon Trotsky stopped the practice of soldiers electing their officers from their ranks and even restored former Czarist officers to their ranks in the Red Army.
When the Russian Revolution began few people clearly understood the gulf which separated the state socialists from the libertarians. Many dedicated libertarians like Alexander Berkman, rallied to the Bolshevik cause, willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in hopes that seizing state power would only be a transitional stage toward the development of the stateless/classless society.
Many sincere lovers of liberty now flock to the standard of the Libertarian Party, as they did the Bolsheviks, completely ignorant of the history of the last century. As Santayana said: "Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them."
What should be done? It should be obvious that government enforcement of private contracts is not libertarian any more than is taking state power to set people free. Libertarianism is and always will mean socialism - the self-emancipation of working people.
Libertarians must stop courting the Republican right and return to their intellectual roots. By standing outside of the political process we deny the state legitimacy, and like the state torturers in Atlas Shrugged, they will come and beg for libertarians to take over.
Remembering the experience of the Spanish libertarians, and heeding the advice of John Galt, libertarians must refuse state power even when begged. The state can never be a tool of liberation. Only its complete and utter collapse will allow for the emergence of non-statist institutions, libertarian co-ops, communes, and free markets, to flourish and displace the political state once and for all.
Gnome started for one reason and one reason only: RMS didn't agree with the KDE developers' interpretation of the GPL wrt the QT library. Gnome was set up with the intention of creating FUD to delay the uptake of the best thing to ever happen to desktop Linux and to bluff and bully the KDE crowd into getting the QT licencing changed.
Yes, you heard it right, Gnome was *deliberately* started to be "bickering, competing and incompatible" and to stop Linux having a single desktop standard if that standard was to be KDE.
The licence issue is *long* in the past. That out of the way, the Gnome crowd should have had to decency to either scrap Gnome completely (as did those working on the Harmony project, which was developing a GPL QT clone) so we could unite behind KDE or keep Gnome going as a low key longer-term hacker R&D project like Enlightenment. But no, we had to keep the ball rolling didn't we.
Why, given the adverse impact this has had on Linux and other target platforms?
NIH syndrome partly; a lot of big egos (many in the US) were beaten to the punch by a bunch of (mainly) German students.
And the fact that it relies on an existing library means that big egos who want to reinvent the universe can't develop their own object library; they have to do something useful.
But the main reason, irony of ironies, is that it is LGPL rather than KDE's GPL; yes folks, the desktop that began as *THE* GNU free desktop now boasts that it is more commercial-friendly. That's why Sun and HP are putting money into it. Guarantees success? Ah, look at CDE...
Gnome is an expensive, deliberately divisive vapourware project that should have been scrapped after the QT licence changes if the principals involved had any sense of decency or any *REAL* committment to free software. It continues because a bunch of pricks can't admit that they were wrong and continue to put their own giant egos ahead of the development of desktop Unix.
Meanwhile KDE continues to release in its usual methodical fashion while Gnome 2 stays as FUD. ("You may think KDE's kewl, but wait till you see Gnome 2!") Pardon me while I puke...
Gnome and the bastards who've hyped this piece of vapourware and tried to sabotage KDE for the last five years can go to Hell! Who needs Microsoft trying to pull the rug from under the free Unix's when you've got this lot! (Yes, that includes RMS, who is responsible for initiating and encouraging this debacle).
To paraphrase the end of RMS's infamous letter of "forgiveness" to the KDE developers: Go KDE!!!
Mod the parent post as offtopic!
Sri Lanka! Trollop that is where the Tibetans are!
In Opera the page widening does not work either. IE must really suck!
I cannot either. I bet it is a new *feature* for you and me and the rest of the negative karma club. Those fuckers!
Sorry to dissapoint you but Gnome is going the way of CDE. Gnome is unmitigated garbage! Vive KDE!
That Neil Stevens guys is hard to deal with. What the fuck is with all these Libertarians? They all seem to be wackos.
Neil Stevens is a professional bitcher. I am surprised slashdot and newsforge gave that lunatic Libertarian a platform to whine. Maybe he can proclaim that the KDE team "doesn't get it".
Neil Stevens = Whining, complaining bitch
That is the only story here.
Oh rubbish. When are people going to wake up and see that Miguel is a charlatan? Big promises, haphazard designs, more big promises, leaving a trail of half-completed projects and ideas behind him.
.NET and Microsoft designs, YOU PEOPLE WOULD BE SCREAMING FOR BLOOD. But since Miguel does it, he's "daring", going where "few fear to tread" (which is nonsense, since there are plenty of people in Windows-land lining up around the block to jump on the .NET bandwagon).
I don't understand the continual Slashdot love-in for Miguel. Were it ANYONE ELSE espousing their eternal love for
(And note, I haven't said a thing about KDE and Gnome. Ptttbbbttgttt.)
Gnome started for one reason and one reason only: RMS didn't agree with the KDE developers' interpretation of the GPL wrt the QT library. Gnome was set up with the intention of creating FUD to delay the uptake of the best thing to ever happen to desktop Linux and to bluff and bully the KDE crowd into getting the QT licencing changed.
Yes, you heard it right, Gnome was *deliberately* started to be "bickering, competing and incompatible" and to stop Linux having a single desktop standard if that standard was to be KDE.
The licence issue is *long* in the past. That out of the way, the Gnome crowd should have had to decency to either scrap Gnome completely (as did those working on the Harmony project, which was developing a GPL QT clone) so we could unite behind KDE or keep Gnome going as a low key longer-term hacker R&D project like Enlightenment. But no, we had to keep the ball rolling didn't we.
Why, given the adverse impact this has had on Linux and other target platforms?
NIH syndrome partly; a lot of big egos (many in the US) were beaten to the punch by a bunch of (mainly) German students.
And the fact that it relies on an existing library means that big egos who want to reinvent the universe can't develop their own object library; they have to do something useful.
But the main reason, irony of ironies, is that it is LGPL rather than KDE's GPL; yes folks, the desktop that began as *THE* GNU free desktop now boasts that it is more commercial-friendly. That's why Sun and HP are putting money into it. Guarantees success? Ah, look at CDE...
Gnome is an expensive, deliberately divisive vapourware project that should have been scrapped after the QT licence changes if the principals involved had any sense of decency or any *REAL* committment to free software. It continues because a bunch of pricks can't admit that they were wrong and continue to put their own giant egos ahead of the development of desktop Unix.
Meanwhile KDE continues to release in its usual methodical fashion while Gnome 2 stays as FUD. ("You may think KDE's kewl, but wait till you see Gnome 2!") Pardon me while I puke...
Gnome and the bastards who've hyped this piece of vapourware and tried to sabotage KDE for the last five years can go to Hell! Who needs Microsoft trying to pull the rug from under the free Unix's when you've got this lot! (Yes, that includes RMS, who is responsible for initiating and encouraging this debacle).
To paraphrase the end of RMS's infamous letter of "forgiveness" to the KDE developers: Go KDE!!!
"I will reverse that. Popular sovereignty, sir judges, is when molotov cocktails and stones are thrown at the police, when state cars, banks, shopping centers and luxury stores are burnt down.... This is how the people react. History itself has proven that this is the way people react. This is popular sovereignty. When Maziotis goes and places a bomb in the ministry of Industry and Development, in solidarity with the struggle of the people in Strymonikos. This is the real popular sovereignty and not what the Constitution says..."
"I will contradict my brother who said before, that he didn't want the guns in order to make war. They were for war. Maybe they were just kept there. But guns are for war, you don't just have them to keep them at home. I might have kept them as they were, but they are to make war and I make war... The bomb in the ministry was an act of war."
"There are three kinds of political violence. Terrorism of the state, which is the most usual and most organised, as the state possesses the monopoly of violence; the "revolutionary terrorism" of organisations with Marxist-Leninist ideology, that through their hierarchical structure reproduce the structures of the state and are a state in miniature; and there is the liberating violence."
"Generally, wherever there are disturbances, there are conflicts we[anarchists] want to be in. To subvert things. For us, this is not a crime. In a real sense, these disturbances are the 'popular sovereignty' that professional politicians keep talking about. That's where freedom is expressed.."
"If theoretically terrorism is exercising violence against citizens and unarmed population, that goes exclusively for the state. Only the state attacks civilians. That's what the repression mechanisms are for: the riot police, special police units, the army, special forces...mechanisms that also rob the people. They finance armed professionals, policemen. Aren't they trained to shoot real targets? Aren't the riot police armed with chemical gas? To use them where? On citizens, in demonstrations and in manifestations. So, only the state exercises violence against citizens."
Dear Troll,
We are sad to inform you that, after careful consideration , we have rejected your troll submission to the Troll Library.
You show a a poor skill at trolling. Please go read Troll Howto, and try again. Either that, or stick to adequacy.
Artist: Beck
Song: Loser
In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey
butane in my veins so i'm out to cut the junkie
with the plastic eyeballs, spray paint the vegetables
dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose
kill the headlights and put it in neutral
stock car flamin' with a loser and the cruise control
baby's in Reno with the vitamin D
got a couple of couches sleep on the love seat
someone keeps sayin' I'm insane to complain
about a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt
don't believe everything that you breathe
you get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve
so shave your face with some mace in the dark
savin' all your food stamps and burnin' down the trailer park
(yo cut it)
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?
(double-barrel buckshot)
Soy un perdedor
i'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
Forces of evil in a bozo nightmare
banned all the music with a phony gas chamber
'cuz one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag
one's got on the pole shove the other in a bag
with the rerun shows and the cocaine nose job
the daytime crap with the folksinger slop
he hung himself with a guitar string
slap the turkey neck and it's hangin' on a pigeon wing
you can't write if you can't relate
trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate
and my time is a piece of wax fallin' on a termite
who's chokin' on the splinters
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?
(get crazy with the cheeze whiz)
Soy un perdidor
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?
(drive-by body pierce)
(yo bring it on down)
soooooooyy....
(I'm a driver I'm a winner things are gonna change I can feel it)
Soy un perdidor
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?
(I can't believe you)
Soy un perdidor
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?
Soy un perdidor
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?
[repeat]
(Sprechen sie Deutches, baby
Soy un perdidor
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?
(Know what I'm sayin'?)
MAJORITIES AND MINORITIES
.
.
We do not recognize the right of the majority to impose the law on the minority, even if the will of the majority in somewhat complicated issues could really be ascertained. The fact of having the majority on one's side does not in any way prove that one must be right. Indeed, humanity has always advanced through the initiative and efforts of individuals and minorities, whereas the majority, by its very nature, is slow, conservative, submissive to superior force and to established privileges.
But if we do not for one moment recognize the right of majorities to dominate minorities, we are even more opposed to domination of the majority by a minority. It would be absurd to maintain that one is right because one is in a minority. If at all times there have been advanced and enlightened minorities, so too have there been minorities which were backward and reactionary; if there are human beings who are exceptional, and ahead of their times, there are also psychopaths, and especially are there apathetic individuals who allow themselves to be unconsciously carried on the tide of events.
In any case it is not a question of being right or wrong; it is a question of freedom, freedom for all, freedom for each individual so long as he does not violate the equal freedom of others. No one can judge with certainty who is right and who is wrong, who is closer to the truth and which is the best road to the greatest good for each and everyone. Experience through freedom is the only means to arrive at the truth and the best solutions; and there is no freedom if there is not the freedom to be wrong.
In our opinion, therefore, it is necessary that majority and minority should succeed in living together peacefully and profitably by mutual agreement and compromise, by the intelligent recognition of the practical necessities of communal life and of the usefulness of concessions which circumstances make necessary.
As well as their reason and experience telling them that in spite of using all the alchemy of elections and parliament one always ends up by having laws which represent everything but the will of the majority, anarchists do not recognize that the majority as such, even if it were possible to establish beyond all doubt what it wanted, has the right to impose itself on the dissident minorities by the use of force.
Apart from these considerations, there always exists the fact that in a capitalist regime, in which society is divided into rich and poor, into employers and employees whose next meal depends on the absolute power of the boss, there cannot be really free elections.
REFORMISM
The fundamental error of the reformists is that of dreaming of solidarity, a sincere collaboration, between masters and servants, between proprietors and workers which even if it might have existed here and there in periods of profound unconsciousness of the masses and of ingenuous faith in religion and rewards, is utterly impossible today.
Those who envisage a society of well stuffed pigs which waddle contentedly under the ferule of a small number of swineherd; who do not take into account the need for freedom and the sentiment of human dignity; who really believe in a God that orders, for his abstruse ends, the poor to be submissive and the rich to be good and charitable-can also imagine and aspire to a technical organisation of production which assures abundance to all and is at the same time materially advantageous both to the bosses and to the workers. But in reality " social peace" based on abundance for all will remain a dream, so long as society is divided into antogonistic classes, that is employers and employees. And there will be neither peace nor abundance.
The antogonism is spiritual rather than material. There will never be a sincere understanding between bosses and workers for the better exploitation of the forces of nature in the interests of mankind, because the bosses above all want to remain bosses and secure always more power at the expense of the workers, as well as by competition with other bosses, whereas the workers have had their fill of bosses and don't want more! '
[Our good friends] are wasting their time when they tell us that a little freedom is better than a brutal and unbridled tyranny; that n reasonable working day, a wage that allows people to live better than animals, and protection of women and children, are preferable to the exploitation of human labour to the point of human exhaustion; or that the State school, bad as it is, is always better, from the point of view of the child's moral development, than schools run by priests and monks . . . for we are in complete agreement. And we also agree that there may be circumstances in which the Election results, national or local, can have good or bad consequences and that this vote might be determined by the anarchists' votes if the strength of the rival parties were equally balanced.
In most cases it is an illusion; when elections are tolerably free, the only value they have is symbolic: they indicate the state of public opinion, which would have imposed itself by more efficacious means, and with more far reaching results, if it had not been offered the outlet of elections. But no matter; even if some minor advances were the direct result of an electoral victory, anarchists should not flock to the polling booths or cease to preach their methods of struggle.
Since no one can do everything in this world, one must choose one's own line of conduct.
There is always an element of contradiction between minor improvements, the satisfaction of immediate needs and the struggle for a society which is really better than the existing one. Those who want to devote themselves to the erection of public lavatories and drinking fountains where there is a need for them, or who use their energies for the construction of a road, or the establishment of a municipal school, or for the passing of some minor law to protect workers or to get rid of a brutal policeman, do well, perhaps, to use the* ballot paper in favour of this or that influential personage. But then - since one wants to be "practical" one must go the whole hog - so, rather than wait for the victory of the opposition party, rather than vote for the more kindred party, it is worth taking a short cut and support the dominant party, and serve the government already in office, and become the agent of the Prefect or the Mayor. And in fact the neo-converts we have in mind did not in fact propose voting for the most " progressive " party, but for the one that had the greater chance of being elected . . But in that case where does it all end? . .
In the course of human history it is generally the case that the malcontents, the oppressed, and the rebels, before being able to conceive and desire a radical change in the political and social institutions, restrict their demands to partial changes, to concessions by the rulers, and to improvements. Hopes of obtaining reforms as well as in their efficacy, precede the conviction that in order to destroy the power of a government or of a class, it is necessary to deny the reasons for that power, and therefore to make a revolution.
In the order of things, reforms are then introduced or they are not, and once introduced either consolidate the existing regime or undermine it; assist the advent of revolution or hamper it and benefit or harm progress in general, depending on their specific characteristic, the spirit in which they have been granted, and above all, the spirit in which they are asked for, claimed or seized by the people.
Governments and the privileged classes are naturally always guided by instincts of self preservation, of consolidation and the development of their powers and privileges; and when they consent to reforms it is either because they consider that they will serve their ends or because they do not feel strong enough to resist, and give in, fearing what might otherwise be a worse alternative.
The oppressed, either ask for and welcome improvements as a benefit graciously conceded, recognise the legitimacy of the power which is over them, and so do more harm than good by helping to slow down, or divert and perhaps even stop the processes of emancipation. Or instead they demand and impose improvements by their action, and welcome them as partial victories over the class enemy, using them as a spur to greater achievements, and thus they are a valid help and a preparation to the total overthrow of privilege, that is, for the revolution. A point is reached when the demands of the dominated class cannot be acceded to by the ruling class without compromising their power. Then the violent conflict inevitably occurs.
It is not true to say therefore, that revolutionaries are systematically opposed to improvements, to reforms. They oppose the reformists on the one hand because their methods are less effective for securing reforms from governments and employers, who only give in through fear, and on the other hand because very often the reforms they prefer are those which not only bring doubtful immediate benefits, but also serve to consolidate the existing regime and to give the workers a vested interest in its continued existence. Thus, for instance, State pensions, insurance schemes, as well as profit sharing schemes in agricultural and industrial enterprises, etc.
Apart from the unpleasantness of the word which has been abused and discredited by politicians, anarchism has always been, and can never be anything but, reformist. We prefer to say reformative in order to avoid any possible confusion with those who are officially classified as " reformists " and seek by means of small and often ephemeral improvements to make the present system more bearable (and as a result help to consolidate it); or who instead believe in good faith that it is possible to eliminate the existing social evils by recognising and respecting, in practice if not in theory, the basic political and economic institutions which are the cause of. as well as the prop that supports these evils. But in any case it is always a question of reforms, and the essential difference lies in the kind of reform one wants and the way one thinks of being able to achieve it. Revolution means, in the historical sense of the word, the radical reform of institutions, achieved rapidly by the violent insurrection of the people against existing power and privileges; and we are revolutionaries and insurrectionists because we do not just want to improve existing institutions but to destroy them completely, abolishing every form of domination by man over man, and every kind of parasitism on human labour; and because we want to achieve this as quickly as possible, and because we believe that institutions born of violence are maintained by violence and will not give way except to an equivalent violence. But the revolution cannot be made just when one likes. Should we remain inactive, waiting for the situation to mature with time?
And even after a successful insurrection, could we over night realise all our desires and pass from a governmental and capitalist hell to a libertarian-communist heaven which is the complete freedom of man within the wished for community of interests with all men?
These are illusions which can take root among authoritarians who look upon the masses as the raw material which those who have power can, by decrees, supported by bullets and handcuffs, mold to their will. But these illusions have not taken among anarchists. We need the people's consensus, and therefore we must persuade by means of propaganda and example, we must educate and seek to change the environment in such a way that this education may reach an ever increasing number of people....
We are reformers today in so far as we seek to create the most favourable conditions and as large a body of enlightened militants so that an insurrection by the people would be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. We shall be reformers tomorrow, after a triumphant insurrection, and the achievement of freedom, in that we will seek with all the means that freedom permits, that is by propaganda, example and even violent resistance against anyone who should wish to restrict our freedom in order to win over to our ideas an ever greater number of people.
But we will never recognise the institutions; we will take or win all possible reforms with the same spirit that one tears occupied territory from the enemy's grasp in order to go on advancing, and we will always remain enemies of every government, whether it be that of the monarchy today, or the republican or bolshevik governments of tomorrow.
ORGANIZATION
ORGANISATION which is, after all, only the practice of co-operation and solidarity, is a natural and necessary condition of social life; it is an inescapable fact which forces itself on everybody, as much on human society in general as on any group of people who are working towards a common objective. Since man neither wishes to, nor can, live in isolation-indeed being unable to develop his personality, and satisfy his physical and moral needs outside society and without the co- operation of his fellow beings-it is inevitable that those people who have neither the means nor a sufficiently developed social conscience to permit them to associate freely with those of a like mind and with common interests, are subjected to organisation by others, generally constituted in a class or as a ruling group, with the aim of exploiting the labour of others for their personal advantage. And the age-long oppression of the masses by a small privileged group has always been the result of the inability of most workers to agree among themselves to organise with others for production, for enjoyment and for the possible needs of defence against whoever might wish to exploit and oppress them. Anarchism exists to remedy this state of affairs....
There are two factions among those who call themselves anarchists, with or without adjectives: supporters and opponents of organisation. If we cannot succeed in agreeing, let us, at least, try to understand each other.
And first of all let us be clear about the distinctions since the question is a triple one: organisation in general as a principle and condition of social life today and in a future society; the organisation of the anarchist movement; and the organisation of the popular forces and especially of the working masses for resistance to government and capitalism....
The basic error committed by those opposed to organisation is in believing that organization is not possible without authority.
Now, it seems to us that organisation, that is to say, association for a specific purpose and with the structure and means required to attain it, is a necessary aspect of social life. A man in isolation cannot even live the life of a beast, for he is unable to obtain nourishment for himself except in tropical regions or when the population is exceptionally sparse; and he is, without exception, unable to rise much above the level of the animals. Having therefore to join with other humans, or more accurately, finding himself united to them as a consequence of the evolutionary antecedents of the species, he must submit to the will of others (be enslaved} or subject others to his will (be in authority) or live with others in fraternal agreement in the interests of the greatest good of all (be an associate). Nobody can escape from this necessity; and the most extreme anti-orgnisers not only are subject to the general organisation of the society they live in, but also in the voluntary actions in their lives, and in their rebellion against organisation, they unite among themselves, they share out their tasks, they organize with whom they are in agreement, and use the means that society puts at their disposal. .
Admitting as a possibility the existence of a community organised without authority, that is without compulsion-and anarchists must admit the possibility, or anarchy would have no meaning-let us pass on to discuss the organisation of the anarchist movement.
In this case too, organisation seems useful and necessary. If movement means the whole-individuals with a common objective which they exert themselves to attain-it is natural that they should agree among themselves, join forces, share out the tasks and take all those steps which they think will lead to the achievement of those objectives. To remain isolated, each individual acting or seeking to act on his own without co-ordination, without preparation, without joining his modest efforts to a strong group, means condemning oneself to impotence, wasting one's efforts in small ineffectual action, and to lose faith very soon in one's aims and possibly being reduced to complete inactivity....
A mathematician, a chemist, a psychologist or a sociologist may say they have no programme or are concerned only with establishing the truth. They seek knowledge, they are not seeking to do something. But anarchy and socialism are not sciences; they are proposals, projects, that anarchists and socialists seek to realise and which, therefore need to be formulated as definite programmes....
If it is true that [organisation creates leaders]; if it is true that anarchists are unable to come together and arrive at agreement without submitting themselves to an authority, this means that they are not yet very good anarchists, and before thinking of establishing anarchy in the world they must think of making themselves able to live anarchistically. The remedy does not lie in the abolition of organisation but in the growing consciousness of each individual member.... In small as well as large societies, apart from brute force, of which it cannot be a question for us, the origin and justification for authority lies in social disorganisation.
When a community has needs and its members do not know how to organise spontaneously to provide them, someone comes forward, an authority who satisfies those needs by utilising the services of all and directing them to his liking. If the roads are unsafe and the people do not know what measures to take, a police force emerges which in return for whatever services it renders expects to be supported and paid, as well as imposing itself and throwing its weight around; if some article is needed, and the community does not know how to arrange with the distant producers to supply it in exchange for goods produced locally, the merchant will appear who will profit by dealing with the needs of one section to sell and of the other to buy, and impose his own prices both on the producer and the consumer. This is what has happened in our midst; the less organised we have been the more prone are we to be imposed on by a few individuals. And this is understandable.
So much so that organisation, far from creating authority, is the only cure for it and the only means whereby each one of us will get used to taking an active and conscious part in collective work, and cease being passive instruments in the hands of leaders....
But an organisation, it is argued, presupposes an obligation to co-ordinate one's own activities with those of others; thus it violates liberty and fetters initiative. As we see it, what really takes away liberty and makes initiative impossible is the isolation which renders one powerless. Freedom is not an abstract right but the possibility of acting: this is true among ourselves as well as in society as a whole. And it is by co-operation with his fellows that man finds the means to express his activity and his power of initiatives
An anarchist organisation must, in my opinion [allow for] complete autonomy, and independence, and therefore full responsibility, to individuals and groups; free agreement between those who think it useful to come together for co-operative action, for common aims; a moral duty to fulfill one's pledges and to take no action which is contrary to the accepted programme. On such bases one then introduces practical forms and the suitable instruments to give real life to the organisation. Thus the groups, the federation of groups, the federations of federations, meetings, congresses, correspondence committees and so on. But this also must be done freely, in such a way as not to restrict the thought and the initiative of individual members, but only to give greater scope to the efforts which in isolation would be impossible or ineffective. Thus for an anarchist organisation congresses, in spite of all the disadvantages from which they suffer as representative bodies . . . are free from authoritarianism in any shape or form because they do not legislate and do not impose their deliberations on others. They serve to maintain and increase personal contacts among the most active comrades, to summarise and encourage programmatic studies on the ways and means for action; to acquaint everybody with the situation in the regions and the kind of action most urgently needed; to summarise the various currents of anarchist opinions at the time and to prepare some kind of statistics therefrom. And their decisions are not binding but simply suggestions, advice and proposals to submit to all concerned, and they do not become binding and executive except for those who accept them and for as long as they accept them. The administrative organs they nominate - Correspondence Commissions, etc.-have no directive powers, do not take initiatives except for those who specifically solicit and approve of them, and have no authority to impose their own views, which they can certainly hold and propagate as groups of comrades, but which cannot be presented as the official views of the organisation. They publish the resolutions of the congresses and the opinions and proposals communicated to them by groups and individuals; and they act for those who want to make use of them, to facilitate relations between groups, and co-operation between those who are in agreement on various initiatives; each is free to correspond with whoever he likes direct, or to make use of other committees nominated by specific groupings
In an anarchist organisation individual members can express any opinion and use every tactic which is not in contradiction with the accepted principles and does not interfere with the activities of others. In every case a particular organisation lasts so long as the reasons for union are superior to those for dissension: otherwise it disbands and makes way for other, more homogenous groupings.
Certainly the life and permanence of an organisation is a condition for success in the long struggle before us, and besides, it is natural that every institution should by instinct aim at lasting indefinitely. But the duration of a libertarian organisation must be the result of the spiritual affinity of its members and of the adaptability of its constitution to the continually changing circumstances. When it can no longer serve a useful purpose it is better that it should die.
We would certainly be happy if we could all get along well together and unite all the forces of anarchism in a strong movement; but we do not believe in the solidity of organisations which are built up on concessions and assumptions and in which there is no real agreement and sympathy between members.
Better disunited than badly united. But we would wish that each individual joined his friends and that there should be no isolated forces, or lost forces.
It remains for us to speak of the organisation of the working masses for resistance against both the government and the employers.
. . . Workers will never be able to emancipate themselves so long as they do not find in union the moral, economic and physical strength that is needed to subdue the organised might of the oppressors.
There have been anarchists, and there are still some, who while recognising the need to organise today for propaganda and action, are hostile to all organisations which do not have anarchism as their goal or which do not follow anarchist methods of struggle.... To those comrades it seemed that all organised forces for an objective less than radically revolutionary, were forces that the revolution was being deprived of. It seems to us instead, and experience has surely already confirmed our view, that their approach would condemn the anarchist movement to a state of perpetual sterility. To make propaganda we must be amongst the people, and it is in the workers' associations that workers find their comrades and especially those who are most disposed to understand and accept our ideas. But even when it were possible to do as much propaganda as we wished outside the associations, this could not have a noticeable effect on the working masses. Apart from a small number of individuals more educated and capable of abstract thought and theoretical enthusiasms, the worker cannot arrive at anarchism in one leap. To become a convinced anarchist, and not in name only, he must begin to feel the solidarity that joins him to his comrades, and to learn to cooperate with others in the defence of common interests and that, by struggling against the bosses and against the government which supports them, should realise that bosses and governments are useless parasites and that the workers could manage the domestic economy by their own efforts. And when the worker has understood this, he is an anarchist even if he does not call himself such.
Furthermore, to encourage popular organisations of all kinds is the logical consequence of our basic ideas, and should therefore be an integral part of our programme.
An authoritarian party, which aims at capturing power to impose its ideas, has an interest in the people remaining an amorphous mass, unable to act for themselves and therefore always easily dominated. And it follows, logically, that it cannot desire more than that much organisation, and of the kind it needs to attain power: Electoral organisations if it hopes to achieve it by legal means; Military organisation if it relies on violent action.
But we anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves. We do not believe in the good that comes from above and imposed by force; we want the new way of life to emerge from the body of the people and correspond to the state of their development and advance as they advance. It matters to us therefore that all interests and opinions should find their expression in a conscious organisation and should influence communal life in proportion to their importance.
We have undertaken the task of struggling against existing social organisation, and of overcoming the obstacles to the advent of a new society in which freedom and well being would be assured to everybody. To achieve this objective we organise ourselves in a party and seek to become as numerous and as strong as possible. But if it were only our party that was organised; if the workers were to remain isolated like so many units unconcerned about each other and only linked by the common chain; if we ourselves besides being organised as anarchists in a party, were not as workers organised with other workers, we could achieve nothing at all, or at most, we might be able to impose ourselves . . . and then it would not be the triumph of anarchy but our triumph. We could then go on calling ourselves anarchists, but in reality we should simply be rulers, and as impotent as all rulers are where the general good is concerned.'
You sure like to ramble. On and on and on...