Anarchoblogs

CANADIAN ANARCHIST MOVEMENT- TORONTO:TORONTO ANARCHIST ASSEMBLY: Molly mentioned the upcoming Toronto Anarchist Assembly briefly before on this blog. Well, it’s almost upon us…April 9 to 11. Looks like an interesting lineup. Here’s the details from …

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ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS-OTTAWA:SIX ARRESTED AT SIT-IN AT INDIAN AND NORTHERN AFFAIRS OFFICE: According to the CBC our “beloved” Prime Munster Sneaky Stevie has “granted” aboriginal leaders from across the country a private meeting today, the day when fundi…

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I'm putting the finishing touches on issue #1 of The Mutualist, and will start shipping orders over the next couple of days. Here is the introduction to that issue:


This first issue of THE MUTUALIST continues the work begun in the two issues of LEFTLIBERTY, but with significant difference in context and approach. The earlier works were part of a tentative, exploratory phase of my work, a kind of preliminary mapping of the “Libertarian Labyrinth,” where the focus was really on establishing the radical diversity of our anarchist/libertarian heritage. There is certainly much, much more exploring to do, but I’ve come to feel that the argument about diversity has pretty well been made. There are plenty of folks out there unwilling to deny the legitimacy of some or all of the lesser-known varieties of anti-authoritarian thought, but their existence is hardly in question. And among the historically-minded radicals that I meet, it appears that there is actually an emphasis on these previously marginal figures and schools.

Barring unforeseen problems, we should see anthologies this year of the works of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (from AK Press, edited by Iain McKay) and Josiah Warren (from Fordham University, edited by Crispin Sartwell), two anarchist pioneers more often cited than actually read. With a little luck, my Corvus Editions project will have made all of William Batchelder Greene’s major works available in pamphlet form by year’s end. Translators working on the Proudhon anthology and at the Collective Reason site have already made this a banner year for new “classical anarchist” material available in English, and there’s a lot of year left. At the pace they have been producing things, I would expect some more Ukrainian material from Black Cat soon as well. Anarchist/libertarian bibliography seems to have sprung back into very healthy life, with important work being done by Ernesto Longa and John Zube—and I’m gearing up to focus on bibliographic work for much of the remainder of the year. New digital archives, such as the Anarchist Library and the various online sites inspired by the Proudhon anthology, are making historical material increasingly easy to access. I hope the Corvus Editions project is contributing to that as well.

That’s a lot of progress, but even if we were able to suddenly make all the “lost classics” and fascinating ephemera available, there remains the labor of making sense of it all and applying it to present-day concerns. Acknowledging the vast extent and imposing complexity of our heritage has been a necessary step—a useful antidote to certain over-simplistic understandings of our histories—but to the extent that it changes our understanding of the anarchist and libertarian traditions, it also presses on us the need to rethink the whole application-of-tradition part of anarchist practice. To the extent that our sense of theoretical and practical alternatives has been expanded, the complexities involved in our present choices have been increased. And, given the exigencies of the present day, we probably need to get to it. For myself, after some years of (very useful) wandering “In the Libertarian Labyrinth,” it feels very much like time to get out. There is undoubtedly no straight-and-narrow path, out there beyond the exit signs—and certainly not for an advocate of the mutualist “anarchism of approximations”—but there’s a different kind of complexity to deal with.

The change in title, from LEFTLIBERTY to THE MUTUALIST, marks, on the one hand, a narrowing of focus, from the nominally “big-tent” approach of the first issues—which never really panned out anyway—to a much more programmatic attempt to elaborate a roughly “neo-Proudhonian” mutualism adapted to contemporary issues. LEFTLIBERTY was named, in part, as a tribute to Benjamin R. Tucker and his magnificent paper, LIBERTY, at a time when I was very deeply involved in market-anarchist coalitions very similar to the theoretical alliances Tucker sought to establish. Tucker remains an important touchstone for me, and the preservation and dissemination of the work published in LIBERTY remains a top priority. Tucker’s broad interests have influenced my own, and his example has been one of my key inspirations as a translator. But, ultimately, having compared Tucker to his influences, he comes up wanting—in my mind, at least. In many ways, the “plumb-line” approach that he advocated was a rejection of the central principles of Proudhon and Greene, and is arguably not the most faithful adaptation of Warren’s thought. Though Tucker sometimes spoke of “mutualism,” and while his various approaches to the question of liberty emphasized reciprocity in one sense or another, he was almost certainly not a “mutualist” in the same sense as any of his predecessors. THE MUTUALIST is not an organ of Tuckerite individualist anarchism, nor of the broad “mutualism” which makes no distinction between Proudhon and Warren and Tucker—and a host of others—nor even of the modern “Carsonian synthesis”—despite the great respect and admiration as I have for Kevin Carson’s work. It is, as I have said, “neo-Proudhonian” in its emphases, and hopes to demonstrate both the sense of Proudhon’s social philosophy and its application to the present.

But—and here is the “on the other hand,” so inevitable for anyone involved with Proudhon’s antinomies—refocusing on the work of Proudhon immediately gives us pressing reasons to engage with all sorts of other figures—influences, followers, colleagues, antagonists, etc.—who impose themselves on us as we try to understand that work and its context. Indeed, almost everyone and everything excluded with the first move rushes back in with the second, but the work is not a matter of mere gestures. What I hope to accomplish in THE MUTUALIST, and related works, is a reexamination of the broad mutualist tradition, including the works of Proudhon himself, but with a sort of “neo-Proudhonian eye.” Indeed, this is what I have already been attempting in works like “The Gift Economy of Property,” where it has been a question of completing Proudhon’s stated projects and exploring alternate routes to his stated ends. There is no question that Proudhon’s work was unfinished and unevenly developed, and then adapted by a variety of followers and intellectual heirs in an equally uneven manner. Those adaptations included significant advances, as well as significant misunderstandings—and they inform large portions of the spectrum of anarchisms and libertarian philosophies, in one way or another.

That’s probably the way Proudhon—or our speculative “neo-Proudhon”—would have wanted it. He understood progress as a matter of “approximation” and adaptation, of conflicts between more-or-less absolutist projects. And he understood liberty as growing out of more and more complex associations—in the realm of thought, as well as in the social realm. One of the goals of THE MUTUALIST will be to “open up” Proudhon’s own writings, to show his influences, to engage with criticisms in a way that he never did, and to attempt to make explicit and useful that history of choices, adaptations and approximations that is marked by the changing nature of “mutualism,” from the pre-anarchist friendly societies to the various modern variants. I’m starting with a fairly well-researched intuition about the mutualist “big picture”—none of which will be particularly new, probably, to readers of my blogs and of LEFTLIBERTY—and we’ll see how the details work themselves out. But expect, in general, that while I have narrowed my focus with regard to what I will call “mutualism,” the result is likely to be a considerably broadening of what I consider related to the discussion of it.


I’m starting in this issue with what may seem a classic mutualist provocation. The tradition that has given us “property is theft” and “free market anti-capitalism” may perhaps be excused for dressing up the Golden Rule in wild-west drag. But there’s more at stake than just a family tradition or a dubious gag. There’s frankly very little point in going to all this trouble reimagining mutualism if readers persist in thinking of it as a kind of squishy place midway between social anarchism and market anarchism—when, in fact, its original project, the “synthesis of community and property,” was intended to encompass all the ground ultimately covered by those schools, along with all of the complications that come from tackling both individual and social emphases all at once.

That’s a pretty big project, and, let’s face it, even the mutualist tradition itself has not managed to remain focused on it—gravitating instead towards particular approximations, like the mutual bank, in some instances long after those particular institutions offered much in the way of promise.

But, big project or not, it appears to be mutualism’s project, the “solution of the social problem” or, as Claude Pelletier put it, the workers’ freedom. (Talk about your “big f***ing deals”…) The trouble for us seems to be that we are a little jaded about this sort of thing, and, frankly, we’re also pretty seriously out of practice at tackling the sort of complexities involved. Mostly, we live in a much simpler—if not simplist—world, where the established relation between individualism and socialism is pretty close to “never the twain shall meet, and where embracing both looks like a sort of intentional folly.

I hope, in the pages of THE MUTUALIST, to demonstrate a number of reason why the full mutualist project is neither as daunting nor as foolish as it may appear. But I have no intention of suggesting that something like “the solution of the social problem” is going to be easy—and I’m going to have to spend some time, at this stage in the investigation, focusing on the very antagonistic forms in which we have inherited individualism and socialism. Taking up our tools where, and in the condition in which we find them, there will undoubtedly be some initial dangers, even mishaps perhaps. Hence “two-gun” mutualism, picking up a metaphor from Pierre Leroux’s “Individualism and Socialism,” in which the two isms are likened to, among other things, “charged pistols.” After all these years, let’s acknowledge that they are old pistols, and that perhaps we have taken as good care of them as we might have, so that picking them up poses all sorts of potential hazards.

“Two-Gun Mutualism” is intended as a sort of transitional engagement. Ultimately, our goals are of a relatively peaceful sort, the sort where pistols will be of little use to us. But one of the shared assumptions of virtually all of the early anarchists seems to have been that real peace arises only from the “perfection” of conflict. We will have to really take up these two “charged” concepts, and engage with them as they come to us, before we can transform them into tools more suitable to an anarchist future. When it comes right down to it, snake-handling might be safer, and more fun. But here we go…


The goal for the year is to put together a set of essays introducing most of the key aspects of a “neo-Proudhonian” mutualism. The second issue will most likely be built around the conclusion of “Two-Gun Mutualism and the Golden Rule” and an essay called “Owning Up,” about mutualism, egoism and Walt Whitman. Beyond that, future issues will contain the remainder of “The Anarchism of Approximations: Philosophical Issues” (which began in LeftLiberty), more on “the gift economy of property,” a discussion of value theories, thoughts on ecology, micro-enterprise, and the relationship between mutualism and syndicalism, plus notes towards a comprehensive history of the mutualist tradition. By the time 2011 rolls around, I hope to have the cards pretty well on the table—at which point it should be possible to talk much more seriously and concretely about what comes after the “two-gun” transition.

Alle erwarten das technische Gerät, was es am Samstag erstmal zu kaufen gibt und zu dem es jetzt schon Hunderttausende Vorbestellungen gibt: das iPad. So hoch wurden technische Geräte seit langem nicht mehr gehypt, auch wenn dabei eigentlich nicht viel mehr als ein großer „iPod touch“ hintersteckt. In einer anderen Größenordnung, die nämlich in die Millionen geht, in ein weiteres Phänomen zu beobachten: Das „soziale Netzwerk“ Facebook, was schon über Einhundert Millionen User*innen hat, weiter wächst und dabei ständig seine Angebotspalette ausbaut. Beide Sachverhalte, das iPad (bzw. die iProdukte von Appe insgesamt) und Facebook stehen dabei für eine neue technische, leicht zugängliche Welt für alle. Doch sie haben auch noch eine weitere Gemeinsamkeit: Beides sind stark restriktive Systeme, die ihre eigenen Nutzer*innen bevormunden.
Beim iPad (und den anderen iProdukten) kann Apple entscheiden, welche Programme im Appstore angeboten werden dürfen und somit auch, welche Programme auf den iProdukten überhaupt legal nutzbar sind. Apple hat zwar gewisse Richtlinien für den Store geschaffen, kann aber auch (mehr oder minder) nach eigenem Gutdünken Programme zulassen oder nicht. So wird es wohl keine Alternative zu Apples Browser „Safari“ geben und auch einige anzügliche Progrämmchen wurden wieder aus dem Shop genommen. Eine Anwendung namens „iMussolini“, die Reden des italienischen Diktators anbietet, wurde weiter drinbehalten, auch wenn einige Faschist*innen davon regen Gebrauch machten. Im Endeffekt verlieren die Anwender*innen so die Kontrolle über ihr Gerät, da Apple alle Programme vorher überprüft, bevor sie im Appstore angeboten werden können.
Aber viele Leute stört das auch gar nicht, denn sie wollen einfach ein Gerät, was funktioniert und es gibt ja genügend Programme im Appstore, die die Funktionalität erweitern oder einfach nette Spielereien sind. Und das kann mensch ihnen ja auch nicht vorwerfen, schließlich haben nicht alle Lust, einen PC komplett aufzusetzen und mühsam die richtigen Programme rauszusuchen und dann dabei noch Viren und Spyware zu vermeiden. Aber die iProdukte wollen ja auch keine PCs sein, dafür bietet Apple Macs an. Ich denke, unabhängig von der Popularität der iProdukte werden auch immer offene Plattformen weiterexistieren, gerade im Entwicklungs- und Unternehmensbereich, wo Lösungen flexibel sein müssen. Es wäre nur schön, wenn diese nicht in eine Nische zurückgedrängt werden und weiterhin breit verfügbar bleiben.
Und genau auf dieser offenen Plattform, dem PC, setzt nun Facebook an und versucht, alles mit seinem Netzwerk zu verknüpfen, damit sich die User*innen am besten gar nicht mehr ausloggen müssen und weiter Informationen über ihre Gewohnheiten abdrücken, damit Facebook sich besser anpassen kann. Und solange die Leute sich innerhalb des Facebooks-Netzwerkes bewegen, was ja auch immer mehr neue Funktionen bietet, befinden sie sich innerhalb einer ähnlichen geschlossen Plattform wie auf dem iPad, nur dass sie sie jederzeit verlassen können. Facebooks Datensammelei ist natürlich kritisch zu betrachten, schließlich sind die Daten dort auch nicht allzu sicher, wie einige Datenschutz- oder Phising-Skandale zeigen. Aber auch dort kann mensch den Nutzer*innen kaum verbieten, Facebook zu nutzen, sie müssen es halt selbst wissen und es bietet sicher auch einige nette Funktionen.
Mögen diese ganze Dinge auch noch so nett sein, sie stehen einem Gedanken doch klar entgegen: Dem der „freien Software“. „Frei“ heißt in diesem Sinne nicht nur kostenlos, sondern auch „open source“ und unter einer solchen Lizenz, dass die entsprechenden Programme immer nicht-kommerziell (Okay, das ist umstritten…) und offen zugänglich für alle sind. Ich weiß nicht, ob es auch kostenlose Programme im Appstore geben kann, quellenoffen und zur freien Weitergabe bestimmt sind sie jedenfalls sicher nicht. Ebenso wird Facebook den Quellcode seiner Funktionen eher gschlossen halten und die Mechanismen patentieren statt sie allen frei verfügbar zu machen. Die geschlossenen Plattformen engen also nicht nur die Nutzer*innen ein, sondern stehen auch der Idee der „freien Software“ entgegen, die auf dem Prinzip basiert, dass Technologien und Informationen allen zugänglich sein sollten. Und da sehe ich – neben den datenschutzrechtlichen Bedenken – die größte Gefahr, sollte sich diese Art von Plattformen einmal großflächig durchsetzen. Dann sind wir nämlich wirklich von der Willkür der Hersteller*innen abhängig – und haben keine großartigen Alternativen mehr.

1 April 2010

Anti-war activists in Derry, Northern Ireland, have been harassing a local plant of the U.S. arms manufacturer Raytheon for several years. In one action, nine people from the Derry Anti-War Coalition occupied the offices and destroyed over £350,000 of equipment.

The saboteurs were charged with burglary and criminal damage, but the court permitted them to argue that they were acting to prevent war crimes, and after presenting evidence to support this argument, the defendants were acquitted of all charges by a unanimous jury. Raytheon’s U.S.-side managers concluded that “the legal system in Northern Ireland does not offer the degree of protection to their business that could be expected in other parts of the world,” and the company has decided to abandon their Derry plant!

Congratulations to the Raytheon 9 and to the Derry Anti-War Coalition.

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Those of you with a copy of that war tax resister’s bible: War Tax Resistance: A Guide to Withholding Your Support from the Military will be interested to know that NWTRCC has published a supplement that brings the guide up-to-date, including important updates on such topics as:

• the repeal of the federal excise tax on long-distance telephone calls
• the increase of the frivolous-filing penalty
• expanded use of levies and liens by the IRS
• new guidelines on how to regulate paycheck withholding
• more information on evolving IRS enforcement priorities

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Utopía: Revista de Cristianos de Base has published an interview with Spanish war tax resister Joan Surroca about ecology, the global economic crisis, and related topics. “From my point of view,” Surroca says, “there is no way out other than a profound transformation of values. Tolstoy made it very clear: ‘We all want to change the world, but nobody thinks of changing himself.’” The interview briefly touched on his tax resistance:

Utopía: Few people know that you are one the few or perhaps the only person who has won a court case over your tax resistance claims. What do you think that meant, and what do you think today?

Surroca: That the Superior Court of Justice for Catalonia for the first time overturned my guilty verdict and exempted me from paying the fines for my resistance to my money going to the military, is a small step that should encourage many, but tax resistance is something political; because ethics cannot restrict itself to particular cases and to my little world. Certainly I don’t want that the Spanish government should continue to direct these immoral sums in their budgets to support the arms race, but clearly we will not achieve significant progress without a stronger movement of the citizens.

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From the 1 April 1971 edition of The Village Voice:

War Tax Resistance

by Mary Breasted

A number of spring harbingers in Manhattan are much more reliable than the weather on Groundhog Day (which was sunny this year, by the way). We have stickball players and nodding junkies out in droves to tell us the fair season is coming. We have some big gathering or other in Central Park, and, like as not, a report in the social columns that Jackie O. was recently seen taking the air on horseback. And now, just as seasonal, we have the re-awakening of the Peace Movement.

It began last week with a news conference in Washington Square Methodist Church that was as passionless as it was repetitive. The news release announcing the event had said: “Leading Intellectuals to Explain Why they Refuse to Pay War Taxes.” And there they all were, seated at a long row of tables Thursday morning, squinting into TV lights, Paul Goodman, Grace Paley, David McReynolds, Dwight MacDonald, familiar faces offering familiar moral aphorisms about mankind’s higher laws superseding the laws of the nations. And although they were as outspokenly critical of the war as ever they had been in demonstrations and news conferences past, they seemed muted even as they redeclared themselves, as if this time they felt secretly defeated right at the start.

Seven “leading intellectuals” in all, they contributed a total of $325 to an account called the People’s Life Fund or to various beneficiaries of the fund (the Welfare Rights Organization, the Women’s Bail Fund, the United Farmworkers Organizing Committee and Operation Move-In). The purpose of the conference, aside from giving them a public forum for personal testimonials, was to launch an intensified campaign for the War Tax Resistance in these last two weeks before we all file our returns.

Robert Calvert, the national director of War Tax Resistance, tried to put some zing into the subdued conference by stresssing the inconvenience his group would cause the Internal Revenue Service. “It usually takes the government six months to a year to move and get the money,” he said, adding happily, “I’ve been resisting my telephone tax for a year. The government has not got a penny from me.”

But Paul Goodman, the most openly cynical of the group, countered that hopeful note by observing, “It would be unrealistic for us to think that this is an economic burden on the government.” But he said he did hope the action would have some influence upon the opinions of legislators.

When the conference was over, Goodman walked off saying cheerily, “Well, it’s nice to give money to the Women’s Bail Fund. I always like to see people get out of jail.”

Founded in December 1969, the War Tax Resistance now has more than 170 tax resistance centers in various parts of the country. And in Manhattan, where they’ve been picketing the IRS office, they’ve attracted one clandestine ally, a young man who works for IRS but who opposes the war. Although he won’t give his name, he did tell me he planned to help the War Tax Resistance people figure out other ways to keep the government from collecting taxes.

If you’re interested in war protest through tax withholding, Calvert’s group suggests that you deduct between $10 and $50 from your federal taxes this year and send the difference to the People’s Life Fund, War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette Street, New York 10012 (telephone 477-2970 or 777-5560). The government will eventually collect the money you withhold and charge you a penalty fee for your action, but according to the IRS employee who is counseling War Tax Resistance, “the expense to collect the tax that is not being paid is far greater than the additional penalty imposed for the delinquent action.” That’s why the Tax Resistance people suggest you withhold such a small sum.

The money will go to the beneficiaries of the People’s Life Fund on April 5, when the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice will lead a demonstration to Wall Street to protest both the war and unemployment.

In der Ausgabe der ZEIT von voriger Woche, erschien ein recht bedrückender Artikel, der am Beispiel der Mißbrauchsfälle an der Odenwaldschule rekonstruiert, wie sich gesellschaftliche Eliten gegenseitig schützen.

Remember kids, just because it got rid of the least popular Prime Minister in living memory and lead to you not paying the more tax than your landlord, violence is never justified. (unless you are a riot cop with a phobia of skinny ladies with orange juice, because anyway it’s not assault when the police do [...]

*sob*

I only just learned that Pauline’s United Australia Party is no moar. Such dreams we shared…

Party Registration decision: Pauline’s United Australia Party
Voluntary Deregistration

File reference: Reg3607, 07/1038-2

The delegate of the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) determined that the application by Pauline’s United Australia Party for voluntary deregistration under s135 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 be accepted.

See also : Whatever happened to… the One Nation Party? (March 23, 2010).

"I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence." -- 1 Timothy 2:12