Anarchoblogs

Torch Runner & Young And In The Way - split (2011):

TORCH RUNNER / YOUNG AND IN THE WAY “split 7””

Year: 2011
Genre: Blackened Hardcore/Crust
Country: USA

Track List:

Torch Runner

1. No Friend Of Mine
   
2. Pulpit Plague

Young…

A radio program has been done on Kootenay Coop Radio about the 1983 BC General Strike, its history and the ramifications of it. I also am interviewed as well as Tom Wayman and 4 other people who were involved at the time. Here is the link - http://kootenaycoopradio.com/index.php?%2Fradio-show%2Fshow%2Fhedge_school_of_the_air%2F

My commentaries for the month of August are both up at Center for a Stateless Society.

In Justice Without the State, I respond to a question raised by E.D. Kain at the Forbes Blog.

Kain describes his reservations about anarchism and wonders “what would replace our criminal justice system in a stateless society?” As an anarchist — one who believes in maximizing individual liberty and wants no person to rule over another — I’d answer hopefully nothing…

The criminal enterprises of the state should not be replaced, but instead displaced, by cooperative alternatives. This may seem like nitpicking, but to me it emphasizes the differences between authoritarian and anarchic functions.

And since I’ve been in Disaster Mode, I naturally did a commentary called Hurricane Reality. It started with considering whether or not the news was over-hyped, and went on to exploring anarchist solutions to disaster preparedness and response.

As flooding and power outages still affect people, many are saying that Hurricane Irene was overhyped by the media. Some, like Howard Kurtz in his article A Hurricane of Hype focus on the minimal damage to New York City, as if this were a superhero movie where bad things strike Manhattan first…

There are probably already commentaries claiming that the disaster shows how important government action is. Certainly, the individuals helping stranded people can be commended by those of us who think the institutions they labor under are not optimal. But there really is no reason why government services would work better than any non-government services.

Auf einer gängigen Video-Plattform im Internet findet sich eine kleine (ca. 8 minütige) Einführung zum Thema Polyamorie. Hierbei handelt es sich um ein Konzept welches als Alternative zum konventionellen Entwurf einer Liebesbeziehung bestehend aus ausschließlich zwei Personen zu verstehen ist. Es möchte die Möglichkeit eröffnen einen Umgang für Menschen zu finden, die mehrere Personen gleichzeitig “begehren” und sich nicht auf eine “romantische Zweierbeziehung” beschränken wollen – sei es auf einer rein emotionalen Ebene, einer sexuellen Ebene oder allen möglichen Misch- und Zwischenformen die man sich noch so vorstellen kann.

Sicher gibt es auch ein wenig andere Vorstellungen von Polyamorie, aber zur Einführung halte ich das Video für ganz geeignet. Viel Spaß und interessante Aspekte also beim gucken:

Bitte hier klicken

la venganza

The existence of a pure country acting as a repository of both communal ethics and traditions is taken for granted in some circles, in places that look fondly back to the past for a solution to today's problems. According to this view, believed in as well by 19th century Romantics in England as well as by sections of hippy culture in the '60s and '70s, cities are places of deracine corruption, the product of a profound split between humanity and nature, one that can only be overcome by going back to the land. There is much truth in this view, as much as cities offer both alienation and isolation, as well as the potential for newness and connection, but the notion that going back to the country takes one back to pre-capitalist values, is near sighted in the extreme.

The reason is simple: capitalism is not simply made up of industry, of factories, technology, and Dickensian social states. It's also a system of property rights and social relations, and those features of capitalism exist as much in the countryside as in the cities. Marx and later thinkers, in particular historian E.P. Thompson, have pointed out that changes in the idea of what property was and what rights owning property entailed that happened in the countryside established part of the foundation for the development of first small scale capitalism and then industrial capitalism. The transition to individual ownership as entailing absolute property rights, making the farmer a small businessman, was also a transition to the sort of market values praised by right-wing economic libertarians today.

The countryside, especially in the United States but also in other countries like England, isn't a repository of communal values anymore, values inherited from the shell of a feudal system, so much as it is a repository of bourgeois values covered with a patina of social conservatism originating in a pre-capitalist state, an empty superstructure preserving the non-progressive forms of those societies. In the U.S. pockets of pre-industrial ideas and ways of thinking do exist. Places like the South, through the establishment of brutal feudalistic relations during slavery, the deep cowboy country of the West, formed by the absolute need for cooperation on the frontier, surviving Mexican society in states in the South and West that were originally part of Mexico , pockets of the Northwest, and possibly traditional New England villages, preserve some of the ethic. Beyond that, however, the countryside is predominately bourgeois in its attitudes, an example of what William S. Burroughs said of Harry S. Truman: that it has the mind of a haberdasher, or small hat salesman.

Politically, if you look at where the biggest supporters of the Tea Party are, of free market policies linked to anti-Statism, in the United States, it's the countryside, the agricultural country, that has the biggest concentration. Glenn Beck appears in front of a barn in the Midwest in the cover of his book "The Real America". Rural society praises not only government non-intervention but the aggressive positive value of buying and selling, the ideal of being an owner, manager, and businessman, marketing yourself, and lifting yourself up by your bootstraps in order to become another Sam Walton some day. True, there is in fact a lot of social conservatism in these areas, and a lot of religiosity as well, but even there none of it threatens their basic economic values . Protestant churches, especially Fundamentalist ones, encourage a basic individualism in both action and belief that starts with the Bible relying on individual interpretation and ends with the importance of individual faith against works as path to heaven. Jesus feeding the poor doesn't register, just your personal faith, going to Church every Sunday, and avoiding non-Godly culture. That social conservatism and bourgeois values can coexist isn't quite as strange as it might seem, because individual responsibility feeding into the Protestant work ethic is the justification of much of their moralism, certainly as it concerns gays, sexual freedom, and women's rights.

The capitalist countryside can also be considered a transitional form of social life, one that exists between the archaic thought of pre-capitalist society and the full worldview of capitalist society that includes social liberalism as one of its components. The city provides an outlet for people frustrated with the static shell of the hypocritical countryside , a place that preaches freedom while restricting people in practice, but in doing so also sows the seeds of what's to come next. Once social and economic liberalism have been fully realized the downsides of bourgeois society become evident, and people try to find positive solutions. The capitalism of the cities, decried by conservatives for its facilitation of social liberalism, has provoked people to create alternatives to the alienation that they experience through the organization of communities as neighborhoods, initiatives to improve the community, social centers, initiatives for work, and housing that's less personally destroying. In my opinion, all of it prefigures a better society that combines social liberalism with collective values.

I also think that conservatives have also been mistaken in thinking that it's the social liberalism of the cities alone that leads to some of the social problems they stereotype cities as having. Instead, what in my opinion contributes more to the reality behind their racialized conception of social problems, is the intersection of alienation and estrangement in capitalism with aspects of capitalist culture that make use of the worst possibilities social liberalism has to offer. In experiencing discrimination, people want to fight back through pursuing what our society portrays as the point of life. There are quite a few other ways to respond, though, and many people in these communities are working to establish better alternatives.

The way out of the crisis people feel in the disconnection created by life in cities, the aspects of city life that resembles being in an anonymous borg, mostly experienced by the poor, isn't to go to back to the country in search of a purity not found in the city. That part of society is not only substantially the same beneath the patina of social conservatism on top but is also very vocal about defending the most alienating tendencies of modern life. Even the closeness to nature present in the country has to be balanced against the anti-nature opinions and points of view that many residents possess, that see nature as something just to be exploited through modern agriculture instead of something to be preserved. Instead, the way out is to create something new. Newness can be fostered both in small and medium towns as well as in cities. Perhaps the country needs to be transformed itself in order to reflect the new sense of community that's being constructed around the country, in a role reversal. Perhaps instead of going back to the country for wisdom, parts of culture of the city should be brought back to the country in order to establish a new fusion, a new synthesis of culture and economic activity, one that doesn't negate what has come before but that adds to and deepens it in harmony with what has been learned about where the future is going.

If an armed band of brigands is determined to take your land, or your crops, or your resources, or impress you and your friends and family into slavery, or establish some other kind of permanent control or direction over all of you, you can hardly prevent them from doing so just by ignoring them. You have to repel them and defeat them.

Now I suppose you can succeed here and there in repelling and defeating threats by adventitiously banding together temporarily into an organized, rule-governed unit for that limited purpose, and then dissolving back into a less organized form of existence. But the threats are persistent and many, and it’s both inefficient and ineffective to keep forming and dissolving units of organized power only when threats arise. For one thing, you will want to deter threats from acting against you in the first place, rather than continue paying the high price of only banding together and acting once threats have arisen, and have begun to do their damage. The practical thing to do is to preserve the band as an organized society; to debate, refine and improve the rules under which you live and organize your cooperative activity and common life; and to establish settled practices for keeping these rules and in place. And then you are a government.

Nope. This is the problem underpinning Dan Kervick’s whole line of thinking here (along with that of people like Gus diZerega and others in the state-as-self-organizing-network camp). He has convinced himself that anarchism is the lack of persistent institutions or organizations because he seemingly defines governments or states as any persistent institution or organization. Either that or he thinks this is the case in matters of large-scale defense. But why should we accept this? I find that to be a weird way to think of it.

If you’re going to tell an anarchist that they don’t really oppose the state if they support any kind of “organized, rule-governed unit” for defense (as Kervick suggests is prudent), then it probably helps to know what they mean by a “government” or “state”:

I won’t hazard a definition of either “government” or “state” here, but some essential features can be described. States have governments, and governments, as such, claim authority over a defined range of territory and citizens. Governments claim the right to issue legitimate orders to anyone subject to them, and to use force to compel obedience. But governments claim more than that: after all, I have the right to order you out of my house, and to shove you out if you won’t go quietly. Governments claim supreme authority over legally enforceable claims within their territory; while I have a right to order you off my property, a government claims the right to make and enforce decisive, final, and exclusive orders on questions of legal right—for example, whether it is my property, if there is a dispute, or whether you have a right to stay there. That means the right to review, and possibly to overturn or punish, my demands on you—to decisively settle the dispute, to enforce the settlement over anyone’s objections, and deny to anyone outside the government the right to supersede their final say on it. Some governments—the totalitarian ones—assert supreme authority over every aspect of life within their borders; but a “limited government” asserts authority only over a defined range of issues, often enumerated in a written constitution. Minarchists argue not only that governments should be limited in their authority, but specifically that the supreme authority of governments should be limited to the adjudication of disputes over individual rights, and the organized enforcement of those rights. But even the most minimal minarchy, at some point, must claim its citizens’ exclusive allegiance—they must love, honor and obey, forsaking all others, or else they deny the government the prerogative of sovereignty. And a “government” without sovereign legal authority is no government at all.

-Charles “Rad Geek” Johnson, “Liberty, Equality, Solidarity: Toward a Dialectical Anarchism”

Kervick has not demonstrated that simply reaching the point where an institution is “preserved,” where there are “settled practices,” or where there is enough continuity to “deter threats” requires anything of the sort Rad Geek describes. If an organization hangs together despite lacking these essential features, then it is not a state, but anarchy. If we accept, as Kervick says further down, that “[objectionable forms of bondage or coercion] are only actively prevented by an organized power that has more coercive heft than the potential oppressors” then why must we also accept that this can only take the form of something with sovereign legal authority?

For example, all kinds of forms of male domination and female subjugation that existed just a few decades ago have been altered and pushed back in the US and other societies.  That’s in large part because many of the constitutive practices of male domination are now illegal, and the institutions and claims of right that once underpinned these practices have been abolished.  Those who seek to engage in those practices, and there are many who do, are now thwarted by the law and by the imposition of punishment, or at least the threat of punishment, on a continuing basis.  So if this is a triumph on behalf of liberty, it is a triumph of democratic government and the rule of democratic law.

Why is this any more likely to be the case than the idea that the Civil Rights Act is in large part the reason that many of the constitutive practices of racism “have been altered and pushed back in the US and other societies”?

And none of these changes would ever have occurred without the extension of the voting franchise to women.

Yes, it’s probably true that legislative changes would not have occurred without the extension of the voting franchise to women. That’s very different from saying that any change would never have occurred without the extension of the voting franchise to women. (I say this not to suggest that women shouldn’t have obtained the right to vote when men continued to have it, but rather that a sovereign legal authority that uses voting shouldn’t exist and that this state of affairs would be better at ending patriarchal domination.) Yes, men face threats of legal force to curb their domination. To the extent that this domination is a violation of rights, they should. But to the extent that it isn’t, they “should face a force much fiercer and more meaningful—the full force of voluntary social organization and a culture of equality.”

In addition to these kinds of consequentialist considerations, (to quote Rad Geek again, somewhat out of context):

But even if you concede that immediate repeal of statist controls, without the preconditions in place, would eventually result in disaster, rather than cultural adaptation … you would need to add some kind of further moral argument that would show that people are entitled to continue invading the rights of other people in order to maintain a particular standard of living, or to stave off aggression that would otherwise be committed by some unrelated third party at some point in the future.

Rad Geek is speaking here against gradualism as a strategy for moving toward statelessness but I think the moral (no pun intended) applies as well to the question of whether we should move there at all. From the perspective of the anarchist, you are arguing that we should trade coercion for coercion, and that, in light of the idea that it doesn’t need to be a choice, isn’t a very appealing argument.

Filed under: Anarchism, Feminism, Left-Libertarianism Tagged: Charles Johnson, Dan Kervick, Gus diZerega

Thanks to Ian Bone.

Peregrine - Reduced To Ashes (english subs) (by wafpress)

peregrine es la banda death metal del filosofo anarco primitivista kevin tucker. su mensaje es anticivilizacion, anti modernidad y a favor de una re salvajizacion de la humanidad.

Strikes in Chilean mines strengthen workers' struggles throughout the copper industry, and reflect growing political unrest in Chile.

2,300 miners at Chile's Escondida copper mine - the largest in the world - have been out on strike since 22nd July, and were joined by 7,000 contractors on 27th July. The mine is privately owned by Australian firm BHP.

Workers at Escondida are demanding a rise in monthly production bonuses, and initially aimed for $11,ooo per worker to be paid out by the end of the year. BHP have declared the strike illegal, as bonuses are discretionary and fall outside the collective contract and strict anti-labour laws in Chile prevent workers from striking outside of the collective negotiating agreement. The union rejected BHP's offer of $6,000, which has since been lowered to $5,600 per worker. The strike continued, with the union lowering it's demand to $8,700, but BHP are now refused to negotiate while workers are still downing tools. Today, the union has put the $5,600 offer out to be voted on, and if accepted by the workers, the strike will be over. The union is also demanding protection for workers who contract work-related illnesses, removal of surveillance cameras throughout the mine, and improved punch-clocks which monitor their 12 hour shifts.

The Escondida strike is yet another case of workers' struggle throughout the mining industry in Chile and the rest of the world, as workers are demanding their share of record profits. Workers in Zambia and Indonesia have also been striking against private firms such as Anglo-American and Freeport McMoran.

Industry bosses are keen to bring an end to the Escondida strike as they fear a success for the workers here could fuel further strikes across Chile. At another major Chilean copper mine, Collahuasi, workers staged a 24hr stoppage over the weekend in protest against anti-union measures, pressure being placed on workers, and bosses attempts to negotiate with workers outside of the collective union contract. Collahuasi workers have previously held a 33-day strike in December 2010.

The state-run Coldeco mines have also seen their first walk-outs in over 20 years, prompting the increasingly unpopular President Pinera to meet with union leaders and assure them that Coldeco will not be privatised. Previous strikes at Coldeco saw sub-contractors demanding improved conditions. Signs outside the Escondida mine are calling for the mining industry to be re-nationalised.

The miners strikes form part of a wave of growing unrest in Chile, as students and environmentalists have also been protesting against the right wing Pinera government.