Proudhon’s “property is despotism” in action:
Barclay brothers tell Sark: you didn’t vote for us, so we’ll take our money elsewhere
Truly, the people of Sark need to be educated about the joys of a “new liberty” — how could they be so silly to demand a say in the management of their lives?
Proudhon’s “property is despotism” in action:
Barclay brothers tell Sark: you didn’t vote for us, so we’ll take our money elsewhere
Truly, the people of Sark need to be educated about the joys of a “new liberty” — how could they be so silly to demand a say in the management of their lives?
Personally, I think that suggesting that this would be fine if the landlords got their property (and power) by “just” means totally misses the point. But, then, I’ve read Proudhon so I’m an anarchist and so biased…
Unsurprisingly, Proudhon did not think the move from feudalism to capitalism to be that significant. He repeated protested against “industrial feudalism”, urging workers’ associations to replace wage labour. He was well aware that property generated hierarchical social relationships and, as a genuine libertarian, opposed it. The consistent anarchist must oppose wage labour (what makes capitalism capitalism) along with the state.
Proudhon, significantly, noted that “workmen’s associations” are “a protest against the wage system” and a “denial of the rule of capitalists”. As I noted earlier in the week, some workers are occupying their workplaces in Chicago (UE Local 1110-Think Like Them) and occupations are something we should be suggesting as a means of solving the current crisis in a libertarian manner (leaving it to the state will ensure the survival of capitalism, at best a reformed New Deal style version but still rooted in hierarchy, oppression and exploitation).
And need I point out that what happened in Sark happens whenever any government becomes too reformist or radical for the ruling class. capital flight is a powerful weapon in detering democracy (even the formal, limited, top-down “democracy” associated with the state).
I should also point to this excellent article (found via Thoughts on Economics) on what is wrong with economics:
What you don’t learn at school about the economy
The key quote is this:
“When people criticize economics for its reliance on traditional models that . . . are just plain wrong in general, the usual response is that this is a mere caricature of the discipline and that of course economists know all about the shortcomings of those models . . . Fine. So why are the traditional models still taught as a meaningful first approximation to economics students who may never encounter the caveats before graduating and becoming financiers and policy advisers?”
Comrades will be well aware of the standard assertion: “Economics 101!” Yet as section C shows in great detail, reality and “economics 101” are not related. So next time someone asks you to take “Economics in One Lesson”, just laugh and tell them to come back when they have taken a few more lessons…
So I’ve posted quite a few blog pieces this week. There seems to be a lot happening just now, particularly in Greece. Which is good.
I’ll end by posting my letter to the Weekly Worker as I promised earlier in the week. I always wonder if this letter writting is a waste of my time or not. Any comment?
Dear Weekly Worker,
James Turley wonders “what on earth [am I] doing writing in to our paper?” (“Prove us wrong”, Weekly Worker, no. 748) I admit wondering the same thing, as he again fails to understand my point!
He wonders what my letters “hope to achieve, if programmatic discussions between different trends is pointless?” Obviously, I need to repeat my basic point which is, simply, that demanding that a United Front accept a CPGB approved “Marxist programme” from the start is to ensure it is a Leninist sect and not a United Front.
He seems unaware of the obvious, that if such a programme is accepted (and good luck in getting the other “Marxists” to agree to it!), then what happens is that only those “Marxists” who subscribe to that particular programme will remain members. Ironically, it is his desire to impose a “Marxist programme” which will ensure that “a dimension of political struggle” is not injected into the “otherwise a cosy lash-up with the exact result that – yes – the anarchists are left to their anarchism, the greens to greenism.” This is because the non-Marxists will leave the organisation!
He states that I “presumably [mean] that programmes are spontaneously generated in social struggles” and he is, to “an extent” right. I think that any serious popular organisation must develop its own ideas and programme based on its struggles, with input and participation from revolutionaries of course. Demanding that popular organisations accept a specific programme in its whole, and from the start, undercuts political discussion and, ultimately, the self-liberation of the working class.
That is important. Apparently, I “will find nary a Leninist that does not at least pay lip service to the creativity of the masses and spontaneous struggle.” And that is the problem. It usually is lip service – as can be seen from this bizarre discussion, not to mention the fate of the Russian Revolution!
For Turley, there “is no movement to learn from, to teach us its spotless programme”, meaning that leftists “are not in a position to do anything other than ‘impose’ a programme” and so the existing “wishy-washy founding statements . . . are every bit as ‘imposed’ as our alternative programmes would have been.” Yet these statements do not actively exclude others nor restrict future development! A “Marxist programme” would, by definition, exclude anarchists, greens, Marxists who reject the “Marxist programme” as Marxist, and so on. I’m surprised I need to point this out!
He ends by stating that either “the proceedings are useless and nothing can be done until the masses see fit to tell us what it is they want” or “some kind of programmatic basis is needed to achieve unity”! So “unity” with be achieved by giving the organisation a “Marxist programme”? Really? So anarchists, greens, Marxists who disagree that it is a “Marxist programme”, and so on, will all remain in an organisation whose programme they fundamentally and explicitly reject? Aye, right!
He claims that “we think Marxism fits the bill” and urges me to “prove us wrong.” I do not have to as even the Bolsheviks eventually recognised that turning up to the soviets, demanding they accept a “Marxist programme” and then disband was stupid. It should be obvious, surely, why doing a sadly similar thing to a United Front in education is repeating history, only this time as farce?
Iain McKay
www.anarchistfaq.org