Posts by giovanni tiso
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Maybe there is a difference between saying you can't do something and saying you shouldn't, but collective disapproval can get very ugly and coercive.
As opposed to the system we have now, you mean?
But Leoncavallo is an arts society and community centre. They're nearly always run by committees, whether anarchist in philosophy or not.
True. But isn't that one of the usual criticisms of collectivism, that it discourages innovation and creativity as if Aristotle, Leonardo or Arthur Miller hadn't been funded by the respective states? And if a non-market based entity can sustain invention, industry, the arts, why couldn't it run everything else?
It''s not quite the same thing as an economy that makes things and sustains billions of people. Have the social centres, for example, built any of the venues they occupy?
Not from scratch, as far as I know, but a lot of renovations and rebuilding, yes. Still, it's kind of a moot point - it's not as if you can expect the good people at Leoncavallo to seize the railway system and start running that. But all the same plenty of states - which you could argue are anti-capitalists organisations by definition - have built plenty of infrastructure, often with their own public works organisations and R&D arms as opposed to relying on commercial entities. It can be done, has been done in a non market-based way.
Markets are just another form of the wisdom of crowds; they're a way of making decisions.
I would argue that there is no compelling reason for that model of social organisation to work that it should be based on money, or private property.
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And never bomb butchers, factory farmers or those who experiment with animals?
You're lumping. It's a bit like saying "you non anarchists start wars".
Um, apparently it's not obvious to everybody that even the capitalists are capable of running it on their own:
And correct me if I'm wrong: didn't the companies that laid fibre in the North America all go bust?
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What do vegan anarchist utopians do to people who insist on eating animals? Pass a law against it?
This is coming from the largest single consumer of pork in the southern Wellington area: they don't say you can't eat meat, they say you shouldn't. Given the numbers, my guess is that they're going to collectively give you the evils if you're caught eating ham in public. (Oh, and if you're the last remaining carnivore, you'll have to do the requisite pig farming yourself I guess.)
Yes, but the hardware and technology still comes from commercial manufacturers, and they still have management structures, legal status and all that other authoritarian stuff.
That's it, I'm getting you the complete works of Bakunin at the Whitcoulls Christmas sales. There is nothing - *nothing* - that puts anarchism and industry in contradiction with each other.
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And I'm saying that's precisely where they fell down. They had plenty of big iron for the enforcement of policy, but people starved, and even when they weren't actually starving, they didn't have a great many of the consumer goods that those of us in the West took for granted throughout the 20th century.
Heh. You just reminded me I've been having this conversation on and off since the days when Breznev could still arch his magnificent eyebrows. I shall limit myself to the observation that, insofar as the Soviets could do a lot of things very well - including plenty of industrial things that were aimed at what you could call a consumer market - the fact they couldn't manage agriculture or plan well enough to sustain themselves doesn't prove that communism doesn't work any more than the fall of the roman empire proves that empires don't work. Nothing works, in the very long run. How's capitalism working for a lot of people? Until such time as it starts catering for everyone, I shall remain grateful that there are people who advance alternative philosophies.
(And nothing how I don't get into all those experiments at socialism and anarchism that were made to fail via the cunning plan of massacring everyone involved.)
I just don't see how a revolution that does away with both capitalism and all authority gets undersea fibreoptic cables laid.
If you lived in my hometown, I can guarantee you that you'd be a regular patron and a staunch supporter of the Leoncavallo and other social centres, and you'd agree that anarchists and other left-wing radicals of similar hue are capable of organising tremendously well. You simply don't need authority in order to organise. What they do is plenty harder than laying cables, too (although they do that as well, on a small scale).
A peek at Wikipedia tells me that these days the Leoncavallo every year organises 350 concerts, 100 film shows, 90 theatre shows and runs a bookshop, a free legal counselling service for immigrants and hosts six community organisations. It has been for over a decade the best musical and theatre venue, hands down, in a town of three million as well as providing a "place to be", for free, to a lot of people, especially young people, who needed it. Beat that with the largest stick at your disposal.
Isn't it ironic how pro-capitalists never mention that the people in abject poverty that their beloved system creates (or tolerates) are ultimately looked after by people - including plenty of religious organisations - who are themselves anti-capitalists?
Here you go: you've been lumped.
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I am, I am! Had paying work to do first.
Remember: Hemingway-like. If you can do Nadine Gordimer, we'll take it at a pinch.
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I find the arrogance, and breathless eagerness to declare enemies, of self-professed anarchists and anti-capitalists a bit wearying, frankly.
Careful, or I'll start lumping you with "liberals". Whomever (thre fuck) they might be.
Seriously, when we've done away with capitalism, who runs global telecommunications?
Say what? The Soviets had phones, and satellites, and radios and tvs, you know. I'm picking that if they hadn't spent so much money in running their army, they could have kept the whole populace in iPods too.
Seriously, Russell, et tu? Doesn't the Web open pretty compelling vistas on how people can and could organise if the demands of the marketplace didn't get in the way?
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You're clearly not an anarchist, but why the disdain for people who hold a different political/economic view?
Some of my, erm, best friends are anarchists, and they seem to struggle with the same contradictions as the rest of us. Narcissism and self-righteousness are hardly the sole domain of political radicals.
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Two TVs, Mr Brown, two TVs.
One TV, one TV on the game at the SCG :-)
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And let's not forget Ntini too, who to be realistic cannot bat
Not out in both innings. A rock, a darker, clean-shaven WG Grace he was.
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Better yet, this piece:
Pipped at the post.
Over at The Fundy Post, Mr Litterick has gone blog wild. I recommend it all as summer reading.
Hear, hear. This effort from Ms. Gallagher is also a cracking read.