Yesterday Daily Kos/Research 2000 came out with a poll that indicated 39 percent of Republicans believe Obama should be impeached, 36 percent of Republicans believe Obama was not born in the United States, 31 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a "Racist who hates White people" – a description used by Glenn Beck. As if that wasn’t enough, the poll also showed 53 percent believed Sarah Palin more qualified to be president than Obama, and 23 percent believed their state should secede from the Union. For our purpose here, the important number is the whopping 63 percent who think Obama is a socialist. Shall we get real? Anyone who thinks Barack Obama is a socialist does not have even a hazy inkling of the true nature of socialism. And what the hell would they do if confronted by the term anarcho-syndicalism?
As it happens anarcho-syndicalism has come up a Jungian number of times in conversation recently and I thought it might be time to be reacquainted with the theory. I’m also thinking a great deal about the potential for anarchism to combine with cyber-technology and online communications where, it seems, money is already on the way to being abolished. I have yet to form even a partial conclusion, however.
"Political rights do not originate in parliaments; they are, rather, forced upon parliaments from without. And even their enactment into law has for a long time been no guarantee of their security. Just as the employers always try to nullify every concession they had made to labor as soon as opportunity offered, as soon as any signs of weakness were observable in the workers' organizations, so governments also are always inclined to restrict or to abrogate completely rights and freedoms that have been achieved if they imagine that the people will put up no resistance. Even in those countries where such things as freedom of the press, right of assembly, right of combination, and the like have long existed, governments are constantly trying to restrict those rights or to reinterpret them by juridical hair-splitting. Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace . Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution." – Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory & Practice, 1947
Click here for the sensible Wikipedia entry
Click here for the Python version
The secret word is Change
As it happens anarcho-syndicalism has come up a Jungian number of times in conversation recently and I thought it might be time to be reacquainted with the theory. I’m also thinking a great deal about the potential for anarchism to combine with cyber-technology and online communications where, it seems, money is already on the way to being abolished. I have yet to form even a partial conclusion, however.
"Political rights do not originate in parliaments; they are, rather, forced upon parliaments from without. And even their enactment into law has for a long time been no guarantee of their security. Just as the employers always try to nullify every concession they had made to labor as soon as opportunity offered, as soon as any signs of weakness were observable in the workers' organizations, so governments also are always inclined to restrict or to abrogate completely rights and freedoms that have been achieved if they imagine that the people will put up no resistance. Even in those countries where such things as freedom of the press, right of assembly, right of combination, and the like have long existed, governments are constantly trying to restrict those rights or to reinterpret them by juridical hair-splitting. Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace . Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution." – Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory & Practice, 1947
Click here for the sensible Wikipedia entry
Click here for the Python version
The secret word is Change
I don't think I was on the "Fuck the royal wedding" march - I'd gone to France for the day as my protest.
ReplyDeleteObama pisses me off. Anarcho-syndicalism might be an ideal, but he doesn't even make it to Clause IV labourite, the basic tenet I grew up with.
Wait, even the Labour Party doesn't make it to Clause IV labourite any longer. Have we really regressed so far in thirty years? How the hell did that happen?
Somehow I do think any libraries in Alaska have a copy of Rocker's Nationalism and Culture to loan out for Sarah Palin to read on her next hunting trip.
ReplyDeleteBlame the yuppies.
ReplyDeleteI'm with ya brother, but I'm not sure pictures of cartoon punk rockers help make the argument. You may also be interested in reading up on Mutualism.
ReplyDeleteSome of my best friends are cartoon punk rockers.
ReplyDeleteI've been a cartoon punk rocker myself. Maybe that's why I cringe reflexively when I see one.
ReplyDelete