KING ARTHUR: Who lives in that castle?
WOMAN: No one lives there.
ARTHUR: Then who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don't have a lord.
ARTHUR: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune.
from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"
"Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with; not the social-Darwinist economic "libertarianism" of the far right; but anarchism, as prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodwin. Anarchism's principle target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories."
LeGuin, notes to the fine short story "The Day Before the Revolution",
a prequel to The Dispossessed.
Included in
The Winds Twelve Quarters
by Ursula K. Le Guin, page 285
-- and though LeGuin does not mention him here,
the Odonian ideas quoted in The Dispossessed
strike me as very similar to those of Bakunin
a page on this site on
/ The Disposssessed /
.
I don't think I could be called an anarchist -- I think radical anarchism as a theory is unrealistic, and as a practice tends to be rather destructive. However, I do tentatively think I could be called a syndicalist or an anarcho-syndicalist -- this is all still rather new to me. It seems to me that corporations are here to stay, that we cannot and indeed should not attempt to eliminate them, but that the present plutocratic system of corporate control and ownership is unnacceptable.
UPDATE 2007: I think that "minarchist" would be an accurate label.
"Anarchists reject the legitimacy of external government, political authority, corporate power, hierarchy and domination. They believe that, through social rebellion, society can become a voluntary association of free and equal individuals. 'Mind your own business' has been an anarchist motto, but the emphasis on equality separates the anarchist from any free marketeer.
Anarchism imagines the maximum individual freedom that is compatible with freedom for all others ..."
-- my working definition for the "anarcho-syndicalism" I support,
as contrasted with "radical" or "solipsistic" anarchism.
-- a page on this site on / Libertarianism /
-- But what is "freedom
that is compatible with freedom for all others", really?
A page on this site on / The Fist /
"Trade unionism (business unionism) is one kind of unionism. The other kind calls itself industrial unionism, sometimes termed syndicalism. In my opinion, industrial unionism is doing something utterly different from trade unionism. It's best to belong to unions of both kinds, but, in a pinch, I'd say that, while it's nice to be in a trade union, it's absolutely essential to belong to an industrial union."Great site! Please take a minute to look around and check out some of Manning-san's other pages
"The fundamental difference between Syndicalism and old trade methods is this: while the old trade unions, without exception, move within the wage system and capitalism, recognizing the latter as inevitable, Syndicalism repudiates and condemns present industrial arrangements as unjust and criminal, and holds out no hope to the worker for lasting results from this system. ...
(I.e., the function of trade unions is to facilitate negotiation between the workers on the one hand,
and management and owners on the other.
In Syndicalism, the workers become the management and owners.)
Syndicalism objects to a large union treasury, because money is as corrupting an element in the ranks of labor as it is in those of capitalism. We in America know this to be only too true. If the labor movement in this country were not backed by such large funds, it would not be as conservative as it is, nor would the leaders be so readily corrupted. However, the main reason for the opposition of Syndicalism to large treasuries consists in the fact that they create class distinctions and jealousies within the ranks of labor, so detrimental to the spirit of solidarity."
A page on this site on / Emma Goldman /
see also a page on this site on / Alternative and Hybrid Economic Systems /
" I heartily accept the motto, -- "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, -- "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient."
Henry Thoreau
Civil Disobedience
-- an amusing comment from Richard Lenat
"Self-government means continuous effort to be independent of government control, whether it is foreign government or whether it is national."
a page on this site on / Rudolf Rocker /
(of course, Buddhism has been saying something like this for 2,500 years now.)
"Every great man that I have known has had a certain time and place in their life that they use as a reference point; a time when things worked as they were supposed to and great things were accomplished. For Richard, that time was at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. Whenever things got "cockeyed," Richard would look back and try to understand how now was different than then. Using this approach, Richard decided we should pick an expert in each area of importance in the machine, such as software or packaging or electronics, to become the "group leader" in this area, analogous to the group leaders at Los Alamos."
Now, if we specify that the group leaders are elected by the workers in those groups --
"(Kennon) 'Third world countries can offer a great deal of personal freedom, and even intermittent prosperity. However, no one is actually running these places, so disputes between castes or religions or other groups that might be arbitrated by effective courts in the first world or a strong dictator in the second can become genuine civil wars.' -- (Reilly) a Third World country is one in which the government, broadly defined, has little control over civil society."
The Story of Mouseland was a story told first by Clarence Gillis, and later and most famously by Tommy Douglas, leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and, later, the New Democratic Party of Canada, both social democratic parties. It was a political fable expressing the CCF's view that the Canadian political system was flawed in offering voters a false dilemma: the choice of two parties, neither of which represented their interests.
The mice voted in black cats, which represented the Progressive Conservative Party, and then they found out how hard life was. Then they voted in the white cats, which symbolized the Liberal Party. The story goes on, and a mouse gets an idea that mice should run their government, not the cats. This mouse was accused of being a Bolshevik, and imprisoned."
Posted to alt.religion.scientology
Quoted
here
-- a page on this site on
/ Hackers and the "Hacker Ethic" /