PERSONAL:

GROWING UP WITHOUT THE STATE:

It's been many many years since I left my old home town. 48 if I count right. I left it at precisely the right time, when I was turning 13. Enough of "being one with nature". Time to get into some serious trouble. Which, of course, I found in the (cough) "beautiful" city of Regina. My purpose in what I write below is to show a life that was as "stateless" as possible, under harsh climatic conditions. A life that was endured and sometimes enjoyed by a diverse mixture of ethnic groups and not just some favoured "oppressed" group. Perhaps the town of my childhood memories doesn't deserve recording. Except for one salient feature. It was a town in an area that never had a functioning and overbearing government. Now it is true that most natives in this part of the world grew up under exactly the same conditions with the difference that they saw more of the cops than we did. They also suffered a lot more from the (triple cough) helping arm of the churches, something that simply couldn't happen in a town where there were 3 distinct churches and education was public and non-demoninational.

So let's start with the obvious ie the police. We saw the RCMP a grand total of one time in the 13 years I lived in said town. Did this mean that we were a community of saints. Obviously not. There was the usual vandalism and petty theft which the community found it could deal with far better on its own than by calling for the 'tender actions' of government. Not that the retaliation wasn't sometimes overdone, but short of cutting off fingers or toes any physical pain is preferable to being cast as raw material for socia1l workers to "reform". The one occasion where the state/government proved itself useful was when one farmer went nuts and killed his wife. He came down to the general store to surrender, and he sat there for the required hours until the RCMP felt it was convenient to pick him up.

I mention this just because it is the most obvious "state function" that comes to people's minds, right up there with firefighters and above education and health care. The point that I want to make is that many of the functions that government now performs were or are provided by other means in the not-so-distant past, Or a little bit beyond the city limits in most provinces where rural firefighting is on a volunteer basis. Many other things such as education or health care could easily be provided via cooperatives rather than government. Sometimes a person may recognize all of this but still draw the line at police and the "justice" system. It seems almost unbelievable that people could do without what radicals call "the oppressive arm of the state". It is, however, true that the vast majority of people in history have lived without police (unless you count the agents of the landlord coming to steal things), and there are those such as myself who grew up in such conditions ie it is a living memory.

This doesn't mean that I think some almost mythical revolution could abolish the need for police, courts and prisons overnight. If I were having coffee with a cop I would admit that people like him or her are needed in the near future. Yet I would also say that it is indeed possible to do without police. More than possible. It is a fact that I can remember in my own life. Yet a change in the way people in a neighbourhood act towards each other is a much more effective remedy for crime than more police even today. What anarchists, at least those in the broad majority tradition of anarchism is not a society without demands and rules. It is a society without a specialized caste who enforce such rules or in the case of our present society also enforce the rules of the more wealthy.

What anarchists propose is perhaps summed up by a very clumsy neologism ie the "smalltownization" of a society that presently lives mostly in cities. This is not some marijuana addled vision from the 60s and 70s where everyone has to "go back to the land" and "pretend" to be indpendent of the wider society. What it means is that urban neighbourhoods could grow to have many of the virtues of a small town (such as its ability to live without police) without some of the vices.

Not that my home town was any anarchist utopia by far. We were connected into the wider society by such things as electricity from Sask Power. The electrical grid came in on the same year as I was born. Before that the town had its own generator like most northern communities have even today. This was also the same year, ironically enough, that they took passenger service on the railway away from the town. I see no reason, however, why a crown corporation such as Sask Power couldn't be run as a cooperative. Many advantages actually. Similarily the Province paid teachers' salaries, something that was different from my father's time when teachers were paid by the local community. Another example of memory of a different life. We actually had a Provincial highway a couple of miles from town, but the road to town was maintained (or not) by the RM as were the dirt trails that led out to various farms.

Then, most importantly, we were connected to the wider society and hence to the state by the fact that our rural economy was built on the availability of gasoline (and also oil for the privileged few who didn't have to depend on wood in the winter). Can the universal availability of hyrdocarbon products be provided outside of the state or big business ? The answer is obviously yes as Co-op service stations are a constant feature of most of the western provinces of Canada. If it is done it is possible.

I have to admit that what I have said may seem like something conservative rather than radical, but I have to say that most "conservatives" are actually quite "progressive" in their desire to clear away all obstacles to the increase in power and wealth of the people they imagine are the "wealth creators". My vision is frankly reactionary in the desire to turn back the clock (or ahead if you like) to a different sort of politics and economy. I stand in the anarchist tradition of such people as Paul Goodman in his book 'Notes Of A Neolithic Conservative'.

More on this topic later.

INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST MOVEMENT:
A TALE OF THREE COUNTRIES:


The usual historiography of anarchism traces its beginnings to the international socialist movement and the First International. Like most things in the social sciences this is only approximately true. The pre-International workers' movement in France, the most advanced on the European continent, generally held to a variety of anarchism called Mutualism. Still it is true that anarchism, for better or for worse, acquired most of its modern characteristics in the struggle against Marxism within the First International. This development is often portrayed as a stuggle between the Latin sections that held, more or less, to the ideas of Bakunin with the Marxoid German movement. The English trade unionists generally kept aloof from both factions.


This is, once more, approximately true. It was in the Latin countries (with the addition of Belgium- half Latin, Switzerland and the Netherlands) that the anti-authoritarian strain of the workers' movement gained purchase and laid the foundation for modern anti-statist socialism. Yet there was and is a wide difference between these countries as to the degree that anarchism 'caught on'. Why ?


I've just finished reading 'Bakunin and the Italians' by T.R. Ravindranathan, and it tells basically the same story as another book 'Italian Anarchism: 1864-1892' by Nunzio Pernicone. The Introduction and first chaper of yet another book, 'The French Anarchist Movement' by David Berry twells the story of early anarchism in France. Herein lies the question. Both France and Italy were much more likely to become the 'motherland of anarchy' than Spain was. France had the existence of a large mutualist labour movement as well as its tradition of revolution. Italy was the 'centrepiece' of the antiauthoritarian sections of the First International, and its early history of anarchism would seem to say that it should have become the centre. What if fact occured was that Spain went on to become the classic land of anarchism, ending up exporting it to much of the Spanish speaking world. The Italian movement while 'large' in a comparative sense never grew to the extent that the Spanish one did, and offered far less resistance to fascism in Italy than the Spaniards did in Spain. The French movement managed to escape its ghetto for a brief period in the glory days of the CGT, but was later to become a rump of its original self. Once more why ?


All three countries shared the same basic social structure ie a combative upper class, in the case of France and Italy one that rose to the top via previous revolutions or wars, and in the case of Spain an decaying aristocratic and clerical class. In terms of the difference between regions Italy was almost a carbon copy of Spain. The messogiorno was pretty well the same as southern Spain. Ther French situation was somewhat different insofar as most rural provinces were conservative after having their land hunger satisfied by the revolution of 1789.


So similar and yet so different. My own suggestion is that the difference came about via certain choices that the 'proto-anarchists' of that day made in different countries. In Italy as in France the choice of syndicalism was delayed by decades. The most prominant action of the early Italian anarchists were the comic-opera "insurrections" that they engaged in. To say thery were laughable understates the case. Meanwhile in Spain the anarchists were organizing strikes and actually "going to the people". Any premature insurrections in Spain in the late 1800s and the early 1900s were peasant rebellions that the leadership of the anarchists supported but not too much.


Let's put it another way. While the anarchist movement in France and Italy was mired ion tactics that were doomed to fail the Spanish anarchists did one salient thing. They organized the working class for bopth its immediate demands and for the eventual social evolution. This combination was something that eluded both the French and the Italians.

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS; THE ARAB REVOLUTIONS:

THE POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITATIONS OF REVOLUTION:


I guess that one might consider me fortunate to have lived through three different eras of international revolutionary ferment. The first was the late 60s, early 70s. The next was the late 80s, early 90s with the fall of the Soviet bloc. Now there is the revolutionary wave sweeping the Arab world. In the first I was a full fledged participant. In the second I did my little bit of solidarity work. This time around, aside from signing petitions and going to the occasional demonstration I am very much only a spectator and commentator.


To be honest the first period left me with something of a sour taste in my mouth, but I responded quite differently than the majority of the so-called "new left" did. Behind all the bombastic rhetoric and grandiose fantasies there was far less of the reality of a revolution than the participants imagined. In the country where I live, Canada, most of the "flaming revolutionaries" became simple bureaucrats via either the NDP or even the Liberals. Others took a brief detour through the mindless maze of trying to recreate Leninist fantasy parties. Which, I suppose, just goes to show that they were not too bright in the first place. Myself I became an anarchist.


My own anarchism, however, became increasingly heterodox as I became familiar with not only the anarchist critique of class societies, both western and 'Marxist' but also with a wide range of other "left wing alternatives" and other economic literature that was basically unknown to the simplistic Marxists of that era. From Bernstein and Berle and Means to Max Nomad to Jan Machaijski , to Berle and Means to the transitional ideas of Burnham as he went from Trotskyism to conservatism, I read them all. As the "new left" circled the drain into the cesspool of Maoism and terrorism I became increasingly convinced that "revolution" was impossible in an advanced industrial society while also simultaneously believing that only in such a society could the sort of libertarian socialism I now favoured be built.



As to the "impossibility" of revolution in advanced countries I was wrong, and I guess I should have noticed this much earlier than I did. It's an old truism that, "if something can't go on forever it won't". This applies to countries and economic systems as well as to most other things. It took the revolutions against Communism to make me doubt my earlier doctrine about the "impossibility" of revolution. Especially as at least one of these revolutions occurred in a nuclear armed country with one of the largest if not most effective armies on Earth. No doubt revolution was "impossible" in the Soviet Union from a purely military perspective. Any revolt could very easily be crushed as previous attempts in eastern Europe had amply demonstrated. But what I ignored in my thoughts were some very important things about actual revolutions rather than the cartoonish Marxist ideas I was familiar with. My thinking changed. I also grew to understand that the earlier period of "revolution" ie the 60s/70s that I dismissed as simply grandstanding and third world nationalism was actually a real revolution, ie the completion of the "managerial revolution". Nothing to do with achieving a classless society of course, but definitely a re-division of the spoils amongst different segments of the ruling class.


As I came to understand that the "revolution of our times" was not a libertarian or even a socialist one I came to understand it as an expansion of the power of the managerial class into hitherto "unknown frontiers" of exercising power and "incidentally" making money. Yes, I am of a generation that understands and remembers how sick and how weird such things as the "grief industry" are ! The Third World revolutions of the late 60s/early 70s reproduced the usual Stalinoid bureaucracies, and when the Soviet bloc collapsed their "proletarian heroes" engaged in the same sort of looting that established a new class order in the ex-communist countries. This was one of the things that "sharpened" my own ideas about "revolution". Even in Poland where a large sector of the working class was attached, at least slightly, to the idea of "self-management" the resulting economic order contained no trace of such ideals. What went wrong ?


When all the dust had settled down I came to understand that it was not only that pretty well all modern revolutions served the interests of a managerial class. It was also that NO class system could exist in its pure form. Soviet society depended on the underground economy (capitalist ? but at least "free market") to continue its existence. The great mass of the economy of the modern world is similarly "mixed" having characteristics of both managerial/government control and a free market that is allowed to exist because of necessity. Is such a thing stable ? Personally I don't know having abandoned the religious precepts of Marxist dialectics many decades ago. There is no foreordained march of history, only possibilities and probabilities.


All that being said how do I view the 'Arab Revolutions' ? Unlike some I don't expect any great "libertarian upsurge" from them though I am sure that anarchist groups will be formed in the countries where the revolution has been "successful". The independent actions of the working class will be suppressed as they are today in Egypt.


The Arab revolutions have, however, shaken the forces of international imperialism. As such I personally support them even if I am sure that the resulting polity will be not even close to what I might want. THAT is the message that I would like to leave with people. Support what you can, but don't expect miracles. Revolutions are only possible in the modern world when certain conditions are met. These conditions simultaneously both make the revolution possible and also limit the amount of change that one can expect from such events. In the end I am just as firmly convinced that a libertarian society can only come about gradually, but I also feel that anarchists/libertarian socialists cannot divorce themselves from revolutionary events if they occur as some outcomes are infinitely better than others for a "slow march" to a free society to take place.



In previous posts on this blog I have mentioned how revolutions, being as they are essentially unpredictable movements of large segments of the population, cannot be "planned" or called into being by "revolutionary conspiracy". The efforts of Leninist groupuscles or so-called "insurrectionists" are nothing but magical thinking. The forces behind revolutionary moments are as far outside of the farcical plotting of such groups as is the movement of the planets. Even the "Model-T of Revolutions", the Russian Revolution was not produced by the Bolsheviks. What that party actually did was take advantage of a revolution already in process to achieve a coup-d'etat, and later they created their own managerial rule as the original revolution was defeated.


While revolutions cannot be conjured out of the ground there are, however, certain conditions that are necessary before any such event can occur. First of all there has to be mass disbelief in a given sociopolitical economic system. This doesn't necessarily mean that the majority of people suddenly join the revolutionaries, merely that the majority are more than content to at least "stand aside" in the conflict between the old order and the revolution, having no overwhelming loyalty to the regime. As a matter of fact it is quite rare (though not non-existent) that an actual majority join the revolution from day 1, except perhaps in restricted locales. The fact that revolutions rarely have the participation of a majority, only their passive acquiescence, is already a "snake in Eden" for the Revolution as the active minority must of necessity act boldly in order to avoid defeat, and they thereby act in a relationship of power vis-a-vis the inactive majority. Great dictatorships from many such little acts grow.


As unfavourable as such necessities may be for actually resulting in a truly more equal and free society the problem is not insurmountable. What is insurmountable is the fact that revolutions are inevitably pluralistic. All sorts of people come to oppose the dying regime because of all sorts of different reasons. This has sometimes included those such as Leninist groupuscles or Islamist ideologues in the Arab world who think this pluralism is a Very Bad Thing. Those to whom the whole idea of pluralism is anathema. Whether these people will be "compromisers" as the Egyptian Islamists appear to be or those who hope to advance their own cause by pushing the revolution as far ahead of the majority as possible depends upon circumstance. A lot depends upon the exact level of another condition for revolution...the ruling class must be divided. At least a large segment of this class must be willing to see the old order crumble and either stand passively by or actively help to tear it down. Lacking this the inevitable military realities that led me to first discount the possibility of revolution still hold true.


Revolutions are carried out, at least initially, by minorities. Military necessity requires this minority to carry out actions without any sanction from the majority. Revolutions are inevitably pluralistic and inevitably are open to the influence both of parts of the old ruling class and to would be ruling classes whose rule is often far worse than the old order. Where does this leave those who style themselves anarchists or libertarian socialists ? Many (almost all ?) of those who want to retain what I call the "romance of revolution" respond by imagining a non-pluralistic revolution, one more purely "anarchist". This is maintained by having, against all historical evidence, what may be unbounded faith in the "libertarian instincts of the masses". No doubt revolutions, by their very nature, develop instances of self-management. This is necessary if the revolution is to survive and grow. Or at least if the population is to fed. Yet even in the most fertile historical ground, Spain of the 1930s, the anarchists attracted the participation or approval of only 1/3rd of the population. The Spanish Revolution was inevitably pluralistic, and all appeals to greater militancy simply ignore this inevitable fact of both then and even more now.


This almost inevitable fact of pluralism sets natural limits as to what can be accomplished by a revolution. What this means in actuality is being demonstrated these days in both Tunisia and Egypt. Also in both cases what is usually a military necessity of a successful revolution ie the desertion of at least sizable chunks of the military and police hamstrings that revolution in terms of how far it can go. In other words all these factors together could be summed up as, "the conditions necessary for a revolution to succeed inevitably lead to restricting what it can achieve". Thermidor is the Siamese twin of revolutions, sharing the same vital organs.


How does all this affect what I think now ? I no longer think revolution in an advanced society is impossible, but I am even more convinced that it can never lead to any great gains that last. Such gains can only come about in a slow, patient and "non-heated" atmosphere where social experiments can be tried out for their viability without any "war necessity" looming over them. This doesn't mean that revolutions are a matter of indifference. Such events can hopefully be influenced to result in situations where such experimentation is more possible and easier. Doing this, however, requires a much "finer touch" than the usual libertarian response of "always push harder and harder". In some cases this might be just what is needed. In other cases, such as choosing the wrong allies and dealing with those that we have made, it can be disastrous.

CANADIAN POLITICS:

FOOD BANK USE SURGES IN CANADA:

The following article from the online news service Straight Goods reports a shocking increase in food bank usage across the country in 2010. You can read the full report from Food Banks Canada here. All numbers in the following article are taken from this report. This has particular resonance for the province of Manitoba because, as another article from the CBC points out this province "led" (if you can call it that) all the other provinces in the increase of traffic at food banks. The Canadian average is 9.2%. Manitoba weighs in at 21.0%, followed by Saskatchewan at 20.0%. Only the territories at an incredible 59,0% are higher.

What can you say about these sort of numbers ? One is that they give the lie to the Conservative propaganda that "Canada has escaped the worst of the economic downturn". Yes, maybe in terms of both the rich and those with secure employment. There are, however, huge numbers of people who very plainly haven't escaped at all. The smoke and mirrors of the federal Conservative "stimulus program" which ended up not spending the majority of its promised funds is now giving way to plans for "austerity"...read further attacks on the lowest income groups in the country while maintaining as many corporate give-aways as possible.

Not that this sort of duplicity is unique to the Conservatives. A Liberal federal government would have acted essentially the same, Perhaps without the utter contempt for truth and the public of a bald faced lie about funds that would never be spent, but with essentially the same set of fiscal priorities. Both major parties are entirely wholeheartedly committed to maintaining an economic system that embodies massive inequality. The NDP and the Bloc Quebecois are committed to tinkering around the edges of the system, often merely to gather votes and reduce social tensions. Their "solutions" leave the mountain intact and chip off a few sharp stones that irk people too much.

Anarchism, on the other hand is committed to a full revamping of the way we do economics, a program that radically reduces inequality. Maybe not eliminating it entirely but definitely abolishing logical absurdities such as the idea that some who make literally 100,000s more income than others do 100,000s more work (a physical impossibility by several orders of magnitude). Or the idea that their work (which far too often consists of purely useless financial manipulation or even literally doing nothing is 100,000 times "more valuable". Put frankly common sense says that there is not a single coal miner, farmer, hydro technician, nurse, snow cleaner and many others whose work is immensely more valuable than the "work" done by corporate executives who continue to profit economic downturn or not.

Now, as I have expressed before on this blog I don't see the transition to a freer and more equal society as coming about through some apocalyptic "revolution", though there will certainly be high tension at certain periods of time. The transition will be years, decades even, whereby workers gradually encroach on management power in the workplaces, where local communities struggle to take back power now monopolized by federal or provincial governments , where trade deals that bind citizens to agreements that are against their interests are abrogated, where laws and social work interventions that restrict personal freedom are eliminated one by one, where cooperatives, both producer and consumer, experience a resurgence that gradually brings larger sections of the economy under democratic control, where financial institutions cooperative and mutualistic in nature, gradually gain the economic clout to finance startups of such initiatives, where local small business is protected both by elimination of the government programs that favour the corporations and by a change in attitude of the population that sees the value of the local community. Where laws that are simply ill-mannered attempts of others to control the victimless actions of others are repealed. Where it finally dawns on social action groups that accepting government grants is the kiss of death. By so many things that don't come immediately to mind.

Anarchism provides at least a general guide to what is laudable and what is not in this long term struggle. No doubt many anarchists go astray in various directions, either towards statism or to useless revolutionary romanticism, but the broad centre of the anarchist movement today is moving towards such goals. That is why anarchism provides a broad outline for the solution of inequality and the poverty that accomplishes it, though local initiate from poor people themselves. Other solutions have been tried and have consistently failed.

But enough of the intro. Here's the SG article...

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Food bank use up sharply

Demand up 9 percent since 2009, 28 percent since 2008.

Dateline: Monday, November 22, 2010

from HungerCount

OTTAWA, November 16, 2010 — The results of the HungerCount 2010 survey released today show food banks across Canada helped 867,948 separate individuals in March 2010, an increase of 9.2 percent, or more than 73,000 people, compared to March 2009. This is 28 percent higher than in 2008, and is the highest level of food bank use since 1997.

Of the 867,948 people helped in March this year, 80,150 — 9.2 percent of the total — stepped through the front door of a food bank for the first time. The survey also shows that food bank use grew in every province in 2010.

Thirty-eight percent of those assisted by food banks are children and youth under 18 years old.



"This is a reality check. Food banks are seeing first hand that the recession is not over for a large number of Canadians," said Katharine Schmidt, Executive Director of Food Banks Canada, which coordinated the annual national study.

"We are hearing that it is really tough out there," Ms. Schmidt said. "Many people who lost their jobs during the recession have now exhausted their unemployment benefits, and are looking to self-employment or to temporary and part-time jobs for income.

"Others have been forced to fall back on social assistance. These options aren't paying the bills, and people are accessing food banks to fill the gap."

As in past years, the profile of those assisted by food banks is highly varied:

38 percent of those assisted by food banks are children and youth under 18 years old.

Half of assisted households are families with children.

17 percent of households that turn to food banks for help each month are living on income from current or recent employment.

7 percent of assisted households report a pension as their primary source of income.
"Coming to a food bank is not an easy decision for people," said Bill Hall, Executive Director of the Battlefords and District Food and Resource Centre, in North Battleford, Saskatchewan.

"Unfortunately, there continues to be a need for help in our community, and we have expanded our efforts to meet that need — when the overall goal should be to address the causes of hunger more broadly, and to be able to reduce our services and even close our doors for good."

"Though the recession has made things worse, the causes of hunger and low income run much deeper than the recent economic crisis," said Ms. Schmidt. "The need for food banks is a result of our failure as a country to adequately address a number of social issues, including a changing job market, a lack of affordable housing and child care, and a social safety net that is ineffective."

The HungerCount provides recommendations on how the federal government can work to increase people's ability to be self sufficient. Food Banks Canada's recommendations include the following:

1. Implement a national poverty prevention and reduction strategy, with measurable targets and timelines.

2. Create a federal housing strategy to increase and monitor investment in affordable housing programs in Canada's cities, towns and rural areas.

3. Maintain current levels of federal cash and tax transfers to provincial, territorial, and First Nations governments.

4. Address the unacceptable rates of low income among our most vulnerable seniors — those who live alone, without other means of support.

About the HungerCount Survey HungerCount was initiated in 1989 and is the only comprehensive national study of food banks and affiliated food programs in Canada. Since 1997, data for the study have been collected every March. The information provided by the survey is invaluable, forming the basis of many Food Banks Canada activities throughout the year. For a full copy of the HungerCount 2010 report and associated graphics, and for more information, please visit www.foodbankscanada.ca.

About Food Banks Canada Food Banks Canada is the national charitable organization representing the food bank community across Canada. Our Members, Affiliate Member food banks, and their respective agencies serve approximately 85 percent of people accessing emergency food programs nationwide. Our mission is to meet the short-term need for food and find long-term solutions to reduce hunger.

— — —

Moncton - The new government of David Alward should immediately increase revenues for people who are living on social assistance - Linda McCaustlin, co-chair of the Common Front for Social Justice

"The last two Hunger Count Reports have revealed that during the last two years, there was an 18 percent increase in food bank usage in NB Just this year, the number of people using food banks has also increased. Thirty-four percent of food bank clients are children; thirteen percent are wage earners but the majority of them (61 percent) are social assistance recipients. This is completely unacceptable in a country as rich as Canada" says Linda McCaustlin.

"We are asking Hon. Susan Stultz, the new Minister of Social Development, to immediately provide all adults on social assistance with a $100 per-month healthy food allowance supplement. We are also asking her to provide an additional $35 per month per child to households receiving social assistance.

"Moreover, since the income of seniors receiving the guaranteed annual supplement is below the Low Income Cut-off (before tax), a $100 food supplement should be added to the current $400 supplement forwarded to these seniors. These food supplements should be indexed with the cost of living.

"Given that 13 percent of NB food bank users are people in the workforce, the minimum wage should continue to rise so as to meet one of the workers most basic needs, namely a nutritious diet.''

"Food is essential for life and is therefore recognized as a basic human right in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. The fact that thousands of NB citizens and their families go to bed hungry is a shameful result of our political leaders' inability to govern in the interest of the common good. Those members of our business community who are paying very low wages should realize the detrimental effects of this practice on the nutritional status of their employees" continues Ms. McCaustlin.

Ms. McCaustlin states: "Part of the problem of food banks being unable to cope with current demands is due to the inadequate income of too many New Brunswickers." Indeed, NB has one of the lowest social assistance basic rates in all of Canada, and it ranks as the fourth lowest in terms of minimum wage.

"The Common Front for Social Justice has heard that some segments of the business community are lobbying for a two-tier minimum wage — one applicable mainly to workers receiving tips. We hope that this will never be implemented because it would keep a large segment of workers, mainly women, in low paying jobs", continues Ms. McCaustlin.

Nutritious food is more expensive than ever as was shown by the 2010 CFSJ provincial survey on food prices. Between 2006 and 2010, basic items like eggs went up by 21.9 percent, cheese by 36.7 percent, round steak by 23.8 percent, rice by 42.6 percent, flour by 84.9 percent and whole wheat bread 102.1 percent.

"Food price increase is a harsh reality facing all NB households. However, the situation is more dramatic for those who work at minimum wage, for those who depend on social assistance and for those seniors living on a low fixed income".

ANARCHIST THEORY:

TO VOTE OR NOT TO VOTE THAT IS THE QUESTION:

Elections in the USA (and the City of Winnipeg) come at an interesting time of
year. Near enough to Halloween to compete in scariness, and near enough to Christmas to remind one that an actual gift is more than a promise. While it hasn't been an invariable tenet of anarchist thought to refuse participation in all elections (whatever some anarchists may think) it is a fact that anarchists have always been critical of the electoral process. Here's one thought provoking example from the Bureau of Public Secrets.

@@@@@@@@@@
THE LIMITS OF ELECTORAL POLITICS
http://www.bopsecrets.org/recent/beyond-voting.htm
Roughly speaking we can distinguish five degrees of "government":
(1) Unrestricted freedom
(2) Direct democracy
(3) Delegate democracy
(4) Representative democracy
(5) Overt minority dictatorship

The present society oscillates between (4) and (5), i.e. between overt minority rule and covert minority rule camouflaged by a facade of token democracy. A liberated society would eliminate (4) and (5) and would
progressively reduce the need for (2) and (3). . . .

In representative democracy people abdicate their power to elected officials. The candidates' stated policies are limited to a few vague generalities, and once they are elected there is little control over their actual decisions on hundreds of issues -- apart from the feeble threat of changing one's vote, a few years later, to some equally uncontrollable rival politician. Representatives are dependent on the wealthy for bribes and campaign contributions; they are subordinate to the owners of the mass media, who decide which issues get the publicity; and they are almost as ignorant and powerless as the general public regarding many important matters that are determined by unelected bureaucrats and independent secret agencies.

Overt dictators may sometimes be overthrown, but the real rulers in "democratic" regimes, the tiny minority who own or control virtually everything, are never voted in and never voted out. Most people don't even know who they are. . . . In itself, voting is of no great significance one way or the other (those who make a big deal about refusing to vote are only revealing their own fetishism). The problem is that it tends to lull people into relying on others to act for them, distracting them from more significant possibilities.

A few people who take some creative initiative (think of the first civil rights sit-ins) may ultimately have a far greater effect than if they had put their energy into campaigning for lesser-evil politicians. At best, legislators rarely do more than what they have been forced to do by popular movements. A conservative regime under pressure from independent radical movements often concedes more than a liberal regime that knows it can count on radical support. (The Vietnam war, for example, was not ended by electing antiwar politicians, but because there was so much pressure from so many different directions that the prowar president Nixon was forced to withdraw.)

If people invariably rally to lesser evils, all the rulers have to do in any situation that threatens their power is to conjure up a threat of some greater evil. Even in the rare case when a "radical" politician has a realistic chance of winning an election, all the tedious campaign efforts of thousands of people may go down the drain in one day because of some trivial scandal discovered in his (or her) personal life, or because he inadvertently says something intelligent. If he manages to avoid these pitfalls and it looks like he might win, he tends to evade controversial issues for fear of antagonizing swing voters. If he actually gets elected he is almost never in a position to implement the reforms he has promised, except perhaps after years of wheeling and dealing with his new colleagues; which gives him a good excuse to see his first priority as making whatever compromises are necessary to keep himself in office indefinitely.

Hobnobbing with the rich and powerful,he develops new interests and new tastes, which he justifies by telling himself that he deserves a few perks after all his years of working for good causes. Worst of all, if he does eventually manage to get a few "progressive" measures passed, this exceptional and usually trivial success is held up as evidence of the value of relying on electoral politics, luring many more people into wasting their energy on similar campaigns to come. As one of the May 1968 graffiti put it, "It's painful to submit to our bosses; it's even more stupid to choose them!"

--Excerpts from Ken Knabb's "The Joy of Revolution."
The complete text is online at http://www.bopsecrets.org/PS/joyrev.htm
* * *
SOME CLARIFICATIONS
My intention in circulating these observations is not to discourage you from voting or campaigning, but to encourage you to go further. Two years ago, I wrote: "Like many other people, I am delighted to see the Republicans collapsing into well-deserved ignominy, with the likelihood of the Democrats recapturing the presidency and increasing their majorities in Congress. Hopefully the latter will discontinue or at least mitigate some of the more insane policies of the current administration (some of which, such as climate change and ecological devastation, threaten to become irreversible).

Beyond that, I do not expect the Democratic politicians to accomplish anything very significant. Most of them are just as corrupt and compromised as the Republicans. Even if a few of them are honest and well-intentioned,they are all loyal servants of the ruling economic system, and they all ultimately function as cogwheels in the murderous political machine that serves to defend that system."

I don't think I need to take back any of my words. The Democrats did indeed recapture the presidency and increase their majorities in Congress, but their accomplishments since then have been as pathetic as could be imagined. Some people will say that they are still better than the Republicans. But being better than a party of sociopathic demagogues and gullible ignoramuses is hardly much of an achievement. And being so lame that you risk getting defeated by such a party is an achievement of a wholly different order.

During the last two years we have seen the consequences of relying on political representatives to act for us. If the antiwar movement and other more or less progressive currents had put even a fraction of the immense amount of time and energy they invested in election campaigns into more directly radical agitation, the situation would be very different today. As a side effect, such agitation would actually have resulted in more liberals being elected. But more importantly, it would have shifted the momentum and the terrain of the struggle. The liberal politicians would have been under pressure to actually implement some significant changes (such as ending the wars and inaugurating free universal health care), which would have invigorated their base while putting the reactionary forces increasingly on the defensive.

And that momentum shift might well have inspired even more radical actions and aspirations -- not just protesting against this or that particular outrage, but calling into question the whole absurd and anachronistic social system. The side that takes the initiative usually wins because it defines the terms of the struggle. If we accept the system's own terms and confine ourselves to defensively reacting to each new mess produced by it, we will never overcome it.

We have to keep resisting particular evils, but we also have to recognize that the system will keep generating new ones until we put an end to it. By all means vote if you feel like it. But don't stop there. Real social change requires participation, not representation.
BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS
P.O. Box 1044, Berkeley CA 94701, USA
http://www.bopsecrets.org/

ANARCHIST THEORY:

ANARCHIST THOUGHTS ON LABOUR DAY:

It's 'Labour Day' in the anglosphere. Elsewhere most of the world ,and many in English speaking countries as well, celebrate May Day as the real Labour Day. Be that as it may here's an interesting and timely article from Linchpin. Linchpin is the site and magazine of the Ontario platformist group Common Cause. Unlike many of the self-congratulatory messages that will be coming forth today this article sees that there are indeed problems with the way labour is organized today, and it points to some possible solutions. I find little to disagree with in what follows though I have to admit that I haven't gone through it with my usual nit-picking comb. What is especially valuable is the suggestion that workers should form organizations seperate from but in sympathy with the unions. Well disposed union leaders may see this as a Godsend as it will "let them off the hook" for actions that are necessary but either outside the scope of unions or perilous for them to undertake. as to those who are not well disposed, well more's the pity. Here's the article.>>>

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It’s the class struggle, stupid!

Organized labour’s confused response to the McGuinty Liberals' attack on Ontario’s working-class

By Ajamu Nangwaya and Alex Diceanu

Organized labour in Ontario will continue to put forth a weak and ineffective response to attacks from the ruling class as long as it continues to ignore the reality of class struggle. A perfect example is its current response to a proposed two-year wage-freeze that the Dalton McGuinty-led Ontario government plans on imposing on unionized public sector workers. The provincial Liberals would like to save $750 million per year from a wage-freeze, so as to help manage the $19.3 billion budget deficit. Readers need not be reminded that this deficit is the result of the risky financial speculations of the captains of finance, industry and commerce that created the Great Recession of 2008.

But it is the 710,000 unionized members of the working class and 350,000 non-unionized managers and other employees who draw pay cheques from the government[1] and the users of state-provided services (and private sector workers) who are being asked to bear the burden of paying for the actions of the corporate sector. At the same time as this attempt to take income from the pockets of government workers, the McGuinty Liberals’ have granted a $4.6 billion tax-cut to the business sector.

The leader of the Ontario New Democrats, Andrea Howarth, has signaled her support for public sector workers’ acceptance of a pay cut. She asserts, "I'm quite sure when they get to the bargaining table they will do their part like everyone else does ... there is a collective bargaining process that has to be respected."[2] Wow! Who said that the working-class needs enemies with “friends” like the New Democratic Party (NDP) and its leader Andrea Horwarth?

However, it is the tame and even puzzling reaction of some of Ontario’s major labour leaders that should be of concern to workers in the public sector. The government called labour leaders and employers from the broader public sector to “consultation” talks on the wage freeze on July 19, 2010. Coming out of the talks, this was what CUPE-Ontario president Fred Hahn had to say, “This is not like the early ’90s, this is not about sharing the pain. That’s all just not true”.[3] He was referring to former NDP premier Bob Rae’s unilateral opening of public sector workers’ contracts and the imposition of public sector wage-cuts accompanied by tax increases for the corporate sector. Was Brother Hahn implying that a wage-freeze would be tolerable, if accompanied by the cancellation of the $4.6 billion corporate tax-cut?

No credible union or union leader should contemplate a zero-wage increase over two years - even if the government rescinds the $4.6 billion tax-cut. There should not have been a tax-cut for the capitalist class. Restoring the tax should not be used as a bargaining chip to escape a wage-freeze on public sector workers.

Not to be outdone was the president of the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union, Warren (Smokey) Thomas. We will leave it to you to decipher the implicit message in the following statement by Smokey Thomas. “Just because he [Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan] wants something doesn’t mean he’s going to get it. It’s not a social contract. He can propose (a wage-freeze) but he has to bargain it. He can’t legislate it. He’ll lose.”[4] Is it just us or does that sound like a labour leader who is not really in a fighting spirit and just wants to make a deal?

A simple matter of misguided policy?

However, the critical issue for Ontario’s public sector workers is the extent to which many of our labour leaders seem to be completely unaware of the state and employers’ motives for disciplining labour through wage concessions. Ismael Hossein-zaded of Drake University made the following observation, which is quite applicable to the posturing of labour leaders in Ontario:


Quote:
Viewing the savage class war of the ruling kleptocracy on the people's living and working conditions simply as “bad” policy, and hoping to somehow—presumably through smart arguments and sage advice—replace it with the “good” Keynesian policy of deficit spending without a fight, without grassroots‟ involvement and/or pressure, stems from the rather naive supposition that policy making is a simple matter of technical expertise or the benevolence of policy makers, that is, a matter of choice. The presumed choice is said to be between only two alternatives: between the stimulus or Keynesian deficit spending, on the one hand, and the Neoliberal austerity of cutting social spending, on the other.5

Based on some of the statements coming from labour leaders, they may not have gotten the memo that the attack on the working-class (through the slashing of social programme spending, attacks on private sector pensions and wage freezes) is not about good or bad economic policies. Hossein-Zedad must have been inspired to write his paper after reading the following Keynesian-inspired comment by Ontario Federation of Labour president Sid Ryan; “From a policy perspective, it makes no economic sense whatsoever. You’ve got a government saying we need to stimulate the economy. The best way of stimulating the economy is through public-sector workers who spend every single penny of their disposable income in their local communities,”[6] But it’s not about the economy, per se. It’s the class struggle, stupid!

Canada’s economic and political elite have clearly given up the ghost of Keynesian economics, which calls on government to either stimulate or restrict the demand for goods and services based on the state of the economy. In the case of the 2008 crisis in capitalism, these neoliberal players felt forced by the magnitude of the impending financial collapse to pump money into the economy. A not-too-insignificant fact was lost on many observers and commentators who gleefully cheered on the capitalist class’ “Road-to-Damascus” moment. The capitalist state in Canada and other imperialist countries will do everything within their power to maintain a business environment that facilitates the accumulation of capital or profit-making, as well as legitimize the system in the eyes of the people. That is all in a day’s work for the state…no surprise here for class conscious trade unionists and other activists!

Labour’s “Response”

We ought to note that the recent crisis in the economy caught organized labour off-guard and ill-prepared to mobilize the working-class against that monumental failure of capitalism. For decades, Western corporations and governments have been force-feeding the public a steady diet of tax-cuts. Lower taxes on businesses, high-income earners and the wealthy, the widespread slashing of social services and income support programmes, a massive reduction in state oversight and regulation of corporations and the enactment of anti-union policies and legislation have been the all rage since corporations and Western governments abandoned their class-collaborationist pact with organized labour in the 1970s. Yet at the very moment when capitalism experienced a crisis of confidence resulting from a set of policies that had been hailed as perfect ingredients for economic and social progress, organized labour was caught with its pants down. Its leaders didn’t have a class struggle alternative to Keynesian economics – an economic tendency that was never intended to be used as a tool to end wage slavery and the minority rule of bankers, industrialists and the managerial and political elite.

Presently, the labour movement is ideologically and operationally ill-prepared to effectively face down the two-year wage-freeze demand from the McGuinty Liberals. Unfortunately, labour’s leaders have, in the main, focused on narrow economic demands rather than seeking to politically develop union activists and their broader membership behind a class struggle labour movement platform. Union members have been politically deskilled and demobilized in favour of a social service model of trade unionism. These labour leaders have failed to use their unions’ courses, workshops, week-long schools, publications and other educational resources to educate members of the fact that they are a part of a distinct class with economic and political interests that are different from that of the rulers of capitalist society.

Even the most casual of observers understand that organized labour’s raison d’être is to champion the material concerns of the working-class. And yet, ideologically-speaking, most labour leaders in Canada have cast their lot in with capitalism - albeit a more Scandinavian version. This is why a coherent critique of capitalism is notably absent from most union-organized workshops and events. It should therefore not come as a surprise that many union members have swallowed the employers and politicians’ message that Canada is a largely middle-class country and that our collective aspiration should be to remain a member of this class. If the labour leaders, academics and the media say that the majority of Canadians are a part of the middle-class, it must be so. The development of a working-class consciousness becomes very difficult (but not impossible) in this kind of political environment.

The great majority of Canadians are members of the working-class. They sell their labour, exercise little to no control over how their work-life is organized, have no say over how the profit from their labour is distributed and are so alienated from work that the aphorism “Thank god it’s Friday” has its own acronym. One should never define middle-class status as one’s ability to purchase consumer trinkets, live in a mortgaged home or even own a summer cottage. Middle-class status ought to be defined by one’s exercise of power and control and/or the possession of high levels of human capital found among administrative/managerial elites in the private and public sectors, academic elites and independent professionals.

Labour’s Credibility Crisis

The narrow economic obsession of labour leaders was on plain display when Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan revealed the March 2010 Budget. When it became known that the McGuinty Liberals would be seeking a two-year wage-freeze from public sector workers, this news was all that consumed the attention of most labour leaders. Many labour functionaries scrambled around in search of external and internal legal opinions, requesting briefs from senior staff on the impact of a wage-freeze on bargaining in specific sectors and sending out correspondence to members assuring them to “just act as if nothing had happened”, because they’re “already covered by a collective agreement”. Many labour union offices’ and unionized workplaces’ anxiety was centred entirely on the desired wage-freeze by the McGuinty Liberals. Nothing else!

But today we hear labour leaders talking about keeping money in workers’ pockets to stimulate the economy and that their primary concern is maintaining public services at adequate levels. Why didn’t organized labour deploy its resources to educate and mobilize the public against the $4.6 billion corporate tax-cuts, slashing of $4 billion in transportation infrastructure spending from Metrolinx’s $9.3 billion budget7] and the scrapping of the special diet allowance that benefited over 160,000 members of the working-class for the unprincely sum of $250 million per annum and a mere monthly average of $130 per person[8]? The provincial government anticipates that the two-year wage-freeze across the public sector will net a savings of $1.5 billion – yet the previous $8.6 billion effectively stolen from the working class failed to push organized labour into action.

The leaders of organized labour did not have the imagination to energize their members and the broader citizenry in alliance with other social movement organizations over the Budget. They could have exposed the class priorities of the McGuinty Liberals. The government’s main concerns clearly have nothing to do with those of us who are poor, live from pay cheque to pay cheque and do not patronize the golf courses where McGuinty and his friends hang out when they are not screwing the public. Listen up public sector labour leaders: the people will not be fooled by your claims to be advocating for the general interest. The broader working-class just have to simply see where you direct the labour movement’s resources and they will clue into the issues that are being prioritized. Take a look at the poor, working-class and/or racialized areas that are likely to be affected by the $4 billion cut to Metrolinx’s budget:


Quote:
…the austerity moves could affect five planned projects: rapid transit lines for Finch Ave. W., Sheppard Ave. E. and the Scarborough RT, along with the Eglinton Ave. cross-town line and an expansion of York region’s Viva service.[9]

Are we to believe that a class-struggle and anti-oppression informed public education, organizing and mobilization campaign in defense of public services, the social wage and a livable wage would not have had some level of traction with the people of Ontario?

An alternative economic plan or a different labour movement?

In some quarters of the trade union sector, there are talks of presenting an alternative plan to the slash-and-burn neoliberal policies of the provincial government. But, the presentation of Keynesian economic proposals by labour leaders is useless in a climate where the ruling class doesn’t feel threatened by a politically mobilized population, especially without “compelling grassroots pressure on policy makers”.[10] We implied earlier that labour unions have a credibility gap with the broader public if they now assert a desire to “broaden the debate, educate community members and local politicians with a view to engaging in actions that protect public services and build strong communities” as outlined by one union. What would be the purpose of the alternative plans of these labour leaders? The status quo of the 1930s to the 1960s that gave rise to the welfare state is not a transformative option.

There is no such thing as a “contextless” context. Where is the necessary political environment that would force the state to make concessions to the working-class out of fear that they maybe inclined to embrace revolutionary options? When some labour leaders are loosely talking about coming up with an alternative (Keynesian economic plan?) stimulus proposal, they would do well to understand the political implications of the following statement:


Quote:
Keynesian economists seem to be unmindful of this fundamental relationship between economics and politics. Instead, they view economic policies as the outcome of the battle of ideas, not of class forces or interests. And herein lies one of the principal weaknesses of their argument: viewing the Keynesian/New Deal/Social Democratic reforms of the 1930s through the 1960s as the product of Keynes’ or F.D.R.’s genius, or the goodness of their hearts; not of the compelling pressure exerted by the revolutionary movements of that period on the national policy makers to “implement reform in order to prevent revolution,” as F.D.R. famously put it. This explains why economic policy makers of today are not listening to Keynesian arguments—powerful and elegant as they are—because there would be no Keynesian, New Deal, or Social-Democratic economics without revolutionary pressure from the people.[11]

However, when labour leaders shy away from speaking openly about class-struggle and the nature of our economic system, we have a serious problem. It means that they are not in a position to facilitate a class-struggle, democracy-from-below and self-organizing form of trade unionism.

In order fight this attack on the working-class of Ontario, the labour movements’ rank-and-file activists, progressive leaders and principled labour socialists must engage in shop-floor education, organizing and mobilizing that is centred on a class-struggle, anti-racist and anti-oppression campaign. This approach to labour activism must be done in alliance with progressive or radical social movement organizations among women, racialized peoples, indigenous peoples, youth, students, LGBT community, climate/environmental justice, independent and revolutionary labour organizations, anti-authoritarian formations, and radical intellectuals. It must be an alliance based on mutual respect, sharing of approaches to emancipation and resources and a commitment to the value that the oppressed are the architect of and the driving force behind the movement for their emancipation. It is essential that organized labour open up and transform its leadership and decision-making structures to accommodate the full inclusion of its membership, in all their diversity.

In most of our unions and locals, this means starting from the beginning and we can use this current crisis to take those first steps. There is a lot of frustration among union members and community activists over the inaction of labour’s leadership in the face of this attack - and a desire to do something about it. That frustration and desire can be channeled into building cross-union “fight back committees” that bring together trade union and community activists in a city or town, such as members of the Greater Toronto Workers Assembly have already begun to do in that city. The “fight back committees” can give us a capacity to act independently from organized labour’s leadership. And probably our first acts should be to organize general assemblies in our locals and town hall meetings in our communities to promote a working-class view of the economic crisis and to mobilize our fellow workers and neighbours around militant, grassroots resistance to the McGuinty government and all the forces promoting a new round of austerity for the working-class.

Nothing less than a self-organizing, class-struggle approach to trade unionism will put labour in a position to fight in the here-and-now, while building the road we must travel on our way to the classless and stateless society of the future.

Alex Diceanu is a member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 3906 and a graduate student at McMaster University. Ajamu Nangwaya is a member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Locals 3907 and 3902 and a graduate student at the University of Toronto. Both authors are members of the Ontario anarchist organization, Common Cause.

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[1] Walkom, T. (2010, March 26). Liberals aim at easy targets. Toronto Star. Retrieved from http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/ontariobudget/article/785616--walkom...
[2] Brennan, R. J. & Talaga, T. (2010, March 26) Hudak cut wages deeper. Toronto Star. Retrieved from http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/ontariobudget/article/785343--hudak-cut-wages-deeper
[3] Benzie, R. (2010, July 20). Dwight Duncan’s wage-freeze pitch gets frosty reception. Toronto Star. Retrieved from http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/837872--dwight-duncan-s-wage-freeze-pitch-gets-frosty-reception
[4] Benzie, July 20
[5] Hossein-zaded, I. (2010, July 23-25). Holes in the Keynesian Arguments against Neoliberal Austerity Policy—Not “Bad” Policy, But Class Policy. Retrieved from http://www.counterpunch.org/zadeh07232010.html
[6] Benzie, July 20.
[7] Hume, C. (2010, March 29). Transit still not a priority. Toronto Star. Retrieved from http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/ttc/article/787317--transit-still-not-a-...
[8] The Canadian Press. (2010 April 1). Ontario asked to restore special diet allowance. Retrieved fromhttp://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/04/01/diet-allowance.html
9] Goddard, J., Rider, D. & Kalinoski, (2010, March 26). Miller outraged as budget sideswiped GTA transit. Toronto Star. Retrieved from http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/785573--miller-outraged-as-budget-sideswipes-gta-transit
[10] Hossein-zaded, I, Holes in the Keynesian arguments against neoliberal austerity policy.
[11] ibid

ANARCHIST HISTORY AND THEORY:
170 YEARS OF ANARCHISM:

My how the time flies. It has been 170 years since the 'father of anarchism' Pierre Joseph Proudhon first published his famous definition of his beliefs ie "I am an anarchist". It is also 170 years since his famous slogan, 'Property is Theft'. Now, even though I have often described myself as a "mutualist", this description is not exactly true especially if you consider what 'mutualism' has become in its majoritarian American manifestations. However much I may appreciate the American mutualists, especially in comparison to some other less savoury trends in modern anarchism I just cannot believe in either the labour theory of value nor in the overwhelming superiority of a free market in all things. On the other hand I cannot believe in the overwhelming superiority of a 'communist' economy for all things. In sum I am very much a believer in a 'mixed economy' in any anarchist society in the far distant future ie part free market, part communist and part managed prices. I don't think, however, that arguments about an unlikely future system mean much in the day to day events of today.


My own attraction to mutualism is because of its 'gradualist' approach and also because of its emphasis on cooperatives. Both the former and the latter are very easily integrated into an anarcho-syndicalist practice that acts in the here and now rather than speaking of the glories of the day after the revolution. Proudhon was a very contradictory writer. Few writers aren't. He believed different things at different times. One might say that he was almost as contradictory as Marx and perhaps equally personally obnoxious for different reasons. The emphasis on gradualism and cooperatives, however, went beyond the original author and became the basis for the first manifestation of anarchosyndicalism in the world ie the French members of the First International. As such it became a social force very much divorced from the merits or demerits of one of its founders.


Over at the Anarchist Writers blog an author, Anarcho by pen name, has posted a review of what Proudhon has meant to anarchism. While the full article is too long to reproduce here I am posting the first few paragraphs. To see more of this incisive essay go to this link.
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"I Am An Anarchist": 170 Years Of Anarchism

In 1840, two short expressions, a mere seven words, transformed socialist politics forever. One put a name to a tendency within the working class movement: “I am an Anarchist.” The other presented a critique and a protest against inequality which still rings: “Property is Theft!”

With “What is Property?” Pierre-Joseph Proudhon became one of the leading socialist thinkers of the nineteenth century and the libertarian movement was born, that form of socialism based on “the denial of Government and of Property” and which did “not want the government of man by man any more than the exploitation of man by man.”

Proudhon’s ideas played a key role in the development of revolutionary anarchism in the International Working Men’s Association (IWMA). Their application in the Paris Commune of 1871 was praised by Marx (although he did not mention the obvious source). Michael Bakunin proclaimed that “Proudhon is the master of us all” while for Peter Kropotkin he laid “the foundations of Anarchism.” It is easy to see why, for Proudhon was the first to discuss most of the ideas we associate with anarchism: the critique of property and capitalism; critique of the state; socio-economic federalism; free association; socialisation of the means of life; decentralisation; the abolition of wage-labour by self-management; and so on.


read more at http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/i-am-an-anarchist-170-years-of-anarchism

ANARCHIST THEORY:

STATE AND CLASS:

I originally saw the following item on the Miami Autonomy and Solidarity site. The original source is an exciting new website Havana Times written from a progressive viewpoint but with none of the displaced mindless patriotism so typical of western leftists who worship foreign dictatorships.

I would certainly not characterize Havana Times as anarchist, but many of the items there are things that few anarchists could disagree with. I found the following interesting despite having my own disagreements with some of the author's opinions. Like many, perhaps most, anarchists the author characterizes state socialist regimes as being essentially "state capitalist". I disagree, and I think "managerial" is a better word just as it is for the societies in which most of us live ie so-called "capitalist" regimes. My reason is the overwhelming way in which prices are set and resources allocated in such regimes, a manner remote from the idealized "capitalism" of a century ago (though "capitalism" was always a mixed economy in any case) where they were supposed to be set by market competition. In the case of Marxist dictatorships the word is even less apt because the supposed labour market consisting of those free to sell their labour to the highest bidder is a total fantasy. The labour "market" under Marxism is closer to that of theocratic slave states or serfdom than it is to "capitalism".

I also disagree that a system of de jure government ownership and de facto self management would be anything resembling a stable arrangement. I admit its theoretical possibility and actual probability over a long term transition to real self management. With the proviso, of course, that the controllers of the state would continually try to expand their power at the expense of actual self managed socialism.

All that being said the following is a perceptive look at the difference between legal fictions of ownership and the actual realities of social power. Well worth reading.

SCSCSCSCSC
State Owned Doesn’t Mean Socialist
HAVANA TIMES, April 27 — Recently in Granma, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, an article appeared about the economic efficiency of “socialist government enterprises” in the armed forces (4/16/10).

In the spirit of helping to clarify certain concepts, I have attempted to provide a few, more precise, details here.

Apparently the comrades who wrote about the Military Agricultural Union “socialist government enterprise,” based themselves on the identification of state and socialist property by virtue of the fact that this property belongs to the Cuban state; they assume that all state property is, de jure, socialist. However, what gives a property its social character —be it socialist or capitalist— is the form of its operation and the appropriation of its output, not its legal form.
This confusion was introduced in socialist theory by those who mistook estatización (state ownership) for socialization. They thought that for property to be socialized, it was sufficient to place it under state ownership and then hold the state sacred above the rest of society.

The social character of a company is one thing and the legal structure of its ownership is something else. The social character of property is determined by the form in which it is put to use, by the way in which work is organized, the mode of production (based on slave, serf, wage or freely associated labor) and the way in which the surplus obtained is distributed. This is independent of the property’s legal structure, which can be state-owned, collective or privately owned. This said, the natural tendency is for the content (the social character) of property to determine its legal form (structure), not the other way around.

Certainly, a government enterprise that exploits wage labor can be efficient. There are many examples of this throughout the entire capitalist world , even in the USA, England and Japan.

However, though the legal form of such property is state-owned, those companies are not socialist. They are capitalist because they respond to the capitalist logic of obtaining profits through wage labor, which in this case is appropriated by the state. As a corollary, when that state seeks the “well being” of the workers, with fairer distribution, this is what characterizes social democracy.

So what if the state is in the hands of the workers?” the statists might ask.

The same thing would happen as what has occurred in every “worker’s state”: the workers would continue being paid a wage (which would not be determined by the level of production), they would have no ownership or usufruct relationship with the means of production, and they would not participate in the distribution of profits.


On behalf of socialism, all those tasks would be overseen by a bureaucratic stratum, which in the long run —as has always occurred— winds up as the bureau-bourgeoisie (“the accidental class,” as described by Russian academics) who appropriate the means of production and the surpluses, and plunge the working class into deeper misery.

That “working class,” harnessed to their new capitalists (the bureaucrats), would not bring new production relations with them, since these laborers still would not have understood their need to liquidate themselves as a working class and become a new class of freely associated workers…of cultured cooperativists, the new class that bears the new production relations.

The government enterprise that exploits wage labor, seeks profits and concentrates the surplus in a few hands is in fact a state capitalist company given its content…given its social character.

Its juridical state form doesn’t matter. This was what all the confusion was around concerning “state socialism,” which never transcended the limits of state monopoly capitalism. This clearly occurred in Russia but also in Cuba.

Wage labor is what characterizes the form of capitalist exploitation, while freely-associated, cooperative or autogestionario (self-managed) work is the generic form of organizing socialist labor.

For the social character of a company to be described as socialist (it doesn’t matter if the property legally belongs to the state or the collective of workers) it must be managed through socialist methods – not capitalists ones; this is to say, with cooperative and self-managerial forms of work and management by freely associated workers who are directed and managed in a collective and democratic way by the workers themselves.

This would even include the election of management, which should be revolving, and the equal distribution of part of the profits (after paying taxes and other expenses due to the state and leaving another part for the extended reproduction of the company, emergency funds and other reserves).

Even under capitalism there are properties that are legally collective, but that in and of itself doesn’t make them socialist. This is the case of the corporation, which legally belongs to its community of shareholders, a few or many of whom might work for that same company. However by organizing itself into a capitalist form of operation —that’s to say with wage labor, with hierarchical forms of management and control of the surplus by a group of owners who control most of the shares— it continues essentially as a capitalist company given its social character, even when it constitutes the first form of the decomposition of capital.

This is what they deceivingly refer to as “popular capitalism,” which capitalists sought to present as an alternative to cooperativist socialism.

Likewise, there exists property that is private by its legal form and socialist by its self-managerial social form of operation. This is the case of many small family-owned businesses, which manage the company democratically, distribute the profits equally and do not exploit wage labor.

Socialist government enterprises would be those where the state maintains the ownership of the means of production in a legal form, but where the social form of its operation is carried out in a socialist, self-managerial and cooperative manner. This would be the case of a type of company that is co-managed between the state and the workers.

By the same token, just as cooperatives are socialist firms in capitalist countries, it’s possible for there to exit in socialist countries reminiscences of capitalist companies (not in name, but because some day cooperative and self-management types of freely associated production relations will prevail), be they state, private or mixed ownership.

The interesting experience of Perfeccionamiento Empresarial (Managerial Improvement), originally conceived and applied in the Cuban armed forces (MINFAR), was a step forward in connection with the traditional statist wage-labor scheme, though still without breaking from it.

ANARCHIST TACTICS:

DESTRUCTIVE TACTICS:

The following is from another Winnipeg blog 'The Plan'. it's all about the so-called 'black bloc' tactics that manage to make their way to pretty well all of the major demonstrations in North America. Despite having never been able to present a single person who has been won to radical politics let alone anarchism in almost 20 years the defenders of this sort of thing soldier on. I don't count those who already were anarchists or leftists. I mean it...not one single demonstrable success in terms of only one person who did not agree with the ideology to begin with in the better part of two decades. Or at least there has never been any such testimonial. This sort of thing has to stand as one of the true monuments to irrationality. Maybe it's time to rethink such things. That is what the following suggests.

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Destructive Tactics
The debate over the use of Black Bloc tactics has been happening for years, but was recently thrust into the spotlight by the events of the Toronto G20 Summit. Although I haven't participated in a full-scale discussion on the topic of Black Bloc tactics with my fellow anarchists and socialists, it appears that many people on the radical left are “in solidarity” with the Black Bloc and favour a “diversity of tactics”. On the other side, you have moderate leftists who, for the most part, condemn the Black Bloc. Some even go as far as to blame the Black Bloc for the crackdown that resulted in the arrest and detention of hundreds of “peaceful” protesters. I don't have much use for empty platitudes such as “in solidarity,” and I reserve my condemnation for my ideological enemies. Therefore, I wouldn't classify my position on this matter as typically radical or typically mainstream. Instead, I hope that I've formulated an opinion that achieves pragmatism and avoids the pitfalls of orthodoxy.

Before we proceed any further, let us abandon the euphemistic phrase “Black Bloc tactics” and call a spade a spade. We're talking about property destruction. Whether you believe that “property” is a legitimate concept and whether the property is private or public, we should all be able to agree that what is at issue in the Black-Bloc-at-the-Toronto-G20 debate is property destruction. Whatever else one wishes to place under the umbrella of “Black Bloc tactics” should not be germane to this discussion.

Before engaging in any political act, it is of the utmost importance to first determine the intended goal of the act. In almost every case, the goal of the highest import is to affect change; often, this is impossible or implausible to achieve directly. Therefore, one must frequently resort to to affecting change indirectly; often by winning ideological converts.

Did the property destruction that took place at the G20 affect change directly? The answer is an emphatic no. The corporations that own those damaged storefronts collected their insurance money and continued with business as usual. The agenda of the summit proceeded exactly as planned. The heads of state who participated in the summit were not inconvenienced in the slightest. The headless zombie that is capitalism continues to plod forward with as much cold brutality as ever before.

Did the property destruction affect change indirectly? Again, an emphatic no. Instead of winning converts, the images of burning police cars and broken windows served to alienate a great many potential allies. Those very same images allowed the federal and provincial governments to justify (in the eyes of the public) the billion dollar security budget and the audacious crackdown on protesters. The police didn't need the anarchists to justify the security budget, but it definitely helped. Without the property destruction, that sort of expenditure in the midst of an economic recession would have been much harder to justify and the crackdown may very well have not taken place. If the crackdown had still taken place, a greater number of people would be persuaded to see it as an overreaction.

Another indirect result of the property destruction was that the important messages about human rights, the environment, globalization, etc. that were being expressed by the protesters were lost in the din and more easily ignored by the mainstream media and the public.

There is some good that can be salvaged from the the events of Toronto. We now have a perfect opportunity to openly dialogue about tactics and how protests should look going forward. Also, through a concerted effort we can draw the public's attention to the fact that the vast majority of those who were brutalized by the police were completely innocent of anything remotely resembling a crime. With the right message, this can be used as an opportunity to win converts to the side of anti-statism, anti-capitalism, or at the very least, anti-Conservative-ism.

I long to engage in this debate with my friends on the left. Do tactics matter? If so, how should they be guided? Should we do what feels good or should we do what works? What does “works” mean in the context of protests? What are the goals we are seeking to achieve? I contend that if we are hoping to achieve radical change, then tactics are foundational to that pursuit. The way to achieve radical change is to gain popular support from a wide swath of society. This doesn't mean watering down ideology to make it palatable to the masses, but it does mean that we need to communicate our ideas in such a way that people will be able to hear, understand and consider them.

Some activists and commentators are saying that the property destruction that occurred in Toronto paled in comparison to the violence perpetrated by the police. Of course this is true. But that doesn't make property destruction a good idea or the actions of the Black Bloc justified in any way. Why not endeavour to draw an even greater distinction between the radical left and the fascist corporate foot soldiers that make up the police force? When oppression is blatant and heavy-handed, the response to that oppression can be equally primitive and be successful. In modern Western nations where oppression is subtle and sophisticated, our response needs to be equally nuanced.

Smashing windows and responding to police force with force is primitive. These acts only communicates rage and randomness to the average person. We must ensure that our actions communicate messages that are obvious and unambiguous.

Actions that are illegal are not a problem in themselves. Actions that provoke the police are not problematic in themselves. Breaking laws that can be demonstrated to be illegitimate or bringing about a police response that can be demonstrated to be illegitimate are effective strategies. Instead of burning police cars, let's cover them in flowers or colourful paint. Instead of smashing windows, let's cover them in slogans that will raise the consciousness of the populace. Let's render their security expenditures absurd by appearing completely nonthreatening to the general public. Let's do the opposite of what the police and government expect and want by creating iconic images of non-violent civil disobedience that will resonate long after we're gone.

I hope this can be the start of a productive dialogue. Please post a comment below and let me know what you think.