[here's my reply to Jim...]
----- Original Message ----- From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Ian writes:>And we wonder why so many young people are embracing anarchism and the autonomist wing of Marxism, with their call for the dismantling - in word and deed- of the dyad of legal/illegal..........< these folks may have their emotions on their side, but getting rid of the "dyad" of legal/illegal (i.e., the state) is silly. Without a state -- and the concept of legal vs. illegal -- we can't have democracy. =============== Hey, I'm the first to agree with that, but there are anarchists who are not democrats and are resolutely anti-majoritarian. There even seems to be a couple over at lbo. So how do we resolve the issue of limited government so the State doesn't go authoritarian on us over time with the simple accumulation of laws? [Despite itself] Without democracy, we can't have socialism. (We might get it if the working class and other counter-establishmentarian movements had significant power and could replace the state with something else, but this isn't something that's likely to happen in the near future.) I'm sure Ken Lay would love the idea of getting rid of (il)legality. That means that his lust for endless accumulation would face no limits at all. Getting rid of the state would mean that even more than usual, might would make right. -- Jim Devine ============== Well maybe that's what some capitalist are constantly striving for too, no? Simply buy from the State the policies you need so they can't bust you for what you'd prefer to do anyway. Legality is seen simply as a form of insurance. Even with the current array of the State[s] system we have now, those who like might still don't give a hoot about what's right. What is right in an irreducibly pluralistic social system anyway?[facetiously...] **Additionally, I would say that on the intellectual/theoretical front, at least on the West Coast of the US, two figures stand out as Anarchists' heavy hitters. Even more than John Zerzan[the primitivist guy], Hakim Bey [Peter Lamborn Wilson] and Chomsky. They are: Murray Bookchin and Michael Taylor [Taylor teaches polisci at UW]. Bookchin is arguably the most knowledgeable guy in the US regarding the Spanish revolution; lot's of Taylor's students and former students were banging drums and locking down streets N30 of '99. Michael Pugliese probably knows more about how things are south of Eugene [San Fran, LA etc.] When groups of young[er] people came to the planning meetings in the summer of '99 with copies of Kropotkin's 'Mutual Aid' in theie hands, stuffed with flyers that appropriated images from 'The Matrix' and 'Fight Club' I knew it was going to be lots of fun.............. Ian
