From: "Andy" <as-AT-spelthorne.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 15:02:02 +0000
Subject: conscience & purity & FAQ


  Joshua Houk <jlhouk-AT-mindspring.com>

> On Friday I signed an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of
> America.

I regularly used to compromise myself by signing the Official Secrets 
Act back in the 70s. You had to sign it to get temporary work on the 
Royal Mail at Xmas. I just crossed my fingers to show I didn't mean 
it. I believe Albert Meltzer had some trenchant views on the lack of 
nobility inherent in poverty, so work anyway.

 I was never sure what 
secrets being a temporary postie entailed. I could reveal that all 
their bicycles are painted red, which is I believe a technical breach 
of the act, and which might be a secret to purists who probably spend 
the wee small hours in lentil-filled rooms plotting general strikes 
and therefore don't get up early enough to see the post[wo]man.

>Different factions
> fighting against each other, going over the same arguments that took place 100
> years ago. Maybe someone can coalesce these sects into a unified whole, but
> that person sure ain't me. I'm leaving the vicious circle, and none too soon.
> If and when something gets worked out, maybe I'll listen. Until then, fuck
> Bookchin, fuck Black, fuck the IWW, fuck the anarcho-whateverists. Fuck 'em
> all, I'll live life on *my* terms.

Isn't this factionalism the point where anarchism becomes akin to an 
ideology rather than a tendency in history, and an analysis of 
capitalism and the state. Where people get cut up about the 
ideologies,  are they indulging in the same sort of schisms that 
authoritarian socialists and fundamentalist Xtians/other sects/cults 
engage in? This constant navel contemplation is not conducive to 
responding to  the sort of rapid change in global capitalist 
economics and technology that is happening now.

As an heretical example, I believe that to join the IWW you still 
have to declare that you are not in a position to hire or fire. This 
was highly relevant for its time but could be re-examined, in the 
light of changes in the Labour Market.

In my organisation - a small college- we have been removed from local 
government control and set up as a corporation with a sovereign board 
of governors. This was part of the Tories ruse to move the costs of 
the replacement for the  poll tax away from local government to 
central government via VAT.  Finance is now dependent on pro-rata 
money for students plus full cost recovery from industry. At the same 
time the public purse has been so squeezed that whole layers of 
institutional  management have disappeared.

In my case, therefore, far from seeking power, the hierarchy has 
descended and flattened to include me in it. I now have limited 
hiring and firing powers which I do not particularly relish, but 
neither do I relish the dole.

I'm therefore apparently  part of Tony Blair's Class 1, and part of 
the middle-class. The FAQ, makes some attempt at analysis of this and 
I would consider myself exploited - I hold no real power, but by IWW 
definitions I am persona non grata. This does not take account of 
trends in business and the public sector to devolve budgets, separate 
cost centres, flatten structures, make tax-reliant enterprises into 
corporations, piss about with shares and pension funds etc. 

These are real difficulties in workplaces and in  the fight against 
these, complaints about lack of political soundness are a 
distraction . Is it possible  that while the degree of devolution in 
current business practice places onerous and unwanted pseudo-power on 
people, it also gives opportunities for undermining hierarchies and 
politicising the work-force, as the shit  decisions on the one hand 
come down to them, and the big ones are taking place on a global 
level??

>AS