File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_1999/anarchy-list.9912, message 285


Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 07:07:12 -0800
From: "Senex R. Rupicapra" <olgoat-AT-kdsi.net>
Subject: Re: Property damage and "violence"


Andy wrote:
> 
> >One of the reasons i ask is that we have these ongoing debates with
> >capitalists, particularly "anarcho"-capitalists about "choice" and
> >"freedom" under capitalism. It's pretty common for the capitalists to
> >claim that "nobody is coerced" under capitalism - meaning, roughly (and
> >sometimes precisely), "nobody holds a gun on you and makes you go to
> >work." And it's pretty common for anarchists to patiently explain that
> >there is more than one kind of coercion, that one can be robbed of freedom
> >as effectively (or moreso) by systemic and/or indirect means. That seems,
> >in fact, to be a favorite method of limiting freedom, at least in the
> >"first world." Systemic control, with enough threat of simply repressive
> >force to remind us that it's finally our bodies that are in the balance.
> >
> >Isn't capitalism itself violent in all of its manifestations, not simply
> >in its more direct forms of repression and control?
> 
> Capitalists tend to concentrate exclusively on observable decision making
> processes, which are more or less "apparently" democratic. They ignore the
> agenda setting issue which is where the co-ercion comes in. An analogy from
> history:
> 
> I say to my 2 year old daughter, "Put your coat on, we're going to the
> shops"
> She says, "I don't want to."
> I say, "Well if you don't do that, we'll have to tidy up all these toys [or
> other unpalatable choice]"
> She puts coat on. I despise myself.
> 
> Capitalism is like that.

	yep, and so is "human nature".  power corrupts, remember?  y gots a
2-year-old daughter.  y're either younker than i thought or y're a
really long-distance runner.  either way, steady on.

	old goat.
	our fathers' seeds contain too many weeds.
	ÐÏ à¡± á

   

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