File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_1999/anarchy-list.9912, message 286


From: "Andy" <as-AT-spelthorne.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Property damage and "violence"
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 13:43:17 -0000



-----Original Message-----
From: Senex R. Rupicapra <olgoat-AT-kdsi.net>
To: Andy <as-AT-spelthorne.ac.uk>
Cc: Shawn P. Wilbur <swilbur-AT-wcnet.org>; Did Someone Say 'Anarchy?'
<anarchy-list-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Date: 07 December 1999 13:07
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.


No - it was an analogy from history [and  SPW wrote the intelligent bit at
the top] - she's 11 now and the son's 9. I was a late starter though - 35
for the first one and 37 for the second - the other parent is a couple of
year's younger. Interestingly, they seem to see through that lack of choice
thing at about 3/4 years  old, and you can build on that awareness of power
then.

I was proud of her the other day - she'd been given some utterly pointless
homework on volcanoes which she was supposed to research. She couldn't be
bothered so she wrote it out from memory, then made up the source book
titles and authors'  names, saying "no-one will check - I'm a good girl."
Such cynicism in one so young.

Andy
"I'm right, you're wrong; I'm big, you're little" [Roald Dahl/Danny DeVito]


   

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