Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 02:35:36 -0500
From: Sandi & Scott Spaeth <vespass-AT-swbell.net>
Subject: Re: Nader must pull out of the election!!


At 12:35 AM 10/23/00 +0000, Mitchel Cohen wrote:

>There is a difference between government and the State. We oppose the state
>as either an historical mechanism of domination in its own right, or as a
>coercive instrument of class forces wielded against the working class and
>colonized. This does not mean we don't fight for certain laws to better our
>condition and the conditions of everyone, even as we seek to overthrow it.
>The relationship between reform and revolution is complex, but it doesn't
>disappear by wishing it out of existence.

This is the argument of the social democrats and I happen to think they 
(and you) are wrong.  There are few laws draconian enough to equal the evil 
found in the system of power politics you've just propounded - just play 
the ballot game until we've got enough guns to shoot them all eh 
comrade?  You talk about class forces and historical mechanisms and through 
these words and this sort of thinking, you and the traditional left have 
bullshitted yourselves into a blind alley.  You think you've got some epic 
battle of good vs. evil but all you're really doing is playing power 
politics and picking the longshot team.  As long as we try to get 
reparations or try to make the "bad people" behave themselves by laws and 
elections, we are simply playing a variation of the old who-gets-to-be-boss 
game, and in the long run, we'll end up just like them.  As I see it, the 
first step in being an anarchist is forswearing dominion over others.  When 
they pass a law I find intolerable, I simply don't obey.  Is this a 
political weakness?  Fuck yeah it is, I can't get shit done compared to 
what I could accomplish in politics, but that's the price I feel I have to 
pay if I'm serious about truly voluntary and non-coercive combinations 
(either social, economic or both).

>Unlike the other candidates, Nader is an expression of vast radical social,
>political and economic movements from the bottom-up. He may not be the best
>articulator of the ultimate goals of anarchism, but neither is he in the
>same categories as Bush and Gore.

OK, besides the obvious authoritarian nonsense of choosing a master, let's 
talk about Nader. He's got you snowed.  He really, really wants to be 
boss.  He wants control badly.  Do you think he cares about liberty?  He's 
out to save the world, whether it likes it or not.  His whole life has been 
spent protecting consumers, well, fuck the consumer.  If there's one damn 
thing capitalism got right, it's taking care of the consumer.  We're 
screwed as people and as workers, but we've got like 100 brands of 
breakfast cereal - as consumers we're living in heaven.  But occasionally 
as consumers, we do painfully stupid things, like buy rear engined cars 
when many of us clearly have no ability to drive or want to do numerous 
other things while driving.  But no, we need to be protected against our 
own stupidity, the Corvair is too much for us.  All the fucking bullshit GM 
has done to its workers, but fuck them, we're worried about the consumer 
who can't be trusted to learn how to deal with oversteer.  Bah, and you 
want this prick in a position of power?

>If people on the anarchist listserve think that all of this is irrelevant,
>fine, I'll take it elsewhere. (We'll wait to hear, first.)

Ooh yeah, let's vote on it, majority rules, that's anarchism.  I don't see 
why you should give a shit about my opinion as it definitely opposes some 
of your cherished beliefs, but at the same time I'll continue calling 
bullshit on your promotion of the mechanism of authority as being somehow 
anarchist.

>  NOT voting,
>however, as a PRINCIPLE is, in my view, wrong. Not voting should be a
>TACTIC we employ to implement some larger strategy. The self-righteousness
>of limiting these concerns, indeed, the attempt to IMPOSE A LINE
>(supposedly an "anarchist one") on fellow anarchists and anarcho-marxists
>is a dangerous precedent and wholly outside what anarchism is supposed to
>be about.

Impose?  You'd rather I stayed silent as you post on about some idiot who 
wants me to voluntarily submit to him?  Hey, do what you want, call 
yourself an anarchist or anarcho-marxist (wtf?) or whatever AND play power 
politics, but don't be so stupid as to think I won't mock you publicly.  I 
think Ralph Nader is a hierarchy-loving, paternalistic piece of shit.  I 
think that trying to use the domination of the state for whatever ends, no 
matter how lofty, is inherently anti-libertarian (and using my definitions 
of good and evil is a very bad thing).  And most of all, I think people who 
whine about having-to-toe-the-anarchist-line when they're called on their 
authoritarian bullshit (which "let my guy be your boss because he's a 
kinder master than your other bosses" most certainly is) don't know much 
about anarchism in the first place.

cheers,
scott
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