Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 20:37:52 -0600
From: Sandi and Scott Spaeth <vespass-AT-swbell.net>
Subject: RE: Ann Hansen talks shite


At 02:09 AM 1/30/03 +0000, Dave Coull wrote:

>Ah, it seems I was wrong about Chucko being
>a Stalinist. He is coming out with the right-wing
>"libertarian" or "anarcho-capitalist" line.
>They claim that what matters is the  _definition_
>of anarchism, and that they and their capitalist
>friends are the ones entitled to write the dictionary.
>Well, wrong. What matters is the _historical_
>definition. What matters is how anarchism has
>been defined in practice by people in the anarchist
>movement. What matters is what real life anarchists
>say, not what any dictionary definition says.
>It's not a matter of "majority rule". But
>it  IS  a matter of not ignoring the historical
>(and continuing) anarchist movement.
>
>
>Dave Coull


Fuck a bunch of dictionaries, dead folks, majorities and minorities, 
anarchism is what I define it to be.  As for movements, I had one this 
morning, and expect another tomorrow morning.

Seriously Dave, I understand what you're saying, but sometimes you seem to 
be too hung up on historical continuity.   Anarchists of the past have 
created a useful body of theory and experience, but they've far from 
answered every question that gets raised today.   For example the idea of 
workers taking over the factories - fuck that, whether or not I'm part of 
the managing collective, an assembly line is a fucking assembly line.  Go 
ahead, try to humanize it, if you're willing to kill Taylorism you've 
killed the factory, and if you aren't, then at a practical level what's 
changed for the worker?  Fuck all that's what.     Some anarchists have 
realized this, but it's still outside of the main "historical" stream of 
thought (hell, even on this list I got called a monarchist (???) because I 
didn't want to make some fucktard's Play Station for a living).  All I'm 
saying is that the answers aren't all to be found by looking backwards any 
more than they can be found by ignoring the past.

cheers,
scott