Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 21:04:38 -0800 (PST)
From: commie zero zero <commie00-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: is leninism dead? was: Flooding


> hi commie00,

hey sean

> how is this understanding of marx any different than
> communitarianism? this seems like the kind of stuff
> you would read in the ecologist magazine, or receive
> from international forum on globalization
> theorists...

i really have no idea what you're talking about
here... could you be more specific?

> but we can't fully realize our alternatives within
> class society, to do this would involve fully having
> control over our own destinies, no matter what we do
> we still have to contest with the courts, money,
> police, army, etc...

again, i'm not entirely sure what you're talking
about... my whole point was that we "can't fully
realize our alternative within class society", but
that we also don't have to give into the institutions
of class society on the road to a classless one. we
can (and, methinks, must) beging making our
alternatives now, and begin expanding in them in any
way possible. this is what the bulk of autonomist
theory has addressed... 

SEAN SAID:

i'm unclear as to what is mean by central action, this
actually sounds leninist/authoritarian, the central
action of a standing military? or a parliament?

MY REPLY:

i've never seen anything that states that "central"
means hierarchical... 

when you take an anti-hierarchical structure model and
make it graphic, you can get an upside-down pyramid...
the tip of this pyramid is still central, but not
hierarchical. 

and if you start talking about communes of communes of
communes... you get a center with multiple centers
with multiple centers, etc. the question isn't whether
or not there is a center, in many cases there must be
to wage effective struggle. the question is whether or
not this center controls or is controled. 

the zapatistas present an interesting model of this,
methinks: you have a community of communities which
are controled directly by the communities. a part of
this is the thinger whose name escapes me right now
that controls the military. this thinger represents a
center that is not the top of a hierarchy. 

SEAN SAID:

this also does not respond to how we will overcome the
capitalist state when they have access to resources,
hierarchal control of people, wealth, so many things
that a decentralized proletarian movement does not...

MY RESPONSE:

again, you seem to be confusing non-hierarchical with
decentralized... or even decentralized with
disorganized. you also seem to be forgetting that the
key aspect of any kind of successful anti-capitalist
movement will eventually be based on the shift of
those resources away from the hands of capital and
into the hands of labor thru the taking over of the
means of production. this is an absolute necessity,
tactically speaking. 

then a question becomes one of organization. it seems
to me that any revolutionary organization of society
must be non-hierarchical if we are to avoid the
pitfalls of class society. 

how this organzation will happen, and what it will
look like... who knows. but i think the clues are in
the way the (conscious / unconscious) communist
movement organizes now. that is: this organization
must grow organically thru struggle. the only thing we
can not about it is what it can not be.

hope i'm making sense...

greg, i'll answer your note sometime soon. still
thinking about it.

====commie00
---------------------------------
http://www.geocities.com/commie00
---------------------------------

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