anarchism

Chuck0 chuck at tao.ca
Mon Dec 6 07:06:16 PST 1999


Michael Yates wrote:
>
> Chuck,
>
> I don't know why the word "jealousy" would be used in response to my post. I
> thought that there was some debate going on about anarchism in light of the
> anarchism of some of the Seattle protesters. Just because someone posts a
> quotation doesn't mean that the poster agrees with all that is in the post.
> I'm certainly jealous of the fact that I was not there! These were great and
> possibly important protests.
>
> michael yates

Oh, alright. I looked up Hal Draper's name on the Internet and he was quoted approvingly by several documents that are valued by authoritarian socialists. It seemed to me that Woodcock was being quoted in a way to spread disconfort about anti-democratic tendencies in anarchism. Woodcock was hardly a good source on contemporary anarchism when he wrote in the 60s and 70s. Anarchists may find concepts such as "Democracy" to be pretty useless, since most people associate it with representative democracy, but anarchists conducts their affairs in what could be described as the most "democratic" way. They strive for egalitarian meetings, frequently use consensus, and discourage the emergence of any kind of leadership. Anarchist meetings are much more open than, say, meetings run by socialist groups such as the ISO.

I guess it's how you define the word "democracy."

-- Chuck0

Mid-Atlantic Infoshop http://www.infoshop.org/

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"A society is a healthy society only to the degree that it exhibits anarchistic traits."

- Jens Bjørneboe



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