<< Pahtoo at aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 12/16/99 8:49:38 PM Pacific Standard Time,
>furuhashi.1 at osu.edu writes:
>
><< Perhaps anarchists think that
> it would have been better had the USSR never existed.
>
> Yoshie >>
>
>I'd say there's no "perhaps" about it.
Ok, say there was an anarchist revolution in Russia in 1917. What
would you have done surrounded by hostile capitalist states that put
you under economic blockade and send in armed counterrevolutionaries?
At the same time you're facing a capital strike by your own local
business class. How would you keep basic production and distribution
mechanisms going?
Doug >>
I don't believe in anarchist revolution on a national scale. Maybe I'm an unrepentant bio-regionalist who believes in revolution an a small communal scale, with production and distribution therefore, local in nature, with the actions of the local business class irrelevant.
In fact, I've been involved in just such experiments here in the NW, helping create a cooperative corporation that now employs 60 and is the biggest business entity in the area (Detroit, Oregon) and in founding a food co-op that employs 14. IN each case the local business class hated us and were an immense obstacle, but, now they have to deal with us and they've changed a lot -- from Ancient Forest-logging dominated to tourism -- not a complete revolution by any means, but progress, especially if you are an old-growth-dependent species.
The military intervention issue is just one that I don't see how to address.
Michael Donnelly