And the opposite truth is actually one of the differences between anarchists and Marxists again. Marxist believe the state, one of the masters's tools, cannot whither away under socialism until there are no more capitalist states, because you have to fight fire with fire. You can't defeat the bourgeois state if you let down your guard. They will come and get you with their states, as the bourgeoisie demonstrated in by the multinational invasion of the young Soviet Union, the Nazis holocaustic invasion of the SU and the Cold War.
So, much of the criticism of the Soviet Union by non-communist leftists is actually based on following Lorde's maxim too far. That nasty master's tool, the repressive apparatus, must be retained to defend against the vicious bourgeois state until the workers overthrown them from within and to repress the bourgeoisie.
Charles Brown
>>> "Liza Featherstone" <lfeather32 at erols.com> 09/16/99 03:09PM >>>
Yeah, what else to use to dismantle that damned house. PR? Propaganda?
Media? Politics? Education? Economic analysis? Verbs and nouns? All pretty
useful tools...
Liza
----------
>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Re: the master's tools
>Date: Thu, Sep 16, 1999, 2:35 PM
>
>alex lantsberg wrote:
>
>> The master's tools will never destroy the master's house.
>> - Audre Lorde in Sister Outsider
>>
>> [From the 50 Years is Enough list, reformatted by your humble
>> moderator. I don't think I agree with Audre Lord's aphorism at the
>> end of Njoki's sig file, but that's another story.]
>>
>>what do folks on the list think about the statemen? i'm
>>particularly interested in doug's story.
>>
>>frankly, i think that since the master has accumulated all of the
>>best tools, then oftentime we have
>>no choice but to use them.
>>
>
>I'm not sure what tools she's talking about. Syllogisms? Calculus?
>Computers? Rhyme and meter? Complex social organization? There seems
>to me to be a big difference in how "tools" can be used - whether to
>dominate or liberate.
>
>David Henderson, the ex-OECD economist, thinks that the use of the
>Master's tool - the Internet - by anti-MAI campaigners is a very bad
>thing. Seems a very good thing to me.
>
>Doug
>