> Let's say Verizon becomes a worker-owned collective. Fine. But it's still
> in the capitalist marketplace. It still has to compete with capitalist
> outfits. Wouldn't it benefit if those firms were unionized? Then they
> couldn't use their advantage of labor exploitation to undersell Verizon and
> drive it out of business. The one thing most necessary in providing the
> right kind of climate for economic anarchism is labor regulation (not to
> mention eco and "consumer" regulation). This removes the unfair advantage
> of corporations, while we in our co-op commons get to retain our entirely
> legitimate advantage of not being insane.
Well, there's a lot of problems with cooperatives exisiting in a capitalist system. See the Anarchist FAQ for a good analysis of this problem.
If self-management is more efficient, surely capitalist firms will be forced to introduce it by the market? http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secJ5.html#secj512
> Utopia doesn't appear overnight. It isn't given-- it's self-created. It
> starts out as spores which have to grow and mature in the context of the
> marketplace. Our little specks of worker's society will never transform
> into a syndicate if they have to do so in the face of an unfriendly
> marketplace. Government regulation is like putting an ozone in, plenty of
> nitrogen in the air, some rain clouds once in awhile. And it can work the
> other way too. The government can poison the air, and that's what it's
> doing at all times with its corporate welfare. This is why we need to
> support progressives in the voting booth (but only the real ones and
> hopefully at the expense of the fake ones).
Well, I agree with the first part of this paragraph, but I reject the voting part. Voting doesn't accomplish anything and disempowers the workers who engage in it. Workers need to stay out of the voting booth and devote more energy to workplace organizing and sabotage.
It's really amusing to see progressives prostrating themselves at the feet of Nader the savior when 8 years ago they were urging me to vote for Clinton.
We all know what Clinton gave us. I can't see how that was any better than Reagan/Bush.
<< Chuck0 >>
This was the year *everything* changed.
-- Commander Ivanova, 2261
Mid-Atlantic Infoshop -> http://www.infoshop.org/ Alternative Press Review -> http://www.altpr.org/ Practical Anarchy Online -> http://www.practicalanarchy.org/
Homepage -> http://flag.blackened.net/chuck0/home/
"A society is a healthy society only to the degree that it exhibits anarchistic traits."
- Jens Bjørneboe
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