libertarian socialism

JKSCHW at aol.com JKSCHW at aol.com
Tue Oct 3 14:24:56 PDT 2000


OK, so I mean "schmocialism," a democratic worker's state, not like Russia, but with civil liberties, competitive elections, and civil liberties as well as workers' control of production and investment. I am not interested in disposing of claims by definition. I mighta s well say that by definition, majority rule is inconsistent with no government,s ince I define majority rule as a form of government. This sort of pronouncementw ill get us nowhere.

If you claim that any government ends us up with the Stalin terror or a Brezhnevite dictatorship, that is obviously false. We have a government here in the US and it is neither of those things,a lthough I am not saying it is ideal by any means.

If you can't see the difference between liberal democracy and dictatorship, go and live under what other people call a dictatorship for while. For one, the police come to arrest you if you say things like what you have been saying.

--jks

In a message dated Tue, 3 Oct 2000 4:35:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "Joe R. Golowka" <joeG at ieee.org> writes:

<< ----- Original Message ----- From: <JKSCHW at aol.com>
> Who said representative = corporate?

In practice every representative system has ended up being dominated by an elite of one kind or another. If it's not corporations then it's some other elite.


> I am talking about under socialism. --jks

Socialism cannot coexist with government. The state is an organisation with a monopoly on legitimate violence. If you have a classless society and a government then the buerecrats that make up the state will use their monopoly of force to establish themselves as a new ruling class. That's what happened in Russia.

Joe R. Golowka JoeG at ieee.org Anarchist FAQ - http://www.infoshop.org/faq

"An anarchist who supports male domination contradicts the implicit critique of power which is the fundamental principle upon which all of anarchism is built. Sexist anarchists do exist, but only by virtue of directly contradicting their own anarchism. This contradiction leaves sexist anarchists open to criticism on their own terms. Anarchism must be feminist if it is to remain consistent" - L. Susan Brown

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