Hardt & Negri: The New Federalist?

Lisa & Ian Murray seamus at accessone.com
Fri Feb 9 21:49:48 PST 2001



> Andrew wrote:
>
> >Nice theory except the left anti-state movement is many, many times
> >stronger in Europe then it is in the US. There are considerably
> >more anarchists in a single organisation (CGT union - 45,000 members)
> >in Spain there there are anarchists in the entire N.American continent.
>
> It seems to me that our contemporary anti-statist American leftists
> are not into building an organization. Building a union of 45,000
> members would probably violate the American spirit of
> decentralization. :) The anarchist current that has been influential
> in Europe is anarcho-syndicalism (to which the CGT, the CNT, etc.
> belong). Anarcho-syndicalism probably is a little too disciplined &
> organized to appeal to anti-statist sentiments of American leftists
> (including American anarchists) today.
>
> Yoshie
************** Well, it actually helps to rail against the state when you want to organize 45K workers in a company; especially when the state has labor laws on the books that serve as blatant protectionism for capital like the US'[it _can_ feed the "1st the union then the state" paradigm]. The question isn't one of disipline, it's whether organizing is participatory or replicates the toxic leader-follower dynamic.

Ian



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