<HTML>The issue here is not simply one of differences in anarchist and socialist conceptions of politics, but of core questions in democratic thought and practice. Important currents in democratic theory have recognized the possibility of a 'tyranny of the majority,' in which the majority decides to deny the rights of a minority; in opposition to such notions, more progressive currents of democratic theory insist upon defining a democratic polity in terms of the combination of majority rule and minority rights. That is why the classic notion of civil disobedience under a democratic government asserts both the right to disobey laws which one believes violates fundamental human rights and the responsibility to accept whatever penalties may come from the judicial system as a result of breaking the law. The challenge is then not the authority of the majority to rule, per se, but to the enactment of specific laws which violate minority rights. This was the philosophy behind the use of mass, non-violent civil disobedience during the civil rights and anti-war movements. It seems to me that, as a body of political philosophy, anarchism does not recognize the democratic principle that the majority has a right to govern. It accepts liberal principles of individual rights, and thus, minority rights, but not the right of the majority to make laws. Anarchism is liberalism taken to the extremis, denying democratic principles in a way that points out how liberal democracy embodies a tension between liberalism's focus on individual rights and democracy's focuses on equality. << In reality most anarchists are not against majority votes, we are against the idea that in all circumstances the minority are required to obey the majority. This might sound controversal but on issues like racism and abortion rights many on the left would agree with this. My own introduction to activism was partly through defying the strongly anti-abortion majority of the Irish population and supplying 'abortion information' to Irish women. [A relevant example because it involved disobeying the majority not merely arguing for it to be changed). And in the next months I'm part of a group bringing a ship here that will be equipped to carry out abortions. See http://struggle.ws/ws/2001/64/abortion.html >> Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- </HTML>