> Liberalism is full of paradoxes, on of them being the
> melding of an apparent rational skepticism with a set of
> absolute and unquestioned religious beliefs even when these
> fly in the face of both experience and intention (e.g. the
> credo in the Declaration of Independence.) In a way, it's a
> continuation of feudalism, an improved version, which makes
> room for and incorporates certain anarchistic ideas like
> personal autonomy into a (somewhat) cleaned-up context of
> domination. Given that human beings seem to prefer to deal
> with social problems in the worst way possible which yet
> achieves the needed result, maybe there was no other
> politically possible way out of the feudal state.
Right.... if only the serfs had just gone anarchist when met with the proposition of owning their own land or wage labor.... what idiots the serfs must have been....
>
> It appears to me that, because of that very creativity, we do
> not have the conservative choice of simply accepting the tragic
> nature of human life and muddling on. As technology and
> accumulation make more and more humans more and more powerful,
> the likelihood that continued aggression, competition and
> violence will destroy the world steadily increases, so that
> our choice becomes not one between socialism and barbarism --
> we chose! -- but between anarchy and self-annihilation. So
> we may have to tragically abandon the delights of tragedy.
>
I like the Judy Garland version the best: "Come on along, come on, Get Happy, Get ready for the Judgement Day!"
It is not a matter of "accepting tragedy," or for that matter comedy, happiness, etc. It is the necessity of coming up with an analysis of the real obstacles that people really face. The "reality" is not a bourgeois universe, a la the Oprah Winfrey show, where people can "choose" happiness, if only they put their minds to it. It's not as if Daddy would have given me a Jaguar, if only I hadn't found the "worst" way of asking for it, and ended up with a Dodge Dart instead. There are real economic-- and dialectical-- constraints.
And again, you seem to be hinting at this notion that socialism has already been attempted (i.e., "we [sic] chose"), or that socialism is the same as barbarism. But, socialism has never been attempted in the most developed countries-- the very countries in which Marx wrote that it needed to occur!
>
> Well, there are a few around. In 1999 I published a short
> essay on Usenet visible at http://www.etaoin.com/A/anaprax1.htm
I look forward to reading it.
> which contained some very specific ideas for advancing anarchist
> culture and politics. Subsequently I have discovered that
> many people have put forward similar ideas here and there.
> However, at this time they're not taken seriously by very many
> people because of the widespread assumption, even among
> leftists, that all politics is and must be statecraft, that
> is, some kind of technique of violence and domination. I
> believe that these cannot get us anywhere we want to go for
> both theoretical reasons and the evidence of history.
You just wrote, above, that "maybe there was no other politically possible way out of the feudal state", but now seem to be stating that the "possible" was impossible. If you care to explain how the burghers could have avoided violence and domination in their overthrow of the feudal system, I'd love to hear the reason. Or, at the dress rehearsal for the next stage, I'd love for you to explain how Russia could have become a instant utopian society free from want, given the isolated nature of its revolution and economic backwardness.
All ears, David -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20020818/7eacc1da/attachment.htm>