Milton the Anarchist Re: "post-leftism"

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Mon Aug 19 13:56:09 PDT 2002


Gordon Fitch wrote:
> > > So we're really not done with airplanes. Good. Now, do you
> > > all want to tell me who you're going to coerce, and how, in
> > > order to get the airplanes, steel plowshares, and so forth?

Miles Jackson wrote:
> > Both sides of this debate seem to accept the premise that people
> > will only do socially useful labor if they are coerced

Michael Pollak:
> Actually, as far as I can tell, Gordon emphatically doesn't accept that
> premise and wants to have someone prove it him, i.e., that airplanes can't
> get built without coercion (and are therefore impossible to build in a
> non-coercise society). But he's been expressing himself so conditionally
> -- accepting his opponents' premises arguendo at great length and then
> tacking on his fundamental view as a coda -- that everyone he's arguing
> with thinks he does accept it.

My opponents' arguments are much juicier than mine. I say things like that I don't see any inherent upper limit to the complexity of self-organized systems. Ho-hum. My "opponents" have us anarchists frog-marching the populations of great cities into the desert, smashing the looms, and selling out to globcap all at once; meanwhile they're beating people to death in the basement of Boeing to keep the planes coming while muttering catch-phrases from Marx and Adorno. It's like _Natural_Born_Killers_ where you start hearing Nusrat yipping in the background -- how can I compete with it? Better to wait until the driver falls asleep and let the air out of the tires.

Whoops! One over limit. Well, that's an anarcissist for you.

-- Gordon



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