Ack, more liberal apologia for capitalism and property relations.
> The equation of all property with capitalism is the key economic idiocy of
> the Left in the 20th century. There are all kinds of property, some of
> which promotes personal freedom against both government and criminals, and
> some of which just promotes raw corporate power to take away that freedom.
> The failure to distinguish between those different meanings of property to
> people is one reason the Right can play public relations games of equating
> democracy with capitalism.
Obviousman: No shit. There is a difference between personal and corporate property.
> And arguing that no economic action can constitute harm or violence is
> ridiculous. Taking away someone's health care, taking away their home,
> taking away their job is a form of attack that I fully recognize as
> violence. People understand that; when companies are threatening peoples
> livilihoods during strikes, its one reason there is often sympathy for union
> physical violence to defend themselves economically. It's also one reason
> the NRA maintains support in the idea of having a gun to protect personal
> property.
Who the hell is attacking personal property?
The NRA supports guns to protect private property while liberals like Newman support armies to support capitalism. Sounds like the NRA is at least being more up front about their goals.
> Now, when corporate opponents are clearly identified and property damage
> targets them in retaliation for their specific violence, physical or
> economic, that they may have done, you can often generate real public
> sympathy. But when such property damage appears to be indiscriminate,
> hitting small stores on the edge of financial survival (often true) as
> well,then that sympathy will disappear as fears lead the public to switch
> sympathy to property owners.
The property destruction perpetrated by the anti-capitalist movement has been very discriminate and on target.
> And the problem is that the damage done by these kind of protets is
> insignificant economically for the corporate giants we are talking about, so
> it fails on both levels. It fails to really deter corporate power by the
> big guys but inflames the fears of those small property owners for who the
> damage would be meaningful. The worst of all possible worlds.
Oh, jesus, another lame liberal entreaty for us to all play nice in the streets. Give us a fucking break!
Small property owners are not targetted in these protests. The property destruction bothers the corporate giants, not because it inflicts great monetary damage on them, but because, as the Eugene anarchist say, it "breaks the spell." Don't tell me that you haven't heard of the "end of history" meme. Contemporary capitalism has spent billions of dollars over the past few decades coopting dissent and convincing everybody that capitalist was triumphant over all competing systems. It was saying that resistance is futile.
> It all goes to the issue of disciplined activism-- you celebrate "anything
> goes" networks and lack of strategic coherence, but that is what inevitably
> feeds the fears of the public over such property attacks, since they are
> perceptive enough to wonder if they might be next, since nothing would seem
> to stop escalation by any splinter group.
You spend too much time believing the corporate media accounts of the protests. There is strategic coherence to these tactics. I know some of the folks that do this stuff and I can say that they are more principled and disciplined than most protestors.
This isn't an anything goes street riot. If you want that go to some championship celebration after some big sporting event.
<< Chuck0 >>
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INTERNATIONALISM IN PRACTICE
An American soldier in a hospital explained how he was wounded: He said, "I was told that the way to tell a hostile Vietnamese from a friendly Vietnamese was to shout ‘To hell with Ho Chi Minh!’ If he shoots, he’s unfriendly. So I saw this dude and yelled ‘To hell with Ho Chi Minh!’ and he yelled back, ‘To hell with President Johnson!’ We were shaking hands when a truck hit us."
(from 1,001 Ways to Beat the Draft, by Tuli Kupferburg).