<HTML>In a message dated 8/17/2002 11:52:35 PM Eastern Standard Time, gcf@panix.com writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">The liberal vision centers on the efficiency of the social machine; therefore, while liberty is good in its place (so that the wheels can turn) it must be liberty under Law.  When necessary to the well-being of the Great Machine, that Law may order war, slavery and imperialism -- that is, call out the cops -- so that the Machine can go forward.  This is the very coercion whose specifics I have been asking about and which we see all around us. The anarchist, interested (I would think) in Minute Particulars rather than the greatness of the Great Machine, might suggest that if we need to shoot people to get airplanes, maybe we don't really want airplanes.  After all, there are things more important (to this anarchist) than the Great Machine's maximal performance.  (Of course, there's also the possibility that we don't have to shoot people to get airplanes, but nobody's interested in it.)</BLOCKQUOTE> I think we really ought to resist polarizing our own political tendencies, and thus those of others, in the course of debate. It seems like the author, above, makes binaries out of "anarchism" and "non-anarchism." The fundamental view from a revolutionary socialist perspective is the same as that of anarchism: All states are coercive vehicles of class power, period. The question is HOW to get to the post-revolutionary (or advanced communist) society. I have never gotten an anarchist to answer this question, beyond the usual vague emotionalisms on "freedom," "liberty," etc. -- David</HTML>