(Quoting Chuck0)
>> For the anti-capitalist movement to achieve real change it
>>will have to do so through a confrontational approach to
>>liberal democracy. This could involve the setting up of
>>social forums throughout Europe, at local levels, creating
>>direct links with local communities in struggle. These,
>>organised in a federal structure - but respecting local
>>autonomy - would undermine and ultimately make obsolete the
>>earth-destroying, authoritarian and oppressive governmental
>>structures that currently control the planet.
>
Doug
>
> Do you (or any other anarchists around) agree with this? Instead of
> engaging with the state and other institutions of power, can people
> just opt out and build around?
An important and provactive question. A lot of anarchists do believe exactly this - that we can create alternative institutions that will gradualy supply an alternative economic and cultural base. In the most extreme form, some anarchists actually beleive we can built a replacement for capitalism - building the new within the shell of the old. In less extreme form, alternative institutions are seen as an ecomomic base from which to fight capitalism, a place to stand once you find that damn lever big enough to move the world!
To me, both visions are utopian in the worst sense of the word - impractical, and possibly impossible. The overwhelming prevalence in belief in this strategy even among anarchists I trust is one of the reason I am not an anarchist.
This is not to say that I oppose alternative institutions. Alternative instituions help relieve immediate pain. Free medical clinics, soup kitchens , even super-granola food co-ops meet real human needs that are not being met adequately by capitalism. Free clinics will never make up for the lack of univerisal single payer health care in the U.S. Soup kitchens will never feed very hungry person in U.S. Food coops will never make up for the fact the food production here is for profit, not need. But they all do something, relieve some of the suffering. And something is better than nothing. A political movement linked to such instituions is more grounded than one that is eternally fighting for pie in the sky by and by, can gain respect by relieving immediate suffering.
Further, even very small alternative instituions can make for excellent propaganda. Take the Mondragon Coffee Shop and Bookstore in Winnepeg (named of course after the much larger coop dominiated region of Spain).
It is a small anti-hierachial co-op, sharing management tasks and rote tasks equally among it's worker/owners so that everyone has pretty much equal power and work quality, pay and working conditions in their work lives. OK, easy to dismiss as "boutique socialism".
Only what they do politically is fairly impressive. Firstly everyone who walks in to the store gets a pamphlet telling them that it is not only worker owned and controlled, but boss-free - that everone has some management responsiblities so that the store is not divided into managers and managed. The idea of actually doing without bosses is novel to quite a number of people; they end up making a large number of connections.
And of course, even as a very small instituion, they are able to provide practical help to leftist causes - meeting space, space for display of posters, literature racks to distribute pamphlets, and even modest donations of food and money. Plus, time is made for members to take part in activism.
Now there is nn way I can see for alternative institutiosns to ever replace captialist institutions before a revolution, or even serve as a material base for most action. Soup kitchens and free clinics depend on donations. They can't by their nature replace economic institutions that produce profits, at least not while capitalism exists. And alternative instituions such food co-ops or workers owned and run small buisinesses generally do not produce huge surpluses of money to contribute or labor or space or resources. I simply do not ever see that them providing the kind of material base, say, a radicalized labor movement could.
But both the relieving of suffering, and the potential propaganda roles are not to be underestimated. Supose co-ops like the (Winpeg) Mondragon Co-op were everywhere - resteraunts, food stores - not some gigantic percentage of the economy, but enough so that everyone came into the contact with them. Then they would be a way for ordinary workers to be exposed to the idea that workers could own and run their own workplaces - that it is possible to be boss free. This was once a commonplace of US popular culture - now so far buried that most people find it inconcievable. And if such co-ops did exist, they could also network loosely - and be a tremedously useful way of spreading information quickly.
Of course the for such a network of co-ops to exist, you would need the resources to found them. In short you would need a left. So if we had some ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some eggs....