[lbo-talk] Good Morning America on anarchism

Lance Murdoch lancemurdoch at lycos.com
Tue Aug 17 06:34:26 PDT 2004



> I was recently informed by an organizer with the national Greens
> that many of the Greens are actually anarchists. But this stuff
> is the exception to the basic principles of anarchism which
> stresses direct action.

Local to where I am outside of the city, the only real progressive meeting place has been the local Greens office. They're involved in Green political races, but they also do other stuff as well. To do any kind of action you need a handful of people to start with, and I'm not sure where else there would be to go locally except the local Greens office.

The Green Key Values ( http://www.gp.org/tenkey.html ) have some congruousness with anarchist values.

Value 1 Grassroots Democracy: "We will also work to create new types of political organizations which expand the process of participatory democracy by directly including citizens in the decision-making process."

Value 5 Decentralization: "Decision-making should, as much as possible, remain at the individual and local level, while assuring that civil rights are protected for all citizens."

I have a suspicion most Greens are "watermelons" - Green on the outside, red on the inside. I've met many of the most active Greens in New York City. One of them talked about Hegel at one meeting, another one had Hegel books on her bookshelf and talked about alienated labor. Another one had a book written by Mao under a pile of other stuff.

Of course, on the other hand, they are a political party. Running for office, petitioning and voting all seem pointless. A petitioning counselor told me that spending several minutes talking to someone was pointless. So what is petitioning? Hours and hours of trying to get disinterested people, whom you also have a disinterest in as you're just trying to get to the next person, to sign a petition because some bureaucrat demanded it, so that someone can run for office - it all seems rather pointless. Then there's the whole Cobb/Nader fiasco. When you consider that the majority of Greens just want the Greens to be subordinate to the Democratic Party leadership, it seems even more pointless. Aside from the fact that the party, at least from a PR point-of-view, seems to be about environmentalism and a lot of hippy-dippy stuff, when I would want the basis of a political party to be rooted in rank-and-file workers. -- _______________________________________________ Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10



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