>But they've grown up in a capitalist society that systematically
>facilitates weenie-wagging and flaming, so this is a predictable
>outcome. (Again, the obstacle is not human nature, it's the
>constellation of social relations we're in now.)
But we've all grown up in a capitalist society, and bear its psychic scars. Doesn't that contaminate any anticapitalist project? If a group highly disposed towards nonhierarchical, self-governing politics can't organize a listserv, how could they organize a complex social system?
I realize I'm generalizing from a small and near-trivial example, but the inability of anything but small, ephemeral organizations to prefigure the post-hierarchical utopia is sobering.
Seems to me that the old Marxist point - we have to work with the hand we've been dealt - is compelling. Which, in this case, means working towards more just and egalitarian formal systems, and not the elimination of organizational charts.
Doug