[lbo-talk] : The New Anarchist

c b cb31450 at gmail.com
Mon Dec 5 07:49:10 PST 2011


Civil disobedience logically must be of an unjust law. I believe Thoureau broke laws unjustly collecting taxes for unjust war, Ghandists unjust colonialist laws, 60's Civil rights activists unjust segregation laws. The Occupation's breaking park regulations is very indirectly breaking the unjust laws being protested which are ultimately the laws of private property. An important distinguishing characteristic of the Occupation is it is a protest of private property and institutions, which is not identical with the govenrment and public institutions. The distinction is important because criticism of the government, and not private property, is an American passtime. This tradition overlaps with the American anarchist, i.e. anti-government tradition and importantly is a main fascist Tea Party/libertarian focus. The central Tea Party criticism of the Occupation is, of course, that it should not be protesting Wall Street , but the government. Exactly wrong. What is new and critical about the Occupation is that it takes a form of activity always directed at government and directs it at private property institutions. It polticizes the Market. The government is already sufficiently politicized in the US. So, the Occupation should be careful not to over protest for the right to demonstrate in a public park when it has had more time to protest in public parks than most in the past. In the past limitations on First Amendment rights , protesting the government something of a diversion in a libertarian direction for the Movement. The police brutality must be protested (Fourth Amerdment rights) but that too is a diversion, the police drawing protest on to themeselves and off of Wall Street and private property Keep the focus on private property laws.

"In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. "

^^^^^^^^^ An important aspect of the occupations is how so many other geographic locations responded and militantly to the initial #Occupy Wall Street protest. It seems to me that the substantive issues of protest, unfairness of the 99%/1% unequal distribution of wealth and the bailout of the institutions where wealth is already unfairly concentrated somehow resonated with a large number of people all over America. A bigger chunk than I thought of the 99% "get it" already; get the anti-capitalism as a system message already. And a bigger chunk of the 99% are militantly angry about what capitalism is doing to them.

The Facilitated Concensus form of meeting may be popular because American radical tradition is significantly anarchist. The novelty of the form is some of its appeal. Actually, contrast with "democratic centralism" is too narrow. "Democratic centralism" is the same thing as "majority rule" or sort of "vulgar" democracy. Lenin used the term , but he was in a country that had a history of autocracy, not majority rule. So, he was spelling it out and using a fancy term to explain to people who were not used to being in meetings where Roberts rules were followed , which means votes with majority rule. That the minority abides by the decisions of the majority - democratic centralism- is the same thing, identical to, majority rule, no ?

Roberts Rules of Order is more fully what Facilited Consensus replaces, because the GA meetings are still on the scale of meetings customarily run by Roberts'.

Charle



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