The War at Home, Up Closeby Kevin AnnettEast of Main, on occupied land called VancouverThe iron fence went up quickly around Oppenheimer Park this week, closing off the last remaining common ground left to the people of our community: homeless mostly, half of them aboriginal, none of them with anywhere else to go save a piss-soaked alley, now that the walls have once again fallen and enclosed a green and quiet space.It's fashionable these days among white folks to talk about "solidarity with native people", now that even the government is babbling about "reconciliation". But when the walls …
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This is a response to Graeme's question on parties and methods of change. I. To Party or Not to Party? While I favour the formation of a party in the mid-nineneeth century concept ion of it – which at that time meant tendency or grouping, I do not favour the creation of what the concept became in the latter half of that century. Typically such parties are top-down and centralized. Such structure means they cannot help but become sclerotic, or opportunist or corrupt. The situation is even worse for parties in the parliamentary arena, where compromise and deal-making are the order of the …
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My intention here is not to make points against Lenin, but rather to analyze "The State And Revolution" as objectively as possible, yet remain within the context of anarchism. This analysis written by Lenin some months before the October Revolution, has been called his most libertarian work. Writers such as Hal Draper, Raya Dunayevskya, C.L.R James, therefore claimed that Lenin was something of a libertarian socialist and Trotskyists have also used it to claim that he was in favour of workers' power. The State and Revolution, more than any other document, spells out the Marxist concept …
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This latest work by Kevin Carson, expands many of the themes found in his groundbreaking STUDIES IN MUTUALIST POLITICAL ECONOMY published in 2004. In ORGANIZATION THEORY Carson first examines the literature on the economics of scale and finds the giant corporation to be highly inefficient. State intervention is the factor that allows the corporation to overcome this disadvantage. He next exposes the different variety of government policies which gave rise to and aided the growth of economic centralization and giantism. In Part Two he examines the systemic effects and in Part Three examines the …
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The word "totalitarian" while politically loaded, is still a useful concept. As brutal and authoritarian as 18th and 19th Century England was it could not be considered a totalitarian state. Plain old authoritarianism is separated from totalitarianism by the high level of invasiveness of the latter. Also, the old authoritarian states were so inefficient and the techniques and technologies of domination so crude, they were highly ineffective. Even if they wanted to totally dominate the lives of the people they could not do so. The kings and tyrants of old wanted you to work for them …
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