Jim, I usually agree with or at least enjoy what you write, but I could not let aspects of your blindsiding rant go undisturbed. >> Historically, anarchists have done very little for anybody or any just causes; often they have served repressive powers-that-be as wreckers obsessed with their own self-centered concepts and states of "Liberty" >> Which anarchists ? Which times ? Which places ? There have been brief shining moments in history when revolutionary anarchism has had a mass basis to the great service of liberation. Obviously, as one person here commented, there's the Spanish Civil War. Revolutionary anarchism was the anti-traditionalist and anti-capitalist ideology of choice for a large segment of the working class based on their own history, not on the outside agitation of dilettante artists or some such imaginaries. Not only did they turn convents into latrines, but posh hotels into popular cantinas, and instituted workers' control in the mines, mills, and factories of a Republican Spain under seige (not that they didn't have their own problems ...) >> In Germany many of the anarchists were instrumental in wrecking united fronts against fascism and easily came over to the side of the Nazis and cut their own Faustian Bargains >> Whereas the CP and SDP of pre-Nazi Germany had all of their ducks in a row, illustrated by their petty feuds over social imperialism and fealty to the Comintern ... My point here is not to raise the black banner against the red, but just to complicate the picture a bit more ... John Gulick UC-Santa Cruz
