Beautiful sentiment, and much of it I'm not prepared to argue with.
First of all, I'm going to place my comments among your message. This is
not to present the appearance of a winning arguement, but only for ease of
keeping track of the points.
At 10:41 AM 10/4/2000, Secret Squirrel wrote, or rather forwarded:
...read on and learn also that capitalism == mass slavery [LART],
and that, very definitely, property == theft [LART].
For an anarchist, he also seems a little too eager to invoke the authority
of the dictionary to support his claims [CLUESTICK - get 2 free LARTs].
FableOfNamesMonger http://www.politechbot.com/p-01275.html
--
Forwarded from http://www.radio4all.org/anarchy/guerin.html
Purported Author/Host: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Reach out and touch him ;-)
TRUE OR FALSE?
"Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism. The anarchist is primarily a
socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man."
This statement was made by Daniel GuĂrin in his excellent book,
_Anarchism_. I
included it at the top of my web page as a way of making it clear that
anarchism
isn't merely a lifestyle or is somehow compatible with capitalism, but is a
radical, revolutionary social theory that, should it ever be successfully
implemented (barring the genocidal force that capitalist powers have and
continue to put to bear against any popular socialist revolutions that
arise),
would transform society in ways we can scarcely imagine today.
The ideas of the key thinkers as well as the history and practice of
anarchism
backs this view up.
*_"Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism"_*
What does this mean? To the individual raised on decades of unrelenting
anti-communist propaganda, the mere mention of the word "socialism" prompts a
knee-jerk reaction, typically involving references to evil, repression, mass
murder, totalitarianism.
This is largely a result of the multi-million dollar campaigns waged for the
past 80 years against socialism by the capitalist nations of the world.
Apologists cite the brutality of Stalin as "proof" that socialism is
synonymous
with mass murder. However, it should be noted that the capitalist West
actually
INVADED the nascent USSR in the immediate wake of the October Revolution.
President Woodrow Wilson ordered Marines sent to Russia, who ransacked
villages,
murdered peasants, and threw their lot in with the Tsarist White Russians
(beginning an long-repeated tradition of support for fascist/monarchist
regimes
at the expense of popular uprisings).
So, even before Stalin came onto the scene, the capitalist West was
determined
that socialism be stamped out!
News to me, I won't argue. We've done it before, we're doing it now, we'll
do it again.
But one thing that is very important to note is that what came about in
the USSR
wasn't really socialism in practice--rather, the Bolsheviks seized political
power and control of the state (and set about destroying the anarchists
within
Russia, who actually took the revolution seriously--from 1917-1921, the
indigenous anarchist movement in the USSR was systematically wiped out,
making
the anarchists the first victims of Bolshevik repression!)
So what we had in the USSR was a party vanguard (the Bolsheviks) seizing
power
FOR the people. Lenin, Trotsky, and the other Bolsheviks had no intention of
allowing the state to "wither away". They, instead, killed the Revolution and
spent time consolidating their power.
And this, first off, is a very important distinction: the Communist Party
ruled
in the USSR; NOT the people themselves. Thus was totalitarianism born.
Socialism, according to the _American Heritage Dictionary_, is defined as:
1. A social system in which the producers possess both political power and
the means of producing and distributing goods.
Think about that for a moment.
*- Were the Bolsheviks the producers? NO! They were a vanguard party
acting (so
they said) IN THE INTERESTS OF THE WORKERS. This is an important
distinction. They used brutal police and military force to enforce their
power over the genuine producers.
*- Did the workers of the USSR possess the means of producing and
distributing
goods? NO! In fact, it was the actions of the anarchists in the
Ukraine, in
the worker soviets, and in the City of Kronstadt to do precisely that
(worker control of production and distribution of goods) that the
Bolsheviks
put a violent end to!
In other words, the Bolsheviks wanted to put an end to SOCIALISM! Why?
Because
they wanted to secure power for themselves. And that they did, as history has
shown.
Let's look at the definition of communism, for the sake of completeness...
1. A social system characterized by the absence of classes and by common
ownership of the means of production and subsistence. 2.a. A political,
economic, and social doctrine aiming at the
