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It's not a secret that my politics are largely libertarian, though I tend to reject the utopianist anarchs within the Libertarian movement. I reject the cult of Ayn Rand, objectivism and a score of other icons of neo-libertarians.
What can't be escaped in the movement for Men's Rights is the idea of politics; while a dirty game, it's the game we have to play. Fact is, regardless of one's politics elsewise, we'd be well advised to take a page from the pheminists book. They learned to play the game, and play it well, and their success in the political arena can't be argued against as it is self evident. The lesson they learned is to view their politics through the lens of what they were trying to achieve.
I'm not saying that Men's Rights is the only issue that faces society today, but in order for the men's movement to gain a seat at the table, it has to be the sole determiner of what a view is. I myself, though I disagree with several things that I call for, call for them nonetheless as an overall strategy. For example, I'd like to see more government pro-activity in support of educating fathers. This isn't because I find it desireable, or that I think the government would be particularly effective, but the reasons are threefold, first it might tend to over-extend the government and render all such services impotent, second, it diverts funds away from anti-male programs, and lastly, it's been a frequent practice of the pheminutz to shut down women's programs in a fit of pique rather than provide equal service for men. Any of the three are desireable, as they all achieve the true end, to stop disparate treatment of men de jure.
Well, sympathies on political issues not-withstanding, I have several issues with it.
Future feminists will look back in disbelief at today’s false notion of a built-in Gender War between men and women, in much the same way we regard past theories of a flat Earth.
Only, flat-Earthers were generally harmless people. Politically correct feminists can be vicious.
To understand the Gender War, it is necessary to examine each word separately.
Wendy here makes the same mistake of hubris that is so common in many libertarians, that their concept of the "way things ought to be" is so self evident that its adoption as a societal meme is inevitable. She also seems to imply that her views are a lot more widely held than the evidence would indicate, just because they are so damn obvious.
While a crumb of praise for a more balanced view is due, Ms. McElroy doesn't quite grasp that her brand of "IFeminism" is a fringe movement of the Feminists. At best they are regarded as sometimes useful deviants by them, at worst she is considered a sell-out and traitor to her sex.
Don't believe it? Get you a feminine handle, and go spouting iFeminist rhetoric on the Ms. Boards (Damn right I frequently lurk there, I always want to know what the enemies of God and Man are up to) and Quoting Wendy Mac and see where it gets you.
What Is Gender?
Politically correct feminists consider "sex" to be a matter of biology; that is, you are physically male or female. By contrast, they believe "gender" is a social construct; that is, your sexuality is defined by society, not biology. By this definition of gender, there are currently about 20 different categories of gender, from heterosexual to lesbian, from transvestite to transgendered.
"Socially constructed" means that everything about your sexuality -- short of the brute biology -- can be transformed by changing your environment. PC feminists claim that everything from the urge to procreate to male-female attraction is created by society. This is different from merely claiming that your environment influences you.
Transforming the environment, therefore, is a political matter. PC feminists contend that the institutions of society -- such as the legal system, churches and the family -- must be deconstructed and rebuilt according to "correct" principles.
A necessary definition of terms, and a succinct though oversimplified definition, but covering the essential facts.
What Is the War About?
The current principles are said to be incorrect and anti-woman because men, acting as a class, constructed them. Men define "woman" by her biology -- for example, as a sex partner or mother -- and they force a male definition of gender upon her through their institutions.
In short, PC feminists see the Gender War as a tugging contest between two classes, men and women, for control of "woman." The political interest of men is called "patriarchy (search)," or white male culture. The political interest of women is PC or gender feminism (search).
See above, so saith the feminists. Now Wendy is getting on to her point, that she is a conscientious objector to the "gender war." Well, she's already proved that the gender "feminists" have declared war on men. So she's going to sit it out. I suppose I can envy her ability to make this choice, as she isn't in their crosshairs.
Who was it that said, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good to do nothing?"
However, many assumptions of the Gender War are absurdly false, beginning with the rejection of biology's crucial role in human nature. Perhaps the most destructive assumption is that men and women are separate and antagonistic political classes.
And in a perfect world they wouldn't be. But such a division has been made by the feminists, and the lines drawn. What reality should be, and what reality is are two different things. Women's issues, Wendy, have been defined, and that definition accepted within the political arena as being atagonistic, mutually exclusive, and a zero sum game. To pretend otherwise would be like sitting down at a poker table and starting to play euchre. After some consternation, you at best wind up ignored and get dealt no cards.
There can be valid reasons for dividing women and men into separate classes. For example, doctors often medically separate the sexes to apply different treatments. Women are examined for breast cancer; men for prostrate problems. But medicine does not claim that the basic health interests of men and women as human beings are separate and in conflict. Indeed, the interests of both do not widely diverge. Because of a common biology, the sexes share the same basic approach to nutrition, exercise and common sense lifestyle choices. Health for men and women is roughly defined and pursued in the same manner.
A statement of the obvious, and it's prostate, not prostrate. Add to that, I do know a man who had to have a masectomy - for breast cancer. The trouble is that funds for medical research are first allocated in bulk, and then divided up, and what winds up is a de facto zero sum game. If condition "A" gets funds, other conditions B through Z lose them.
Choose your tactics from there as you will, but accept the reality of the present game we are playing; the pheminists have set the rules up so that in order to be pro-man you must be anti-woman. Yes the game is rigged. Deal with it.
By contrast, politically correct feminism separates men and women into political classes and claims that their common humanity is less important than their genders. Accordingly, men and women not only have no shared political interests -- their interests directly conflict.
Which may be a wrong thing morally, but they pheminazis have defined the terms of the political dialogue. Again, deal.
Consider freedom of speech. You might assume that all human beings benefit from the uninhibited flow of words and ideas, even offensive ones. But that would be a "male" assumption, coming from male institutions. Freedom of speech is simply a guise by which men "control the dialogue" to oppress women. Thus, PC feminists often dismiss the U.S. Constitution -- including the First Amendment (search) -- as a document written by dead white men and of no importance.
Which is why the old asage of "The Personal is the Political" is so important to pheminist ideology. The group (women) is intertwined and indistiguishable from the individual so much that the needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. This is where socialism and "feminism" are married to each other, the concept of community, communalism, and communism is the vehicle by which pheminists advance their agenda. It must be so, how could you advance the cause of a group under a system that valued the individual over the group?
This is a lesson here for the "moderate socialists." Like "feminism" your political movement has been hijacked by extremists. Extremists are driving the train. You are a fringe of the movement, so small that your views are just given a statistical nod by the leaders of your movement, the only consideration of you being "How many of them are Yellow-Dog socialists that will vote our way anyway?"
If you wish to complain that people are saying feminism and socialism are connected, you're just shooting a messenger that is pointing out an obvious truth. Your leaders could long ago have rejected "feminism" as an undesirable association to have. They didn't, and more so, they gave them significant voice. Now the train is going to where you don't want to go.
Your call is to stay on the train or not. I know building your own railroad at this stage of the game is a rough job. You have to decide for yourself is socialism is more important to you than masculism. The Pheminut/socialists have given you an ultimatum on this, if you want to be socialist, you have to be "feminist." That's their doing.
Again, your call.
To counter male control of the dialogue, such feminists seek to suppress politically incorrect words and ideas. In the workplace, laws such as those against verbal sexual harassment (search) control words. In academia, ideas are regulated by language codes which categorize criticism or "attacks" on categories of human beings -- other than white males -- as hate speech (search). Even children's textbooks are edited to remove politically incorrect references.
To PC feminists, such censorship is not a violation of freedom of speech. In essence, they claim there is no such freedom; there is only social control through social construction. The real question is: Whose hands will be on the helm? Men's or women's?
This isn't the sole property of either pheminists or socialists. Totalitarians from time immemorial have gone to great pains to define disagreement with them as a crime.
And before Lorriane even chimes in here, I didn't say your disagreement was criminal, merely stupid. I fully support your right to be both wrong and stupid, and will fight with my last breath to give you a platform to speak so that there can be no doubt.
This is the key to understanding the cult of victimhood surrounding PC feminism. As long as "male institutions" remain, women are -- by definition and everywhere -- oppressed. In their worldview, the only way to cease being victims is for feminists to grab the helm. Whenever feminists do grab the helm, men cry out: We have become second-class citizens! We are legally disadvantaged in the workplace by affirmative action , ignored as victims of domestic violence in the home, discriminated against in funding for health care, oppressed by family courts that favor a mother's claim to custody ... the list scrolls on.
But protesting men miss the point. Until the "utopian" day when the institutions of society have been reconstructed, gender feminists claim no equality is possible. It is men against us; men win only if women lose, and vice versa. That's the class conflict known as the Gender War.
And here's where Wendy Mac misses the point herself: We have become second-class citizens! We are legally disadvantaged in the workplace by affirmative action , ignored as victims of domestic violence in the home, discriminated against in funding for health care, oppressed by family courts that favor a mother's claim to custody ... the list scrolls on.
Our choice is - shut up and take it. Accept the status quo? Oh, there's another choice? What, pray tell? Change it?
Okay - Yoohoo! Anti-male pheminists! Um - Would it be alright if we called a truce for a while until we change the battlefield of the war you've forced on us, so it's more advantageous to us? It's only sporting, right?
(Insert moment of stunned and defeaning silence followed by the usual pheminazi hoots, jeers, and catcalls.)
Well ... There. You. Go. That certainly was a waste of time, wasn't it?
She goes on:
The only way out of the quagmire is to abandon convoluted social theory and return to common sense. Men and women are first and foremost human beings. Biology is a controlling factor of human nature, albeit not the only one. Men and women act as individuals, not as cogs in some vast class struggle. And, as individuals, we all share the same political interest: freedom.
And here is the crux of the matter, in classic utopianist libertarian rhetoric: Open your eyes! See the obvious! And everything will magically change!
I'm reminded when dealing with many of my fellow libertarians of an old cartoon. Two scientists stand before a blackboard. Scientist number one is writing; on the first third of the blackboard is a complex formula, as is the last third. In the middle, there is a great big circle with the words "And here, a miracle occurs!" Scientist two is pointing to that spot and saying "I think we need a little more detail here."
I'd love to change the political reality. I'd love it if the terms of the dialogue were change to be founded on common sense. Hang on. Concentrating ... visualizing ... trying real hard ...HUNH!
Did it work? Hmmm. Nope, not this time either. Darn the luck. Maybe some new age "Think in?" Sure worked real good for "Visualizing World Peace" didn't it?
That's the trouble with idealism, is the tendancy to ignore reality. We men need to get a political voice BEFORE we can begin to effect a change on the political process. If we want to play Euchre, first we have to sit in on a few hands of Poker until we get the cards passed to us so we can deal them and call the game.
"I don't like poker! Poker is a feminist game! We don't want to be like them!" Such is the whine and cry of the idealists and purists when this reality is pointed out. Fine. Go build a house, build a table, and buy a deck of cards. (The real-world analogy would be secession, civil war, and the founding af a government that isn't anti-male) Lot of trouble? True. For now, this is the house, the table, and the only deck of cards at hand.
Deal with it.
We're not sitting at the table, gents, metaphorically we're standing beside it reading the rules for Euchre, and at best we are an annoyance. They don't care. They are playing poker. Don't want to play? Don't. Stand alongside the table, impotent, and continue to waste your breath kibbitzing. Who is making advances for men?
Hey, they're the folks sitting down, playing poker, and doing the dirty work that "purists" don't want to soil their hands with. They're filing lawsuits even though they have contempt for the courts. They're maneuvering in the public arena to make pheminist-friendly legislators look bad when they vote Pheminazi - dirty tricks? Maybe, but with the singular distinction of being fucking effective. They are swallowing their pride to sit down with hostile legislators, and executives, and taking incremental success - which is a bad thing only if you stop at an incremental success.
Guys, you have to decide whether your politics or Masculism is more important to you. As for me, if I'm eventually going to be edged out from having a political voice, my politics don't mean squat, do they?
Think about it.
---- Burn, Baby, Burn ----
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This article was mentioned on another thread on this board, but since the essay now heads its own thread, I, too, will repeat what I wrote.
A fine post, Gonzo.
The group (women) is intertwined and indistiguishable from the individual so much that the needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. This is where socialism and "feminism" are married to each other, the concept of community, communalism, and communism is the vehicle by which pheminists advance their agenda. It must be so, how could you advance the cause of a group under a system that valued the individual over the group?
You hit the nail square on the head here. As I've stated elsewhere on this board, there are some socialist policies with which I agree, such as universal, state-supported education at least through high school. (If the percentage of men in college drops any further, I'm starting to think that perhaps all state support of colleges and universities should be eliminated. Such support is becoming clearly discriminatory.)
There is no doubt, however, that totalitarian socialism is a tool of anti-male feminism. Pretending that this isn't true may seem helpful to some men in the very short term, but ultimately it will prove disastrous. We need to rely on the truth.
As for Wendy's article...
I generally think a lot of Wendy, but the piece (On being a conscientious objector in the gender war) that you cited really had me wondering. In particular the part, about protesting men missing the point, made no sense to me. What does she think she's doing when she speaks and writes about unfair treatment of men? She's protesting. Does she expect men to just be silent and wait for a miracle to occur? I doubt it. Perhaps she's referring to men who respond to anti-male discrimination and hatred with anti-female discrimination and hatred. That would make some sense, but it's not what she said. I hope that at least the most questionable parts of her article are more an expression of a tight deadline than of what she really believes.
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... there are some socialist policies with which I agree...
Sorry, it doesn't work that way. You can have only one basic principle, not two contradictory ones. You can have a social order based on the responsible freedom of the individual, or one based on the idea that Person A is owed a living (or an "education") by Person B. But not both, for the latter destroys the former.
Pour a thimble-full of urine into a gallon of water; what do you have? Would you drink it?
If you think you can have a free society which also offers "universal, state-supported education," you are deluding yourself. If you want socialism, you might as well go whole hog and stop wasting your time and energy pretending you want something else. Maybe once you've had a good dose of it, you'll be able to think more clearly about what you really want.
I always find it amusing that women tend to be so enamored of such "lite" socialism, when any woman knows instinctively that there's no such thing as being "a little bit pregnant." You might as well admit to yourself where that road goes before you set foot on it, because once you start, sooner or later you'll reach the destination.
This same kind of female thinking can be seen in all the feminists who apparently want to have children, but then hire a nanny to do the work. What they want is the "idea" of having children, not the reality, which is not always easy, and which requires self-sacrifice. Similarly, these "ifeminists" like to think they want liberty, but what they really want is the "idea" of liberty, while retaining what they think feminism gets for them.
The idea that you can distinguish "gender" or "radical" feminism from a benign variety thereof is the same as the delusion that there is a benign version of socialism that is different from "totalitarian" socialism. Feminism by definition divides the human species into two opposing groups; there can be no version of feminism that does not lead, sooner or later, to gender war. Socialism is based on taking one citizen's property by force (or the threat thereof) and giving it to another who hasn't earned it; since some will always resist this aggression, to which resistance the State can respond only with more force, any form of socialism will inevitably become totalitarian in time - otherwise it must collapse. There can be no other outcome - as anyone who is honest with himself can see all around us today.
"The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." --Frederick Bastiat
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... on the idea that you can have both freedom and socialism, or feminism and gender harmony: This kind of "have your cake and eat it too" thinking seems to be typical of the female mind. (Perhaps it has something to do with the double-X chromosome, which doesn't understand difference?) As well as the undeveloped male mind, which is in essence female (all embryos begin as female, etc.).
I am often reminded of the invaluable insight of Rich Zubaty, that kings and other politicians are more like women - in their ostentatious love of display, their craving for power and material weath -- than like men -- as he defines men. Of course, many would not agree with Zubaty's definition of men -- but at least it has the virtue of positing a real difference between the sexes, rather than the current meme that there is no significant difference.
Have you noticed how fond women are of "compromise"? "Compromise," like "equality," has become an unquestionable shibboleth ideal in our current culture. Now, compromise does have its place: for instance, if one child grabs two cookies while the other child gets none, a fair compromise would be for each child to get one. But women have taken this idea to be a Universal Good, where in fact when it comes to any question of real importance, compromise is a chimera: a mythical beast about which much has been said and written, but which doesn't actually exist. Most women don't seem to be able to understand this, at least not in abstract; perhaps this is because of the observed inability of the female mind to think in abstract terms -- one of those nonexistent differences between the sexes.
My response to calls for "compromise" from women (or the feminized males that have become the norm in present political culture) is a little story: Okay, say you (a woman) are walking down the street, and some guy comes up to you and says, "Hey, let's fuck." Your response, probably, is "No way." (Or, in the immortal words of Maggie O'Connell, "In your dreams, Fleishman.") So the guy says, "Okay, let's compromise: I'll just put it in half way."
Most women, I think, would "get" this. It has to be personal, like the "little bit pregnant" analogy.
Unfortunately, however, very few women are capable of "getting" such a truth unless it is somehow made personal - which doesn't happen often enough for a significant majority of women to get it. Which is why giving females direct access to political power is so dangerous. They don't ordinarily distinguish between what they feel and what they think - if they think. Since they feel it would be nice ("warm and fuzzy") to have both freedom and, e.g., "universal, state-supported education" -- or "equality" along with every woman being able to get any job she wants (so her feelings won't be hurt), regardless of whether she's qualified -- they "think" it's possible, and go right ahead and try to do it. And since the emotional investment in this utopia (from the Greek ou + topos, literally "no place") is so high, things have to get really bad before anyone's willing to see the plain truth: that it doesn't, and can't, work.
While I don't necessarily disagree with the short-term value of political actions such as Gonzo describes, ultimately the only effective response to feminism will have to be for men to become men again, not merely another "victim" class deserving of governmental protection and care, i.e. the perpetual children that is the only status feminism will allow to males. Women understand children, who are subordinate to them; they do not understand men. When women overtly rule -- when everything is under their control -- there can be no men. They cannot allow boys to become men, because they would lose their ruling position. It's not about what is "fair," or "nice"; it's simply fact, natural law, how the universe works.
"If you allow them [women] to pull away restraints and put themselves on an equality with their husbands, do you imagine that you will be able to tolerate them? From the moment that they become your fellows, they will become your masters." --Cato the Censor
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You can have only one basic principle, not two contradictory ones.
I don't buy this for a femtosecond. Life and society are not either a one or a zero. They're a continuum. Public school is a form of socialism -- ownership of education by the state. It doesn't destroy freedom.
People who have an agenda often claim that no sort of compromise is possible. Such a claim may help a person make easily understood sweeping statements, but it rarely if ever reflects reality.
Maybe once you've had a good dose of it, you'll be able to think more clearly about what you really want.
An ad hominum, self-superior statement that is not worthy of a response.
This same kind of female thinking can be seen in all the feminists who apparently want to have children, but then hire a nanny to do the work.
I love to garden. I just re-landscaped my yard, and I hired a couple of guys to help me, especially with the heaviest work. That doesn't mean I don't love to garden.
The idea that you can distinguish "gender" or "radical" feminism from a benign variety thereof is the same as the delusion that there is a benign version of socialism that is different from "totalitarian" socialism... There can be no other outcome - as anyone who is honest with himself can see all around us today."
"Delusion." "Anyone who is honest with himself."
More ad hominum that isn't worthy of a response. Try to control yourself.
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by Anonymous User on Sunday June 22, @02:12PM EST (#8)
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I've decided to post this For one to show how some who speak about socialism don't really know what it actually means. And two to say that I used to take the mens movement more seriously. I've been interested in the mens movement to stop misandry, (which I had to grow up with), and to actually come closer to gender reconciliation. It is hard to take seriously the black and white thinking of some here, and also the sexism towards women that some do here. There is no excuse for it, even if feminists are sexists towards men. Women have and still are treated badly by men, and I think it is partly mens fault that misandry exists, and I do feel the same way for mysogyny. There is a reason why feminism was created and it wasn't just made so women could oppress men, women have and in a lot of countries still face a lot of abuse from men. This does not mean I excuse them, but I believe BOTH genders need to change to stop BOTH misandry and mysogyny, just as BOTH genders need to help stop rape (I believe most rape happens out of powerlessness).
It seems to me that the mens movements is largely a white male middle class movement, at least for what I can tell on this board. It seems a large number here are "libertarians" or even randites who want to keep a state that only ensures "their" property rights and deny's anyone else's "rights" to put limits on the property owners power and exploitation over the working people who have to work and pay rent (taxes) to them. like for instance getting rid of OSHA and other laws and regulations or Labor Unions that working class people have made to protect themselves from the state and property owners even while knowing that men make up 94% of ALL work related injuries, sickness and DEATH (although there are better ways to limiting the powers of the property owners like unions www.IWW.org) This is why I find this a largely a right wing middle class movement that doesn't leave much room for anyoneone else or any other working class egalitarian philospshy. The time and energy and ignorance spent of anti-socialism rhetoric is pointless and has nothing to do with mens activism unless you have something to benefit from by getting rid oif any social safety net that is needed under capitalism.
I did post under another name before I posted anything on my personal views of anarchism. I don't even want to make anyone here an anarchist, (although I"d appreciate it some took and learned from our ideas). I stay annonymous for my own personal reasons one of which is because I'm sure an anarchist wouldn't be accepted here to well since there is so much mis-information about anarchism, as Gozo the KId has previously made obvious in another thread. I have no problem working with non-anarchists in stoping misandry though, which is why I hung out here.
If I decide to post again it will be under the name "propertyless george". I may or may not post again, I"m undecided.
Although I'd like to say that Thomas, Thundercloud and rage and some others are not the people I'm talking about. I appreciate quite a bit of their posts.
"The idea that you can distinguish "gender" or "radical" feminism from a benign variety thereof is the same as the delusion that there is a benign version of socialism that is different from "totalitarian" socialism"
There are two different camps in socialism and a big grey area inbetween. There is authoritarian socialism and then there is something called libertarian socialism, both have been around for a long time.
"Socialism is based on taking one citizen's property by force (or the threat thereof) and giving it to another who hasn't earned it; since some will always resist this aggression, to which resistance the State can respond only with more force, any form of socialism will inevitably become totalitarian in time - otherwise it must collapse."
It amazes me how people on this board talk as if they are an authority on what socialism is but yet completely fail to understand or explain what socialism is. It also can and has been argued that prvate property (capitalism) is based on theft from the workers. I might get to that last sentence later. Socialism most simply and bascially put is that the workers are in control of the means to life, or the means of production, even more simply put in control of their own work places and shelter. This can only happen in the absence of what is called "private property" as opposed to personal possessions. For with private property of the work place the workers aren't in control of their lives at work nor are they in control of the places they live (rental). Someone else is in control of their lives both at work and the places they rent and that is the property owner. The authority that is granted to the property holder is brought to them from the state or in the "anarcho-capitalist" world, a police force that has no input from the communiuty whatsoever, which of course is more authoritarian then out present day police forces.
"Isn't libertarian socialism an oxymoron?", http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secI1.html
"...what does socialism mean? And is it compatible with libertarian ideals? What do the words "libertarian" and "socialism" actually mean? It is temping to use dictionary definitions as a starting point, although we should stress that such a method holds problems as different dictionaries have different definitions and the fact that dictionaries are rarely politically sophisticated. Use one definition, and someone else will counter with one more to their liking. For example, "socialism" is often defined as "state ownership of wealth" and "anarchy" as "disorder." Neither of these definitions are useful when discussing political ideas. Therefore, the use of dictionaries is not the end of a discussion and often misleading when applied to politics.
With that warning, what do we find?
Webster's New International Dictionary defines a libertarian as "one who holds to the doctrine of free will; also, one who upholds the principles of liberty, esp. individual liberty of thought and action." As we discussed earlier (see section B.1, for example), capitalism denies liberty of thought and action within the workplace (unless one is the boss, of course). Therefore, real libertarian ideas must be based on workers self-management, i.e. workers must control and manage the work they do, determining where and how they do it and what happens to the fruit of their labour, which in turn means the elimination of wage labour. The elimination of wage labour is the common theme of socialism (in theory at least, anarchist argue that state socialism does not eliminate wage labour, rather it universalises it). Or, to use Proudhon's words, the "abolition of the proletariat." [Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 179] It implies a classless and anti-authoritarian (i.e. libertarian) society in which people manage their own affairs, either as individuals or as part of a group (depending on the situation). In other words, it implies self-management in all aspects of life -- including work. It has always struck anarchists as somewhat strange and paradoxical (to say the least) that a system of "natural" liberty (Adam Smith's term, misappropriated by supporters of capitalism) involves the vast majority having to sell that liberty in order to survive.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary "socialism" is "a social system in which the producers possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods." This definition fits neatly with the implications of the word "libertarian" indicated above. In fact, it shows that socialism is necessarily libertarian, not statist. For if the state owns the workplace, then the producers do not, and so they will not be at liberty to manage their own work but will instead be subject to the state as the boss. Moreover, replacing the capitalist owning class by state officials in no way eliminates wage labour; in fact it makes it worse in many cases. Therefore "socialists" who argue for nationalisation of the means of production are not socialists (which means that the Soviet Union and the other 'socialist" countries are not socialist nor are parties which advocate nationalisation socialist).
Indeed, attempts to associate socialism with the state misunderstands the nature of socialism. It is an essential principle of socialism that (social) inequalities between individuals must be abolished to ensure liberty for all (natural inequalities cannot be abolished, nor do anarchists desire to do so). Socialism, as Proudhon put it, "is egalitarian above all else." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 57] This applies to inequalities of power as well, especially to political power. And any hierarchical system (particularly the state) is marked by inequalities of power -- those at the top (elected or not) have more power than those at the bottom. Hence the following comments provoked by the expulsion of anarchists from the social democratic Second International:
"It could be argued. . . that we [anarchists] are the most logical and most complete socialists, since we demand for every person not just his entire measure of wealth of society, but also his portion of social power, which is to say, the real ability to make his influence felt, along with that of everybody else, in the administration of public affairs." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, p.20
From this short discussion we see the links between libertarian and socialism. To be a true libertarian requires you to support workers' control otherwise you support authoritarian social relationships. To support workers' control, by necessity, means that you must ensure that the producers own (and so control) the means of producing and distributing the goods they create (i.e. they must own/control what they use to produce goods). Without ownership, they cannot truly control their own activity or the product of their labour. The situation where workers possess the means of producing and distributing goods is socialism. Thus to be a true libertarian requires you to be a socialist.
Similarly, a true socialist must also support individual liberty of thought and action, otherwise the producers "possess" the means of production and distribution in name only. If the state owns the means of life, then the producers do not and so are in no position to manage their own activity. As the experience of Russia under Lenin shows, state ownership soon produces state control and the creation of a bureaucratic class which exploits and oppresses the workers even more so than their old bosses. Since it is an essential principle of socialism that inequalities between people must be abolished in order to ensure liberty, it makes no sense for a genuine socialist to support any institution based on inequalities of power. And as we discussed in section B.2, the state is just such an institution. To oppose inequality and not extend that opposition to inequalities in power, especially political power, suggests a lack of clear thinking. Thus to be a true socialist requires you to be a libertarian, to be for individual liberty and opposed to inequalities of power which restrict that liberty.
Therefore, rather than being an oxymoron, "libertarian socialism" indicates that true socialism must be libertarian and that a libertarian who is not a socialist is a phoney. As true socialists oppose wage labour, they must also oppose the state for the same reasons. Similarly, libertarians must oppose wage labour for the same reasons they must oppose the state."
http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secI1.html
http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secIcon.html
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by Anonymous User on Sunday June 22, @02:17PM EST (#9)
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signed
Property Less George
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Your ignorance is appaling, as is the convoluted rhetoric (I won't dignify it with the term "logic") you use to attempt to justify your preconcieved notions.
I've decided to post this For one to show how some who speak about socialism don't really know what it actually means.
State management of capital, even private capital.
And two to say that I used to take the mens movement more seriously. I've been interested in the mens movement to stop misandry, (which I had to grow up with), and to actually come closer to gender reconciliation. It is hard to take seriously the black and white thinking of some here, and also the sexism towards women that some do here. There is no excuse for it, even if feminists are sexists towards men.
Your first mistake. I've never advocated, nor have the vast and overwhelming majority here advocated, any special discriminatory treatment under law for women, in fact, quite the opposite. With rare exception, there has been a growing swell of desire to subject women to the exact same standards demanded of men, for good or ill.
"which I had to grow up with" is a very telling clue to your psyche here; your pheminized upbringing is readily apparent, because you obviously see the removing of gender based privilege and preference for women as an act of discrimination and sexism.
Women have and still are treated badly by men, and I think it is partly mens fault that misandry exists, and I do feel the same way for mysogyny.
I suppose if someone robbed you at gunpoint, you'd find a way to make it your fault too? Contemptible.
There is a reason why feminism was created and it wasn't just made so women could oppress men,
Thomas, I believe, said it best: Pheminism came about because women wanted high-paying jobs with disposable income, freedom from conventional reproductive roles, and access to top level positions - in short, money, sex, and power. What's fucking hypocritical is these same desires, in a man, are seen as the bane of western civilization.
women have and in a lot of countries still face a lot of abuse from men. This does not mean I excuse them, but I believe BOTH genders need to change to stop BOTH misandry and mysogyny, just as BOTH genders need to help stop rape (I believe most rape happens out of powerlessness).
You just have excused them, though. "Women too! Women too!" It's a cheap and sophmoric debating ploy.
Get a clue: Women have the N.O.W. They have their own cheerleaders, their own advocates, their own movement. Want help as a woman? Go there. Want support? Go there. What someone who cares? Go there. The men's movement isn't about women, it's about MEN. It's childish one-sided chivalry, and fucking outrageous, that this movement would be expected to divide our resources to help "Women too!" when they have multiple organizations out there dedicated to helping women, and women alone.
In fact, it's so pathetically transparent, only a MORON could fail to see it for what it is, an attempt to dilute the push for Men's Rights and to obfuscate the issues.
It seems to me that the mens movements is largely a white male middle class movement, at least for what I can tell on this board.
Which is New-Age codespeak for "racist." Tell me, asswipe, what "race" am I? If you guess I'm a pure-whitebread type, you lose. Nice assumption, though contrary to fact.
You grow more incoherent, so I'll have to insert more frequently:
It seems a large number here are "libertarians" or even randites
Nice try at equating "libertarian" with the cult of Ayn Rand. In fact, most libertarians I know regard the Holy Ayn as a socially inept boob, and spit on objectivist philosophy.
who want to keep a state that only ensures "their" property rights and deny's anyone else's "rights" to put limits on the property owners power and exploitation over the working people who have to work and pay rent (taxes) to them.
Smells like a communist here. Power to the workers! Perhaps you'd Like a National Socialist American Worker's Party? I know you probably can't get some neat little slang term for it - but in Germany it was eventually called the Nazi Party.
In fact, most libertarians see a proper opposition between government and big business, and are rather anti-corporate; as corporations have invuited the vampire of government into their bed, they see corporate regulation as the rightful consequences of being chartered by the government. In fact, a great many of us would do away with the corporate virtual person, who exists only as a legal fiction and has all the perks of citizenship and none of the responsibilities.
like for instance getting rid of OSHA and other laws and regulations or Labor Unions that working class people have made to protect themselves from the state and property owners
Nossir, wrong again. I'd keep OSHA, but require due process of law, rather than have it a club used to keep governmental control over property.
even while knowing that men make up 94% of ALL work related injuries, sickness and DEATH
Umm hmm. First oppressor class I know of who let their "slaves" live lives of relative leisure while they went out their damn selves and toiled in the fields. While that may make "white guys" dumb, how much dumber those who either let themselves be shackled by those morons, or who tried to escape this plush non-cage. But I, like you, digress.
(although there are better ways to limiting the powers of the property owners like unions www.IWW.org)
Excuse me? I'm very MUCH pro union. Labor is a commodity, a source of wealth, a type of wealth, and I'm all for pooling wealth to create a company. Which is what unions are, is a company that sells their labor.
This is why I find this a largely a right wing middle class movement that doesn't leave much room for anyoneone else or any other working class egalitarian philospshy.
In other words, since people in a Men's Movement site won't sit and listen to your Marxian rants with rapt attention, they are hostile to you.
Like most of your type, you are bound and determined to refuse to consider that the what, how and where of your crap has nothing to do with it; and you refuse to contemplate the fact that people just not might like you because you're a turd.
The time and energy and ignorance spent of anti-socialism rhetoric is pointless and has nothing to do with mens activism
And the time and energy you spend in socialist posturing has nothing to do with men's activism. You probably get a lot more hostility because your Marxist rants are irrelevant.
unless you have something to benefit from by getting rid oif any social safety net that is needed under capitalism.
Affirming the antecedant, for starters. Even if I agreed with a "safety net" I'd talk against you because your bad logic does a disservice to an end.
I did post under another name before I posted anything on my personal views of anarchism.
And you think being "anonymous" changed the obvious rambling illogic of your posts? Symbolism over substance.
I don't even want to make anyone here an anarchist, (although I"d appreciate it some took and learned from our ideas). I stay annonymous for my own personal reasons one of which is because I'm sure an anarchist wouldn't be accepted here to well since there is so much mis-information about anarchism,
No, nobody who proslytises ever wants to "Convert" anyone, do they? And if we had someone starting to quote the Bible We'd believe it if they claimed to not be wanting to "convert" anyone either.
as Gozo the KId has previously made obvious in another thread.
That's "The Gonzo Kid." In Fact, it's "Mr. Kid" to you, asshole, but that's another story.
You get crap from me not because an anarchist society wouldn't be a paradise. It would. It would be heaven on earth. The trouble is, it plain won't work, anymore than a pure democracy or a variety of other crackpot theories would work because it fails to take into account human nature - and I am talking, greed, apathy, ignorance, and a frank desire by many to to be responsible for their own lives.
Why is your theory a crackpot one? Very simple - one of the main indentifiers of a "crackpot" theory in a scientic model is any one in which it requires more than one miracle to work. Social/Political sciences are not exempt. Your two miracles are 1) All "Human Nature" problems must be banished, and 2) Nobody can ever be born again who has a "human nature" problem.
On the chalkboard of the social equation, these two problems well and truly come out with a little cloud around them saying "And then a miracle occurs." "If only everyone would see that..." Well, dippy-squat, name me one - JUST ONE- religion, theory, philosophy, or anything that has ever achieved universal acceptance.
You can't. It doesn't exist. And your insistance that your philosophy will achieve such universal acceptance is the insistance of the Cultic Zealot who would be willing to hold some secret executions of malcontents just to stack the deck and insure it would.
Of course, I'm sure anyone with any reason would see your "Secret Police" as a regrettable necessity, but one born out of a desire to serve the good of humanity.
I have no problem working with non-anarchists in stoping misandry though, which is why I hung out here.
You forgot to insert "so long as they shut up and treat my commie-anarch proselytizing as sacred writ."
If I decide to post again it will be under the name "propertyless george". I may or may not post again, I"m undecided.
"propertyless george?" Is that as in "homeless george?" "carless george?" "moneyless george?" "computerless george?" "I-get-a-shower-only-when-it's-warm-enough-to-danc e-naked-in-the-rain george? "jobless george?"
Or is it allright for you to own these things for now, hypocritical that it may be, because of the purity of your purpose? Tell, me, propertyless george, if I walked in, evicted you from your house by force, and took your car, computer, and ate the last of your Frosted Flakes, would you call the police?
Heh. Thought so.
Although I'd like to say that Thomas, Thundercloud and rage and some others are not the people I'm talking about. I appreciate quite a bit of their posts.
I'm sure they're squirming in delight.
"The idea that you can distinguish "gender" or "radical" feminism from a benign variety thereof is the same as the delusion that there is a benign version of socialism that is different from "totalitarian" socialism"
Well, your command of the obvious is unhampered.
There are two different camps in socialism and a big grey area inbetween. There is authoritarian socialism and then there is something called libertarian socialism, both have been around for a long time.
Yes, this same tired old B.S. Libertarian socialists are a constant pain in the ass. They're not libertarians. It's an oxymoron.
"Socialism is based on taking one citizen's property by force (or the threat thereof) and giving it to another who hasn't earned it; since some will always resist this aggression, to which resistance the State can respond only with more force, any form of socialism will inevitably become totalitarian in time - otherwise it must collapse."
A scintillating and inceisive quote of the obvious. Tell me, do you have an original thought of your own?
It amazes me how people on this board talk as if they are an authority on what socialism is but yet completely fail to understand or explain what socialism is.
Socialism is the government regulation of capital and property for a percieved communal good. In its extreme forms, all private property is abolished, in milder forms "owners" are seen as being merely ""Stewards" or "tenants" and are subject to having their control wrested from them.
It also can and has been argued that prvate property (capitalism) is based on theft from the workers. I might get to that last sentence later.
Why later...? Oh, that's right, you just want to insert a stealth assumption here, and proceed from there, shielding it from being challenged.
"I can and has been argued" So what? It can and has been argued that UFOs originated from the subterranean Empire of Atlantis. Prove it.
Socialism most simply and bascially put is that the workers are in control of the means to life,
That is not socialism. You are confusing a variant economic theory (Ownership from the bottom up) with a governmental theory. That's one of the many reasons communism failed.
Socialism is a governmental theory, whereby the collective has first dibs on your property.
or the means of production, even more simply put in control of their own work places and shelter.
Wrong again. Worker and employee are not interchangable. If you work your 40 acres, you are in control. You say what where and when the planting and harvesting goes on. If I pay you to work my 40 acres, I call the shots. I live in Indiana. I plant corn. Potatoes won't grow, the ground is too clay-like. If you plant potatoes, you're fired.
It's neither unfair or unreasonable, in and of itself. The abuses of capitalism can certainly be unfair, and are myriad, but usually arrive via government meddling - and this also occurs in making exceptions to the law that favor employers, or in overlooking those abuses.
This can only happen in the absence of what is called "private property" as opposed to personal possessions.
Neat assertation. Care to leaven it with a few proofs?
For with private property of the work place the workers aren't in control of their lives at work nor are they in control of the places they live (rental). Someone else is in control of their lives both at work and the places they rent and that is the property owner.
Well, duh. Hello, McFly?!?!?! It's MINE. I built the business up. I invested my money. I borrowed the money, bought the house, and fixed it up. Don't like it? Start your own business. Get your own house.
The authority that is granted to the property holder is brought to them from the state or in the "anarcho-capitalist" world, a police force that has no input from the communiuty whatsoever, which of course is more authoritarian then out present day police forces.
No sir, it does NOT proceed from the state - property is a natural law, the right of which is one of those "inalienable" rights. If I open a business, so long as I alone bear the risk, then I alone reap the rewards. If I develop land, and build a house, it is mine to do with AS I PLEASE. This includes live in it, rent it, or whatever. One of the few legitimate functions of government is to insure that my natural right is defended by law - meaning a corporation or local governmental entity can't summarily take it from me. If a thug tries to take it, I am allowed to kill them, and the federal government enjoins the local from prosecuting me.
I do not interact with the national government; it exists to tell corporations and local governments to leave me alone, and to require those selfsame entities to respect my rights and extend full protections.
"Isn't libertarian socialism an oxymoron?", http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secI1.html
"...what does socialism mean? And is it compatible with libertarian ideals? What do the words "libertarian" and "socialism" actually mean? It is temping to use dictionary definitions as a starting point, although we should stress that such a method holds problems as different dictionaries have different definitions and the fact that dictionaries are rarely politically sophisticated. Use one definition, and someone else will counter with one more to their liking. For example, "socialism" is often defined as "state ownership of wealth" and "anarchy" as "disorder." Neither of these definitions are useful when discussing political ideas. Therefore, the use of dictionaries is not the end of a discussion and often misleading when applied to politics.
With that warning, what do we find?
Webster's New International Dictionary defines a libertarian as "one who holds to the doctrine of free will; also, one who upholds the principles of liberty, esp. individual liberty of thought and action." As we discussed earlier (see section B.1, for example), capitalism denies liberty of thought and action within the workplace (unless one is the boss, of course).
So why define them? after all, "Use one definition, and someone else will counter with one more to their liking" right? Or are these just the ones YOU like, and are selected in a self serving manner?
You can't condemn definition of a term, and then use it as a foundation for an argument - it's illogical before it even gets out of the gate.
Therefore, real libertarian ideas must be based on workers self-management, i.e. workers must control and manage the work they do, determining where and how they do it and what happens to the fruit of their labour, which in turn means the elimination of wage labour.or the kid dies of hunger because you're not working the fields to feed him. But console yourself. You're free and living a medieval existance. That ought to make you whistle a merry tune while you're digging your son's grave.
The elimination of wage labour is the common theme of socialism (in theory at least, anarchist argue that state socialism does not eliminate wage labour, rather it universalises it). Or, to use Proudhon's words, the "abolition of the proletariat." [Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 179] It implies a classless and anti-authoritarian (i.e. libertarian) society in which people manage their own affairs, either as individuals or as part of a group (depending on the situation).
Creating of a group is a violation of basic anarchy. Any agreement, however informal or temporary, which would limit or compel behavior is de facto government. Once you accede to small governments, where is the dividing line? When does this become a permissable arrangement and cross the line into an authoritarian one?
You want to trade me corn for a plow? Cool. Let's see the corn. Oh, you need the plow to plant the corn? Where's my assurance? How do I know you won't say, "Changed my mind," hmmm? Do I have to go at gunpoint? Is your wife going to let that happen? Is your brother-in-law going to risk his sis getting shot in a shoot out? You going to leave your son with me till the end of the season? What? Once I put the plow on your wagon, I'm subject to your honesty and good will, I'm dependant on it. I risk - what do I get out of that risk? Who enforces our agreement - or is it that "law of the jungle" thing you anarchs just hate top be reminded of, you know, the one that says "The strong will do as they will, and the weak shall suffer what they must?"
You that damn sure YOU will be the strong? I know I would be. You want to live down the road from me, going to bed at night hoping like hell you didn't piss old Gonzo off? I suppose you could look the other way while I picked your corn, and took the occasional hog for my table. Matter of fact, mean SOB that I am, we might just come to an arrangement - I get a little of the "sweat of your brow" and make sure nobody else takes it.
Know what that makes me? Your overlord. Read up on feodality.
In other words, it implies self-management in all aspects of life -- including work. It has always struck anarchists as somewhat strange and paradoxical (to say the least) that a system of "natural" liberty (Adam Smith's term, misappropriated by supporters of capitalism) involves the vast majority having to sell that liberty in order to survive.
Selling liberty has always been a corruption and an abomination. It;'s mainstream libertarian thought that no person or entity should be allowed to curtail behavior you wouldn't allow the government to curtail.
You're equating the current status quo in the US for a libertarian ideal, which it most certainly is not. It's not even a subtle misrepresentation, it's transparent, vacuous, and a cheap shot you should be ashamed of.
We in the US do NOT have a free market, capitalism, or right to work/employment at will. To look at the system, cite it's shortcomings, and declare them evils visited by things which at best exists in small pockets (state by state) is pure sophistry.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary "socialism" is "a social system in which the producers possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods." This definition fits neatly with the implications of the word "libertarian" indicated above.
I thought dictionary definitions were useless? I quote: "It is temping to use dictionary definitions as a starting point, although we should stress that such a method holds problems as different dictionaries have different definitions and the fact that dictionaries are rarely politically sophisticated. Use one definition, and someone else will counter with one more to their liking. For example, "socialism" is often defined as "state ownership of wealth" and "anarchy" as "disorder." Neither of these definitions are useful when discussing political ideas. Therefore, the use of dictionaries is not the end of a discussion and often misleading when applied to politics."
Kindly pick a position, and stay with it
In fact, it shows that socialism is necessarily libertarian, not statist. For if the state owns the workplace, then the producers do not, and so they will not be at liberty to manage their own work but will instead be subject to the state as the boss. Moreover, replacing the capitalist owning class by state officials in no way eliminates wage labour; in fact it makes it worse in many cases. Therefore "socialists" who argue for nationalisation of the means of production are not socialists (which means that the Soviet Union and the other 'socialist" countries are not socialist nor are parties which advocate nationalisation socialist).
Socialism, by most definitions, are precisely the "nationalization" of industry. The horse still has for legs. Call the tail a leg all you want - it's still a tail.
Indeed, attempts to associate socialism with the state misunderstands the nature of socialism. It is an essential principle of socialism that (social) inequalities between individuals must be abolished to ensure liberty for all (natural inequalities cannot be abolished, nor do anarchists desire to do so). Socialism, as Proudhon put it, "is egalitarian above all else." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 57] This applies to inequalities of power as well, especially to political power. And any hierarchical system (particularly the state) is marked by inequalities of power -- those at the top (elected or not) have more power than those at the bottom. Hence the following comments provoked by the expulsion of anarchists from the social democratic Second International:
I'd not go about trying to use Proudhon, he's a nuche theorist with a niche audience; In fact, 120 degrees to my left, 12 feet away, and three shelves up I've got many of his works, including "No Gods, No Masters" and he's long been dismissed by myself and most others as a utopianist idealogue - I'm not suprised you quoted him here.
As for the rest of your post, since it's someone else's works, I won't bother - like most zealots and true believers you show a deplorable tendancy to parrot the words of your gurus rather that to think for yourself, and form your own opinions and conclusions.
Which is why, when all is said and done, you'd be well advised to pick another philosophy, because without an ability to do your own thinking, you'd be a piss-poor "anarchist."
---- Burn, Baby, Burn ----
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by Anonymous User on Sunday June 22, @07:30PM EST (#11)
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FIrst off I'm not a Marxist, if you knew so much about anarchism you wouldn't call me one.
"Excuse me? I'm very MUCH pro union. Labor is a commodity, a source of wealth, a type of wealth, and I'm all for pooling wealth to create a company. Which is what unions are, is a company that sells their labor." Go to the Labor union of the Industriual Workers of the WOrld's website that I gave ww.IWW.org and then come back and tell me that you are pro-union.
So you agree that labor is a commodity? And you can't separate someones labor from THEMSELVES. So in essence you would have to agree that PEOPLE are on the market as a COMMODITY. A union by the way is not company that sells labor. A union is in opposition to the employer to get better benefits, sick leave, better pay and so on. The employer on the other wants the opposite for it's workers otherwise the union would be useless waste.
"No, nobody who proslytises ever wants to "Convert" anyone, do they? And if we had someone starting to quote the Bible We'd believe it if they claimed to not be wanting to "convert" anyone either."
Looko I already know most people here don't want to become an anarchist. I never posted this stuff before because I can handle other viewpoints but it is the ignorance and propaganda that I'm responding to. I wouldn't ever spoke of this if it weren't for that.
"The trouble is, it plain won't work, anymore than a pure democracy or a variety of other crackpot theories would work because it fails to take into account human nature - and I am talking, greed, apathy, ignorance, and a frank desire by many to to be responsible for their own lives."
Anarchists take into consideration of human nature and that is why we believe power corrupts and makes greed even worse. But my point was to show how YOU and others have no clue what socialism actually means.
"Tell, me, propertyless george, if I walked in, evicted you from your house by force, and took your car, computer, and ate the last of your Frosted Flakes, would you call the police?":
You forget that the only way you get kick me out is you HAD the police YOUR dirty work.
"Socialism is the government regulation of capital and property for a percieved communal good. In its extreme forms, all private property is abolished, in milder forms "owners" are seen as being merely ""Stewards" or "tenants" and are subject to having their control wrested from them."
Once again socialism means that Workers are the ones in control of what we call "private property". It means workers are in control of their places and homes. You just want it to mean govt. ownership so you kind hide your authoritarian political philosophy behind "libertarianism". For if you can have socialism without the govt. you would have to defend the authoritarianism inherent in the capitalist workplace.
"No sir, it does NOT proceed from the state - property is a natural law"
If property is natural law then how come I can break this law if I ignore the authority of the property owner? I can't seem to break the natural law of gravity so easily.......
"Creating of a group is a violation of basic anarchy. Any agreement, however informal or temporary, which would limit or compel behavior is de facto government"
If I made an agreement with you is that govt?>no. That is called free agreement and it is free precisely so because no authority is forcing me to do so. Anarchy does not mean no organization.
"Selling liberty has always been a corruption and an abomination"
What exactly do you think woirkers are selling on the labor market? It's themselves, their labor, you can't compartmentalize the two they are inseperable. Capitalism needs the market, the private ownership of land creates this pool.
"I'd not go about trying to use Proudhon, he's a nuche theorist with a niche audience; In fact, 120 degrees to my left, 12 feet away, and three shelves up I've got many of his works, including "No Gods, No Masters" and he's long been dismissed by myself and most others as a utopianist idealogue - I'm not suprised you quoted him here."
This is where I call you on lying. Proudhon didn't write "no Gods, NO masters" Danial Guerin did almost 100 years later. Only some of Proudhons works are IN "No Gods, No masters". So no you haven't read it and don't own it. Nor do you know about anarchism.
See you're sort of making my point, you and others are perfectly ok to spout off about libertarianism and anti-socialism. But not when I speak of anarchism, that's not really so dandy. I get called asshole and turd and many other ad-hominem attacks from you.
I'm showing that there really isn't any room for my political viewpoint or other people from the left in the mens movement.
"Which is why, when all is said and done, you'd be well advised to pick another philosophy, because without an ability to do your own thinking, you'd be a piss-poor "anarchist."
I do my own thinking, if I didn't I wouldn't have come accross anti-authoritarian ideas. I cut and pasted because others can explain things better than I can and to show refereneces and give links to all those who are interested to look further and to see that those who speak about socialism on this site know very little about socialism.
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by Anonymous User on Sunday June 22, @07:45PM EST (#12)
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my only point was to show you and others ignorance of what socialism actually IS. Not for anyone to become an anarchist, I hardly doubt you can convice someone to become one on message boards. I was answering to anti-socialist rhetoric and it's quite from the Gonzo Kid's posting that anti-capitalist ideas will be met with extreme anger, intolerance, and ad-hominen attcks.
Propertyless George this means I'm a wage slave, someone who sells their liberty in exchange for a wage on the labor market only because I have no property. This is the definition of a working class person. It is what they don't have that defines them.
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FIrst off I'm not a Marxist, if you knew so much about anarchism you wouldn't call me one.
Yeah, yeah. Your words are full of marxist rhetoric, first among is abolition of private property, the proletariat, workers - and so on.
Same song, different verse.
Go to the Labor union of the Industriual Workers of the WOrld's website that I gave ww.IWW.org and then come back and tell me that you are pro-union.
And? Another marxist group? They speak for ALL Unions?
So you agree that labor is a commodity?
Absolutely.
And you can't separate someones labor from THEMSELVES.
If you don't seperate it it becomes valueless. a thousand carat diamond used as a paperweight is just another rock. If what you have to sell is your skill and expertise, it's what you do. If you do it on a one shot basis, you're a consultant. If you do it by long-term contract, you're an employee.
So in essence you would have to agree that PEOPLE are on the market as a COMMODITY.
Not at all. Don't put words in my mouth. I certainly don't have to sell me to sell my services based on a per diem, hourly, or by-the-job rate.
A union by the way is not company that sells labor. A union is in opposition to the employer to get better benefits, sick leave, better pay and so on.
Unions in opposition to companies usually result in a bankrupt corporation and a bunch of their people on the unemployment rolls. Get real. I've been in a union, pal.
The employer on the other wants the opposite for it's workers otherwise the union would be useless waste.
Unions started originally because employers had no laws to check them - no laws - hmm, sound familiar there, Bucky?
Looko I already know most people here don't want to become an anarchist. I never posted this stuff before because I can handle other viewpoints but it is the ignorance and propaganda that I'm responding to. I wouldn't ever spoke of this if it weren't for that.
You'd be more effective if you spoke on real things and things you actiually knew about than spreading your own disinformation.
Anarchists take into consideration of human nature and that is why we believe power corrupts and makes greed even worse. But my point was to show how YOU and others have no clue what socialism actually means.
No you wanted to TELL us we were jackasses, and instead wound up being SHOWN what a jackass you were.
You forget that the only way you get kick me out is you HAD the police YOUR dirty work.
Excuse me while I bust a gut laughing. Son, I'm a decorated combat veteran, and hold no less than 5 black belts, plus several marksmanship trophies. If I needed your ass whipped, and you turned into my bitch, I'd be happy to do it myself. I'd never trust the job to a bunch of amateurs like a police department.
Once again socialism means that Workers are the ones in control of what we call "private property".
Buckwheat, either it's private - or it ain't. Either someone owns the fruits of their labor - or they don't. Either someone owns the land they clear, and the house they build, or they don't.
All you're looking to ddo is remove private property from the rich and redistribute it to the poor. It's not going to be done without force. It's called communism.
It means workers are in control of their places and homes.
And the minute anyone owns their own business - their own place - they become non-workers. Self-defeating.
You just want it to mean govt. ownership so you kind hide your authoritarian political philosophy behind "libertarianism".
You just want it to mean that so you can knock it.
For if you can have socialism without the govt.
You haven't demonstrated that. You can't take what someone has without coercion. If you do that, All your puffing about "No Coercion" becomes hypocritical in the extreme.
you would have to defend the authoritarianism inherent in the capitalist workplace.
You know, it's like I used to tell my son, "My Roof, My Rules." If that's the authoritarianism in the capitalist workplace, yeah, I defend it. Bring your gun. And lots and lots of body bags.
If property is natural law then how come I can break this law if I ignore the authority of the property owner? I can't seem to break the natural law of gravity so easily.......
You break it at your peril - it has consequences. Fall, and you get consequences; sometimes you become jello, sometimes you walk away.
If I made an agreement with you is that govt?>no. That is called free agreement and it is free precisely so because no authority is forcing me to do so. Anarchy does not mean no organization.
Au contraire, it is. If you think I'd be dumb enough to make an agreement with you without enforceable consequences if you reneged on our deal, you're madder than the March Hare.
What exactly do you think woirkers are selling on the labor market? It's themselves, their labor, you can't compartmentalize the two they are inseperable. Capitalism needs the market, the private ownership of land creates this pool.
You're free to NOT. I know a whole mess of people who get along very well without a "job." I know many who prefer the security of a regular check. You'd abridge the freedom of the latter to do so? If so, you're "freedom" (Notice the quote marks there!) is no freedom at all - people become free to live only within the constraints of how you demand.
This is where I call you on lying. Proudhon didn't write "no Gods, NO masters" Danial Guerin did almost 100 years later. Only some of Proudhons works are IN "No Gods, No masters". So no you haven't read it and don't own it. Nor do you know about anarchism.
And I can't own his works? I have to buy "No Gods, No Masters" without Proudhon? In fact I have "What Is Property?" "System of Economic Contradictions; or The Philosophy of Poverty (Mine is in two volumes) and De la justice dans la révolution et dans l'église (Of justice in the revolution and in the church] in both French and English.
BTW, You might check up on mutualism, again. Read it a little closer.
And check again - no, let me quote from ol Danny-Boy, "the constructive ideas of anarchism retain their vitality, that they may, when re-examined and sifted, assist contemporary socialist thought to undertake a new departure, and contribute to enriching Marxism."
Hmmmm. So much for not Marxism.
See you're sort of making my point, you and others are perfectly ok to spout off about libertarianism and anti-socialism. But not when I speak of anarchism, that's not really so dandy. I get called asshole and turd and many other ad-hominem attacks from you.
No, shitheel, you're making my point - I hear all about "Censervative" this and "liberal" that, and "left" and "right" and all manner of nonsense. I almost invariably keep my mouth shut until some dingleberry shows up talking that he knows the "One True Way."
And you aren't getting ad-hominem attacks, because you aren't getting "You're wrong because you're an Asshole." You're wrong, AND you're also an asshole - the two have nothing to do with each other, it's just convenient because I don't worry about hurting ums lil' feelings
What you're getting the edge of my tongue for is for being a Zealot.
I'm showing that there really isn't any room for my political viewpoint or other people from the left in the mens movement.
Whatever. Far be it from me to confuse you with facts, you've ample problems as it is.
I do my own thinking, if I didn't I wouldn't have come accross anti-authoritarian ideas.
Oh yeah, you're clever, unique, and trendy - I bought my Anarchy books from a trendy store with sullen goths - Black Hair, Black nails, 14 facial piercings alone - They sure had them by the case in there.
Yeahsureyabetcha - it's the latest in trendy "I'm unique, just like all my friends" movements, at least we in the sixties came up with our own stuff instead of stealing philosophies that died a hundred years ago.
I cut and pasted because others can explain things better than I can and to show refereneces and give links to all those who are interested to look further and to see that those who speak about socialism on this site know very little about socialism.
Why don't you give a link to the Flat-Earth Society too? The White Aryan Resistance? I'm sure they'll be happy to tell us they aren't luddites or all bad guys. We can all be fucking enlightened, then!
Any mook can put up a page, hardly makes it authoritative, and in the case of your links they sure as hell are self-serving house organs.
Again, free your mind. Think for yourself. Think critically. That's the one thing my generation needs to hang its head in shame for is that we removed logic classes as "outdated" and "patriarchal."
Pity you never had the advantage of a classical education. You might not be such a waste.
---- Burn, Baby, Burn ----
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by Anonymous User on Sunday June 22, @07:59PM EST (#13)
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ME---"It also can and has been argued that prvate property (capitalism) is based on theft from the workers. I might get to that last sentence later."
Gonzo---"Why later...? Oh, that's right, you just want to insert a stealth assumption here, and proceed from there, shielding it from being challenged.
"I can and has been argued" So what? It can and has been argued that UFOs originated from the subterranean Empire of Atlantis. Prove it."
I showed how private property takes/steals anothers liberty. 'just as slavery is murder, property is theft', that's a loose quote from Proudhon.
Again my main point was to show what the real definition of socialism means. FOr far too long Marxists and capitalists have defined the terms of socialism to mean state ownership of capital, both have done so for their own authoritraian reasons.,
Propertyless George
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You've made pointless rambling posts preaching about how wonderful socialism and anarchy are - and they are two different things, me bucko, and mutually exlusive, if you is one, you ain't the other -
And here's you're lesson for the day; here's an ad hominem attack:
P: Assholes are wrong
P: Propertyless George is an Asshole
--------------------------
C: Therefore, Propertyless George is wrong.
Note carefully, dingleberry, that the form of "You are wrong because you are an asshole" is REQUIRED to be an ad hominem attack.
Now, the mere fact that you happen to be wrong, AND you're also an asshole is something else, namely just a personal insult which you ain't got the stones to do jack about.
You get anger because you're discussing issues that have exactly jack and shit to do with Men's Rights on a Men's rights board.
You get intolerance not because you won't shut up, but you keep chirping the same old tired song, and calling anyone who disagrees with your worldview a statist and willing slave. Blow me.
And you get insults, because you refuse to learn and won't stop till after you piss somebody off.
Now, go back to mommy, Fem-boy.
---- Burn, Baby, Burn ----
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I showed how private property takes/steals anothers liberty. 'just as slavery is murder, property is theft', that's a loose quote from Proudhon.
And so? Proudhon is an asshole, this is supposed to back your position?
Your problem is, you don't want liberty, you want license. Sorry, you're right to swing your arm will always end before it reaches my nose. Always has been, always will be. And you're desire that it be otherwise just shows you up for what you really are.
Again my main point was to show what the real definition of socialism means. FOr far too long Marxists and capitalists have defined the terms of socialism to mean state ownership of capital, both have done so for their own authoritraian reasons.,
And you'd redefine it for your own authoritarian reasons.
Tell me, what happens to those who don't embrace your vision? They become threats to the non-State, the unState, hm? No? Obviously "enemies of freedom" so they'd be killed by your ideology.
You just use "Real Freedom" instead of "Master Race." Same song, different verse. Someone else who'd kill millions for the good of humanity, all in the name of thoughtcrime.
Like I said, Zealot and True Believer. Go join the Al Quaeda. You'd get along marvellously.
---- Burn, Baby, Burn ----
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by Anonymous User on Sunday June 22, @11:46PM EST (#17)
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"You get anger because you're discussing issues that have exactly jack and shit to do with Men's Rights on a Men's rights board"
Actually this was my point about the anti-socialist rhetoric here. I'm for mens rights, yet at the same time I have to hear anti-socialist rhetoric on a site dealing nothing with pro-capitalism, or anti-socialism. You don't like my anti-capitalist ideas here I feel the same way about anti-socialism.
"You get intolerance not because you won't shut up, but you keep chirping the same old tired song, and calling anyone who disagrees with your worldview a statist and willing slave. Blow me"
Actually this is what you and others were doing, saying the same old tired lies about what socialism is and what it isn't. You should listen to yourselves more closely, I was throwing the word "statist" around for the very fact that you call ALL socialists statists. Oh well.
"And you get insults, because you refuse to learn and won't stop till after you piss somebody off."
I was the one actually teaching you seeing as how you know so very little about socialism and anarchism yet you talk as if you know.
:"Now, go back to mommy, Fem-boy."
Yes I'm sure your peers here are very pleased with your towering intellect. You're a rude angry person who can't take being called on there shit nor can you back it up.
Propertyless George
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by Anonymous User on Sunday June 22, @11:49PM EST (#18)
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You reduce your arguments to the lowest commaon denominator by throwin insults and demonizing your opponent. You make for a good reactionary, I'll give you that. Yet no arguments to back up your ideas or anti-socialist rhetoric.
Propertyless George
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Now, THAT is how a feminist argues! In fact, they teach Propertyless Georgette and other students of 'wimens studies 101' how to argue exactly like this. After awhile, guys, you can pick them out of a crowd.
Disclaimer: Everything I post is of course my own opinion. If it seems harsh, Feminazis just piss me off!
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by Anonymous User on Monday June 23, @07:14AM EST (#20)
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Propertlyless George,
I'm going to take it that you are a young man. I am not going to attack you, for I myself was once an angry, confused young man. I want you to consider that Gonzo is doing you a trememdous favor by taking the time read your mind-numbing, poorly constructed sentences (forget the argument, I mean the grammer)and then taking the time argue back in detail. Dealing with you is hard work. I wouldn't have the patience. Your getting a quality argument here, free of charge.
You have many things to learn. Basic things.And as for me, when you learn how to write a concisely constructed sentence; learn to construct an arguement based on a knowledge of logic which will allow you to critique and find flaws in all points, including your own, then I might take you seriously. You have not achieved this yet.It will take a few years of hard work to master these skills. Forget grand ideas about society, you need to be able to think and write a sentence before you can deal with big things, and make critiques. You will be able to tell when you have acheived these basic skills when you suddenly find that you are no longer so hyper-sensitive to other peoples opinions and even rudeness. Because you will have a sense of mastery and self assurance. It won't matter so much what others say.
Even hierarchies won't bother you then. Maybe.
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by Anonymous User on Monday June 23, @02:26PM EST (#21)
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"I am not going to attack you, for I myself was once an angry, confused young man."
Attack me like Gonzo? ok. If you're going to talk to an angry person talk with Gonzo, unless ofcourse you agree with him then he's your buddy, otherwise.....
No one has shown me my flawed arguments in fact they are rational arguments being met with name calling. And you guys call that rational? Usually the first one or the only one who is resorting to calling names and belittling their opponent doesn't have a leg to stand on and is the one who has no argument.
And as for critiquing my spelling grammar is pointless for that is not the argument. Usually when people skirt around arguing about the main point and resorting to grammar and spelling flaws doesn't have a leg to stand on and who has no other argument to defend themselves. In other words it's their last and only resort.
And seeing how all those who responded resorted to this I'd say I argued very well and my point was made and in fact I was the one making the rational arguments.
"Even hierarchies won't bother you then. Maybe."
The day heirarchies don't bother me will be the day I'm dead. I was born an anarchist, I will never bow down to authority like some might compel me to.
Propertyless George.
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by Anonymous User on Monday June 23, @03:01PM EST (#22)
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"Unions in opposition to companies usually result in a bankrupt corporation and a bunch of their people on the unemployment rolls. Get real. I've been in a union, pal."
What the hell do you think a strike is, pal???? That isn't opposition? Amazing.
"Unions started originally because employers had no laws to check them - no laws - hmm, sound familiar there, Bucky?"
Why do you think workers resorted to making laws and regulations to protect them? If workers were under self management they wouldn't need laws to protect them from capitalists!
ME--"Once again socialism means that Workers are the ones in control of what we call "private property".
Gonzo--"Buckwheat, either it's private - or it ain't. Either someone owns the fruits of their labor - or they don't. Either someone owns the land they clear, and the house they build, or they don't."
My response. Workers don't own the fruits of their labor, the capitalist owns that. THe workers have to rent themselves to the capitalist in exchange for a wage. The workers do not own what they themselves create because OF private property.
"It means workers are in control of their places and homes.
And the minute anyone owns their own business - their own place - they become non-workers. Self-defeating."
Wrong again. The reason the business owner is a non-worker is because he has workers do HIS work in exchange for a wage. Under socialism workers will be doing their work, therefore workers.
ME--"For if you can have socialism without the govt.
Gonzo--"You haven't demonstrated that. You can't take what someone has without coercion. If you do that"
Socialism doesn't mean redistribution of wealth. You won't need to redistribute wealth under libertarian socialism because the wealth that workers create won't be taken from them by the capitalist in the first place!
me--"you would have to defend the authoritarianism inherent in the capitalist workplace."
gONZO---"You know, it's like I used to tell my son, "My Roof, My Rules." If that's the authoritarianism in the capitalist workplace, yeah, I defend it. Bring your gun. And lots and lots of body bags."
This is my point you know. For the workers have no real choice but to starve and go without shelter if they do not obey and give up their autonomy and liberty to the capitalist owner.. "Thus the worker's liberty, so much exalted by the economists, jurists, and bourgeois republicans, is only a theoretical freedom, lacking any means for its possible realization, and consequently it is only a fictitious liberty, an utter falsehood." Mikhai Bakunin
You say start your own business. But I say where would a worker get money to do this in the first place, where would the worker have to start out. They would have to start out by selling their liberty to the owner to get the money, in other words worker have to earn their freedom first before they can enjoy their freedom (not to mention having to play by the rules of the capitalist that is imposed on them with that state).
But the Anarchist says that we are born free and that our liberty can only be denied. The anarchist looks for what is stunting the workers freedomm and sees that it is the private ownership of the factory or business and so wants to abolish this authoritarian institution. Whereas the so-called libertarian says that private property is liberty therefore the authoritarian relationship that private property creates is fine and dandy. They put property above autonomy and liberty so therefore aren't truly libertarians but propertarians.
There have been many instances where workers have gone on strike and have been beaten and killed. In fact read Glenn Sacks article "hate my Father, no Ma'am" his grandfather was in the violent labor wars of the thirty's. So when Gonzo try's to imply that I will justify the use of killing and violence for what I see as liberty he at the same time threatens to use physical violence and to bring body bags. There have been many body bags in the labor movement, almost all of whom are working class folks. Just read about the Haymarket riot.
www.IWW.org
I urge everyone especially Gonzop to read this.
"
Is it necessary to repeat here the irrefutable arguments of Socialism which no bourgeois economist has yet succeeded in disproving? What is property, what is capital in their present form? For the capitalist and the property owner they mean the power and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live without working. And since neither property nor capital produces anything when not fertilized by labor - that means the power and the right to live by exploiting the work of someone else, the right to exploit the work of those who possess neither property nor capital and who thus are forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owners of both. Note that I have left out of account altogether the following question: In what way did property and capital ever fall into the hands of their present owners? This is a question which, when envisaged from the points of view of history, logic, and justice, cannot be answered in any other way but one which would serve as an indictment against the present owners. I shall therefore confine myself here to the statement that property owners and capitalists, inasmuch as they live not by their own productive labor but by getting land rent, house rent, interest upon their capital, or by speculation on land, buildings, and capital, or by the commercial and industrial exploitation of the manual labor of the proletariat, all live at the expense of the proletariat."
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Attack me like Gonzo? ok. If you're going to talk to an angry person talk with Gonzo, unless ofcourse you agree with him then he's your buddy, otherwise.....
Gee, that's funny. I've been on the other side on arguments with Leuk, rage, Thomas, Dan, Tom, Adam, Hunsvotti, Drew, Dave, Philatheles, Hawth, Scott, Thundercloud - a whole mess of people.
I've even told some of them to use their head for something besides a hatrack a time or two. Damn, guys, I guess we aren't buddies, We disagreed, ergo, you're my mortal enemy. Georgie Boy says so.
And as we know, Georgie Boy is *ALWAYS* right. He says so.
See, Georgie Boy, that's a refutation of a flawed argument in the form of "reductio ad absurdium," or, reducing your position to the absurd. Ahhhh - you stand corrected. Thak ya verra much....
No one has shown me my flawed arguments in fact they are rational arguments being met with name calling. And you guys call that rational? Usually the first one or the only one who is resorting to calling names and belittling their opponent doesn't have a leg to stand on and is the one who has no argument.
See above. You stand corrected.
Sorry you're such a thin-skinned little twerp. It's your pheminized upbringing that causes you to confuse your widdle feelins being all hurt with winning; "Oh! I call victim! I call victim! I win! I win!"
Grow up.
And seeing how all those who responded resorted to this I'd say I argued very well and my point was made and in fact I was the one making the rational arguments.
Yeah. You popped in calling all "us guys" whiners within three paragraphs of commiting diarrhea of the keyboard, and we're the fucking abusers?
You're the only one that would say. Fuck, rage is a left wing guy, but he didn't get abused by me - but then, rage isn't a Zealot or the memeber of some cult like "anarchy."
See, what makes you a Zealot is your adoptiuon of an extreme position and refusing to budge from it. Any criticism of your dogma is seen as a personal attack on you. This is why your arguments fall on deaf ears, because you become hysterical and incoherent, and seek the (rightful) abuse of yourself as the punk you are, because then you can fall back to the last hold position of claiming "victimhood" and "persecution." "I'm a victim! I'm being oppressed! I'm being oppressed! I Win! I Win!"
Got news fer ya. It was funny when Monty Python did it. Your delivery of the line is a little lacking. Get a new schtick.
---- Burn, Baby, Burn ----
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What the hell do you think a strike is, pal???? That isn't opposition? Amazing.
Strikes are done as a last resort - frequently work will continue for a time even after a "contract" has run out. Why? Because if the company can't deliver on short term commitments, it interrupts cash flow. A mighty company can collapse in a matter of mere months, making a strike pointless.
Strikes are enacted when the company has stopped delivering already, and are the exception rather than the rule. In fact, often a temporary reduction in wages will be negotiated, even within an established contract, to keep a company viable through a slump, or against the completion of a larger contract, with wages deferred until then. I've been through 3 of them. Your personal experience is...?
Thought so.
A strike is no more hostile to a company than another company saying to them, "Due to the habitual lateness of your payments for our goods, all orders from you must be prepaid from here on out."
Why do you think workers resorted to making laws and regulations to protect them? If workers were under self management they wouldn't need laws to protect them from capitalists!
Ah, self-management. How about you define that, please? In specifics, without ambiguity, amphiboly, etc. etc.
See, Georgie, I have a tree out by my garage, and just yesterday it cracked, leaving a branch hanging. I had to go out this moirning and tie it off, to insure it falls away from the garage against WHEN it breaks.
The tree is dying. It's ugly. I'm just getting rid of it. This is my idea for the weekend. Sunday, I'm having a barbeque, so it has to be done Saturday.
Now, I can do it myself, or I can pay someone to do it. What I need is for the work to start saturday AM, be finished by 6:00 (Because I have to leave then), and requires the tree be cut down, cut into logs, and stacked in my "wood which is seasoning" pile. Neatly. Branches, leaves, and sawdust need to be piled on my burn pile. The root has to be pulled.
Now, if I hire someone to do this, my needs - since I'm paying - are what goes. You know, George, if you "self-manage" and paint my garage, I'll appreciate it, but you won't get paid.
Because that's NOT what I asked you to do.
If the job is incomplete you won't get paid till it is. If the job is undone by the time my guests arrive on Sunday, go home and don't bother me - thanks for the free work. You didn't do what I asked.
Me pay - me boss. You do job I say do. Yo no do job me say do - you no get cash. Capisch? You savvy?
Employees agree to the same terms - on a continuing basis. You show up. You project our image in thus and so ways. You work the specified time. You do the specified task. You go home.
If you don't like it - quit. You are free to go elsewhere. You're free to job out a pickup hauling trash. You're free to write, repair computers out of your garage - whatever. What you aren't free to do with your garage painting business is to go, paint a garage, and demad payment for work nobody asked you to do - and once they ask you to do it, you do it their way, or pass on the job.
You'll still have bosses.
Grow up.
My response. Workers don't own the fruits of their labor, the capitalist owns that. THe workers have to rent themselves to the capitalist in exchange for a wage. The workers do not own what they themselves create because OF private property.
(Note: Marxist rhetoric indicated in boldface)
Same example - if I hire you to BUILD me a garage, once the deal is done, you're paid, and the garage is mine. You want to own your garage? Build it on your own land, with your own wood and tools. Same thing goes - you build me a garage on my lot, I'll be damned if you're going to start hanging around working on motorcycles and drinking beer with your buddies. Thanks for the free garage. Whotta guy!
Wrong again. The reason the business owner is a non-worker is because he has workers do HIS work in exchange for a wage. Under socialism workers will be doing their work, therefore workers.
And this is a bad thing why?
I own the insulin plant. Since I'm not a CPA, I pay an accountant to put my needs first, rather than an accounting firm where I'm just another client. My janitors sweep my floors. Training a new batch of technicians and lab specialists every day is WAY too expensive, so I hire them.
And so on. And so forth.
What you fail to realize is that the prime reason I'm the boss is because I bought the land, I paid for the machinery, I paid for the building to be built, I bought the supplies, and I hold the patent on the process.
If my business goes under, I lose it all. I risk it all - your risk? Well, if I can't pay you, I go into recievership - eventually my assets are sold, for often pennies on the dollar. You get paid - you get penalties - you get interest - and you get to go elsewhere; perhaps for the same factory with someone who has a better head for business than me.
I've lost my land, my factory, my supplies, my business, and maybe even my house and other personal property.
This isn't like I asked you to work for free in promise of better times. This isn't like I asked you to pitch in to buy anything. I didn't ask you to assume the risk of a partner. You agreed to work for $10 an hour sweeping my floors. You made no risk - for you to demand a share in the profits is absurd.
I am sharing the profits - since the job requires many people to do, I'm hiring them - a form of contract, with specific obligations and penalties on both side. You're free to reject it.
\
Can it be abused? Certainly. Don't be guilty of the fallacy of composition (because the attributes of the parts of a whole have a certain property, it is argued that the whole has that property) - because some companies abuse this, it does not follow that ALL companies abuse it.
And ...um ... many workers abuse it too.
Socialism doesn't mean redistribution of wealth. You won't need to redistribute wealth under libertarian socialism because the wealth that workers create won't be taken from them by the capitalist in the first place!
You are first going to have to take this from the "capitalist" in any event. What's your plan to do this bloodlessly, and without coercion?
This is my point you know. For the workers have no real choice but to starve and go without shelter if they do not obey and give up their autonomy and liberty to the capitalist owner..
Nosireebob. It's a real choice, with real consequences.
You know why most petty tyrant bosses walk all over their employees? Because their employees are spineless cowards who let them - nobody, and I mean NOBODY - can treat you like a doormat without your prior permission. Just say, "No." Say, "I won't."
Imagine what would happen if the entire production crew of a factory walked out. Just said, "Screw this!" and applied for jobs elsewhere. This is called a wildcat strike, saying "Take this job and shove it, it's just not worth it."
I bloody gaurantee that if working conditions for the next bunch didn't change radically, the factory would be dead in months. I've been in a "The beatings will continue until morale improves" situation, the good news is that it never lasts long.
It's a self correcting problem, especially if people grow a pair.
"Thus the worker's liberty, so much exalted by the economists, jurists, and bourgeois republicans, is only a theoretical freedom, lacking any means for its possible realization, and consequently it is only a fictitious liberty, an utter falsehood." Mikhai Bakunin
Again, Marxist rhetoric in bold
You say start your own business. But I say where would a worker get money to do this in the first place, where would the worker have to start out. They would have to start out by selling their liberty to the owner to get the money, in other words worker have to earn their freedom first before they can enjoy their freedom (not to mention having to play by the rules of the capitalist that is imposed on them with that state).
Michael Dell started Dell Computers in a college Dorm room. Steve Jobs and The Woz started Apple in a garage. Famous Amos started in a kitchen.
And so on. And so forth.
Check your facts - many booming businesses started out on a shoestring budget, if any at all, and were hand to mouth for a long time. It took perseverance and business sense. Check your facts again - check how many well financed companies fail. Within months.
Fact of the matter is, business sense and customer service drive business success, not capital. Capital makes it easier if you have the savvy, but without the savvy, you're doomed. Without the idea that seizes the market - you're doomed.
Killing rish people isn't going to give you what you are looking for.
But the Anarchist says that we are born free and that our liberty can only be denied. The anarchist looks for what is stunting the workers freedomm and sees that it is the private ownership of the factory or business and so wants to abolish this authoritarian institution.
No, the anarchist claims, it's an assumption of facts not in evidence. Prove it, and use something besides "Some obscure rhetoritician wrote a book and claimed it."
I assert that since it's a statistiacal fact that half the population is below average intellegence, most people are frankly too stupid to be successful in business, and therefore must work because they lack the qualities it takes to be an entrepeneur.
Whereas the so-called libertarian says that private property is liberty therefore the authoritarian relationship that private property creates is fine and dandy. They put property above autonomy and liberty so therefore aren't truly libertarians but propertarians.
You yourself have claimed elsewhere that all people aren't born with equal capabilities - are you suggesting that I am obliged to give of my labor to someone who is less capable, so that he can live in a style which my hard work and intellegence have brought me to?
If so, what group is going to make me, in your Utopia? Uh-uh - no government or police, no coercion.
There have been many instances where workers have gone on strike and have been beaten and killed. In fact read Glenn Sacks article "hate my Father, no Ma'am" his grandfather was in the violent labor wars of the thirty's. So when Gonzo try's to imply that I will justify the use of killing and violence for what I see as liberty he at the same time threatens to use physical violence and to bring body bags. There have been many body bags in the labor movement, almost all of whom are working class folks. Just read about the Haymarket riot.
You don't even begin to make sense in this ramble.
It just points out, though, despite your claims of being "Against Coercion," like most totalitarian idealogues, you're perfectly willing to rationalize violence and killing of any who don't see things your way as "enemies of humanity." (Which is anarchese for "Enemy of the State.")
I urge everyone especially Gonzop to read this.
*sigh* I hate having to respond to out of cointext excerpts of unoriginal thought. I'll make an exception this once because I'm a helluva guy
"Is it necessary to repeat here the irrefutable arguments of Socialism which no bourgeois economist has yet succeeded in disproving?
Well, in fact, yes, because they are irrefutable in your own mind. Bad logic. Specific fallacy "Every Schoolboy knows"
Point refuted.
What is property, what is capital in their present form? For the capitalist and the property owner they mean the power and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live without working.
Wrong. Bad logic, assuming facts not in evidence. Because some of the rich are the idle rich, it does not follow that all wealth is illegitimate and either gained or kept through a lack of effort. 2nd count of bad logic, fallacy of composition (This one's a favorite of yours, eh?)
Point refuted.
And since neither property nor capital produces anything when not fertilized by labor - that means the power and the right to live by exploiting the work of someone else, the right to exploit the work of those who possess neither property nor capital and who thus are forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owners of both.
This requires the presumption that the possession of property or other wealth is a result of luck, which in the vast and overwhelming majority of cases is contrary to fact; Bad Logic, both the Fallacy of exclusion and begging the question is apparant here, and that's just for starters.
Point refuted.
Note that I have left out of account altogether the following question: In what way did property and capital ever fall into the hands of their present owners?
And if it wasn't so malevolent, it'd be cute and clever - the point is avoided because it is inconvenient to admit that many - indeed MOST - of the "rich" got so through dint of hard work. Bad logic, Straw Man, argument from ignorance.
Point refuted.
This is a question which, when envisaged from the points of view of history, logic, and justice, cannot be answered in any other way but one which would serve as an indictment against the present owners.
Contrary to fact, prejudicial language, anonymous authority, begging the question, Composition (AGAIN!), non-support, limited depth.
Bad logic, Point refuted.
shall therefore confine myself here to the statement that property owners and capitalists, inasmuch as they live not by their own productive labor but by getting land rent, house rent, interest upon their capital, or by speculation on land, buildings, and capital, or by the commercial and industrial exploitation of the manual labor of the proletariat , all live at the expense of the proletariat ."
Begging the question and circular definition, bad logic, point refuted.
Marxist language in Boldface. FInal analysis - sheer rhetoric and sophistry. No factual basis for the Marxist rant. Grade, D-.
Class dismissed, boy.
---- Burn, Baby, Burn ----
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by Anonymous User on Monday June 23, @06:24PM EST (#28)
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Gonzo "If you don't like it - quit. You are free to go elsewhere. You're free to job out a pickup hauling trash. You're free to write, repair computers out of your garage - whatever. What you aren't free to do with your garage painting business is to go, paint a garage, and demad payment for work nobody asked you to do - and once they ask you to do it, you do it their way, or pass on the job.
You'll still have bosses.
Grow up."
Freedom means much more than choosing between masters. You are encouraging a slave mentality here. So much for you actually wanting workewrs to have spine.
ME---"But the Anarchist says that we are born free and that our liberty can only be denied. The anarchist looks for what is stunting the workers freedomm and sees that it is the private ownership of the factory or business and so wants to abolish this authoritarian institution."
Gonzo----"No, the anarchist claims, it's an assumption of facts not in evidence. Prove it, and use something besides "Some obscure rhetoritician wrote a book and claimed it."
You want me to prove that people aren't born free? You start off with the assumption that people aren't free? So much for your libertarianism. Anarchists say it is those who are in authority over people that have the burden of proof on them to prove their domination is legitimate. Not for those under domination to prove that they should be free. amazing
Gonzo--"I assert that since it's a statistiacal fact that half the population is below average intellegence, most people are frankly too stupid to be successful in business, and therefore must work because they lack the qualities it takes to be an entrepeneur."
You a start off with the assumption that capitalism is natural and fair to begin with. What anarchists are saying is that EVERYONE no matter their intelligence or handicaps deserves to self manage their place of work and their community they live in, that EVERYONE has an equal voice no more no less. WHat you seem to be saying is that only a select elite group gets to enjoy their freedom.
You don't even begin to make sense in this ramble.
"It just points out, though, despite your claims of being "Against Coercion," like most totalitarian idealogues, you're perfectly willing to rationalize violence and killing of any who don't see things your way as "enemies of humanity." (Which is anarchese for "Enemy of the State.")"
Oh yes, and where did I rationalize violence. WHo exactly was the one who claimed to be a black belt? Who was the one who brought guns? Who was the one who told me to bring body bags???? You talk about me projecting, wow.
Gonzo---"This requires the presumption that the possession of property or other wealth is a result of luck, which in the vast and overwhelming majority of cases is contrary to fact; Bad Logic, both the Fallacy of exclusion and begging the question is apparant here, and that's just for starters."
The ownership of property is what make capitalists money. It doesn't matter how they got it. Whjat matters is that they are taking and enjoying the fruits of others labor.
gonzo "And if it wasn't so malevolent, it'd be cute and clever - the point is avoided because it is inconvenient to admit that many - indeed MOST - of the "rich" got so through dint of hard work. Bad logic, Straw Man, argument from ignorance."
Read the above. the point was that land was STOLEN in the first place by conquerers.
"Marxist language in Boldface. FInal analysis - sheer rhetoric and sophistry. No factual basis for the Marxist rant. Grade, D-.
Class dismissed, boy."
Karl Marx did not invent the word proletariat. Marx does contrbute a lot to socialism like Das Kapital, but anarchist are not Marxists.
propertyless george
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by Anonymous User on Monday June 23, @06:44PM EST (#30)
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"But no one forces you to work for them!
Of course it is claimed that entering wage labour is a "voluntary" undertaking, from which both sides allegedly benefit. However, due to past initiations of force (e.g. the seizure of land by conquest) plus the tendency for capital to concentrate, a relative handful of people now control vast wealth, depriving all others access to the means of life. As Immanuel Wallerstein points out in The Capitalist World System (vol. 1), capitalism evolved from feudalism, with the first capitalists using inherited family wealth derived from large land holdings to start factories. That "inherited family wealth" can be traced back originally to conquest and forcible seizure. Thus denial of free access to the means of life is based ultimately on the principle of "might makes right." And as Murray Bookchin so rightly points out, "the means of life must be taken for what they literally are: the means without which life is impossible. To deny them to people is more than 'theft'... it is outright homicide." [Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society, p. 187]
David Ellerman has also noted that the past use of force has resulted in the majority being limited to those options allowed to them by the powers that be:
"It is a veritable mainstay of capitalist thought... that the moral flaws of chattel slavery have not survived in capitalism since the workers, unlike the slaves, are free people making voluntary wage contracts. But it is only that, in the case of capitalism, the denial of natural rights is less complete so that the worker has a residual legal personality as a free 'commodity owner.' He is thus allowed to voluntarily put his own working life to traffic. When a robber denies another person's right to make an infinite number of other choices besides losing his money or his life and the denial is backed up by a gun, then this is clearly robbery even though it might be said that the victim making a 'voluntary choice' between his remaining options. When the legal system itself denies the natural rights of working people in the name of the prerogatives of capital, and this denial is sanctioned by the legal violence of the state, then the theorists of 'libertarian' capitalism do not proclaim institutional robbery, but rather they celebrate the 'natural liberty' of working people to choose between the remaining options of selling their labour as a commodity and being unemployed." [quoted by Noam Chomsky, The Chomsky Reader, p. 186]
Therefore the existence of the labour market depends on the worker being separated from the means of production. The natural basis of capitalism is wage labour, wherein the majority have little option but to sell their skills, labour and time to those who do own the means of production. In advanced capitalist countries, less than 10% of the working population are self-employed (in 1990, 7.6% in the UK, 8% in the USA and Canada - however, this figure includes employers as well, meaning that the number of self-employed workers is even smaller!). Hence for the vast majority, the labour market is their only option.
Michael Bakunin notes that these facts put the worker in the position of a serf with regard to the capitalist, even though the worker is formally "free" and "equal" under the law:
"Juridically they are both equal; but economically the worker is the serf of the capitalist . . . thereby the worker sells his person and his liberty for a given time. The worker is in the position of a serf because this terrible threat of starvation which daily hangs over his head and over his family, will force him to accept any conditions imposed by the gainful calculations of the capitalist, the industrialist, the employer. . . .The worker always has the right to leave his employer, but has he the means to do so? No, he does it in order to sell himself to another employer. He is driven to it by the same hunger which forces him to sell himself to the first employer. Thus the worker's liberty . . . is only a theoretical freedom, lacking any means for its possible realisation, and consequently it is only a fictitious liberty, an utter falsehood. The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom -- voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory from an economic sense -- broken up by momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real slavery." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 187-8]
Obviously, a company cannot force you to work for them but, in general, you have to work for someone. This is because of past "initiation of force" by the capitalist class and the state which have created the objective conditions within which we make our employment decisions. Before any specific labour market contract occurs, the separation of workers from the means of production is an established fact (and the resulting "labour" market usually gives the advantage to the capitalists as a class). So while we can usually pick which capitalist to work for, we, in general, cannot choose to work for ourselves (the self-employed sector of the economy is tiny, which indicates well how spurious capitalist liberty actually is). Of course, the ability to leave employment and seek it elsewhere is an important freedom. However, this freedom, like most freedoms under capitalism, is of limited use and hides a deeper anti-individual reality.
As Karl Polanyi puts it:
"In human terms such a postulate [of a labour market] implied for the worker extreme instability of earnings, utter absence of professional standards, abject readiness to be shoved and pushed about indiscriminately, complete dependence on the whims of the market. [Ludwig Von] Mises justly argued that if workers 'did not act as trade unionists, but reduced their demands and changed their locations and occupations according to the labour market, they would eventually find work.' This sums up the position under a system based on the postulate of the commodity character of labour. It is not for the commodity to decide where it should be offered for sale, to what purpose it should be used, at what price it should be allowed to change hands, and in what manner it should be consumed or destroyed." [The Great Transformation, p. 176]
(Although we should point out that von Mises argument that workers will "eventually" find work as well as being nice and vague -- how long is "eventually"?, for example -- is contradicted by actual experience. As the Keynesian economist Michael Stewart notes, in the nineteenth century workers "who lost their jobs had to redeploy fast or starve (and even this feature of the ninetheenth century economy. . . did not prevent prolonged recessions)" [Keynes in the 1990s, p. 31] Workers "reducing their demands" may actually worsen an economic slump, causing more unemployment in the short run and lengthening the length of the crisis. We address the issue of unemployment and workers "reducing their demands" in more detail in section C.9).
It is sometimes argued that capital needs labour, so both have an equal say in the terms offered, and hence the labour market is based on "liberty." But for capitalism to be based on real freedom or on true free agreement, both sides of the capital/labour divide must be equal in bargaining power, otherwise any agreement would favour the most powerful at the expense of the other party. However, due to the existence of private property and the states needed to protect it, this equality is de facto impossible, regardless of the theory. This is because. in general, capitalists have three advantages on the "free" labour market-- the law and state placing the rights of property above those of labour, the existence of unemployment over most of the business cycle and capitalists having more resources to fall back on. We will discuss each in turn.
The first advantage, namely property owners having the backing of the law and state, ensures that when workers go on strike or use other forms of direct action (or even when they try to form a union) the capitalist has the full backing of the state to employ scabs, break picket lines or fire "the ring-leaders." This obviously gives employers greater power in their bargaining position, placing workers in a weak position (a position that may make them, the workers, think twice before standing up for their rights).
The existence of unemployment over most of the business cycle ensures that "employers have a structural advantage in the labour market, because there are typically more candidates. . . than jobs for them to fill." This means that "[c]ompetition in labour markets us typically skewed in favour of employers: it is a buyers market. And in a buyer's market, it is the sellers who compromise. Competition for labour is not strong enough to ensure that workers' desires are always satisified." [Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American, p. 71, p. 129] If the labour market generally favours the employer, then this obviously places working people at a disadvantage as the threat of unemployment and the hardships associated with encourages workers to take any job and submit to their bosses demands and power while employed. Unemployment, in other words, serves to discipline labour. The higher the prevailing unemployment rate, the harder it is to find a new job, which raises the cost of job loss and makes it less likely for workers to strike, join unions, or to resist employer demands, and so on.
As Bakunin argued, "the property owners... are likewise forced to seek out and purchase labour... but not in the same measure . . . [there is no] equality between those who offer their labour and those who purchase it." [Op. Cit., p. 183] This ensures that any "free agreements" made benefit the capitalists more than the workers (see the next section on periods of full employment, when conditions tilt in favour of working people).
Lastly, there is the issue of inequalities in wealth and so resources. The capitalist generally has more resources to fall back on during strikes and while waiting to find employees (for example, large companies with many factories can swap production to their other factories if one goes on strike). And by having more resources to fall back on, the capitalist can hold out longer than the worker, so placing the employer in a stronger bargaining position and so ensuring labour contracts favour them. This was recognised by Adam Smith:
"It is not difficult to foresee which of the two parties [workers and capitalists] must, upon all ordinary occasions... force the other into a compliance with their terms... In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer... though they did not employ a single workman [the masters] could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scare any a year without employment. In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate. . . [I]n disputes with their workmen, masters must generally have the advantage." [Wealth of Nations, pp. 59-60]
How little things have changed.
So, while it is definitely the case that no one forces you to work for them, the capitalist system is such that you have little choice but to sell your liberty and labour on the "free market." Not only this, but the labour market (which is what makes capitalism capitalism) is (usually) skewed in favour of the employer, so ensuring that any "free agreements" made on it favour the boss and result in the workers submitting to domination and exploitation. This is why anarchists support collective organisation (such as unions) and resistance (such as strikes), direct action and solidarity to make us as, if not more, powerful than our exploiters and win important reforms and improvements (and, ultimately, change society), even when faced with the disadvantages on the labour market we have indicated. The despotism associated with property (to use Proudhon's expression) is resisted by those subject to it and, needless to say, the boss does not always win.
Propertyless George
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Worthless.
Excerpts, out of context, different authors, no coherency.
Try again - maybve some original thought? Make your case. Do your OWN thinking, rather than be the mental slave to someone else's thoughts.
Be your own person, not a follower.
Grade, "F". I know you don't deserve it, but it's the lowest I have.
That's what plagarists usually get.
---- Burn, Baby, Burn ----
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Freedom means much more than choosing between masters. You are encouraging a slave mentality here. So much for you actually wanting workewrs to have spine.
No, freedom means first taking responsibility for yourself, and viewing the world through a lens of reality. Life isn't fair. Sometimes you have no good choices. Make them. Do what you can with what you have.
I say again; Grow up.
You want me to prove that people aren't born free? You start off with the assumption that people aren't free? So much for your libertarianism. Anarchists say it is those who are in authority over people that have the burden of proof on them to prove their domination is legitimate. Not for those under domination to prove that they should be free. amazing
No, you are born dependant, a parasite who doesn't deserve freedom. Earn it. And then keep it by the sweat of your brow and your own toil.
Freedom isn't free. Only a parasite wants something of value for nothing. `The world owes me ______' is sheer immaturity, at best. Grow up.
You a start off with the assumption that capitalism is natural and fair to begin with. What anarchists are saying is that EVERYONE no matter their intelligence or handicaps deserves to self manage their place of work and their community they live in, that EVERYONE has an equal voice no more no less. WHat you seem to be saying is that only a select elite group gets to enjoy their freedom.
Equality of opportunity is not the same as equality of result. The superior will prosper, the inferior will die. Life isn't fair. Read your Darwin, Mr. "Religion-is-a-slave-mentality." Your claim, what, can't take the heat?
Grow up.
Oh yes, and where did I rationalize violence. WHo exactly was the one who claimed to be a black belt? Who was the one who brought guns? Who was the one who told me to bring body bags???? You talk about me projecting, wow.
If you want to take from me what is mine, be prepared to kill - but first be prepared to die.
I'm prepared to take the burden of my freedom on my own shoulders and do what I need to keep it, by my own hand. Are you?
It's called "The law of the jungle." Like anarchy? Get used to it.
Grow up.
The ownership of property is what make capitalists money. It doesn't matter how they got it. Whjat matters is that they are taking and enjoying the fruits of others labor.
Then the others need to take responsibility for their own freedom if they don't like it; it's not my responsibility if someone chooses to live on their knees rather than die on their feet.
It's their choice to make. Respect it. Grow up.
Read the above. the point was that land was STOLEN in the first place by conquerers.
Show me the deed.
No deed? Well, then things "belong" tpo those who can take and hold it. The strong will do as they will, and the weak shall suffer what they must.
It's a law of survival. Don't like it? Tough. It's reality.
Grow up.
Karl Marx did not invent the word proletariat. Marx does contrbute a lot to socialism like Das Kapital, but anarchist are not Marxists.
Never said he did. Stop putting words in my mouth and then knocking down the straw man you made. Take me on, boy. Grow up.
It's Marxist rhetoric. It looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck. It's a duck. It's Marxism. Straight out of the Manifesto.
Embrace what you are, or if you're ashamed, abandon it. Take responsibility for it, boy.
Grow up.
If ya don't wanna run with the big dogs, stay on the porch.
---- Burn, Baby, Burn ----
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by Anonymous User on Sunday June 22, @12:17AM EST (#3)
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Wendy said:
"Whenever feminists do grab the helm, men cry out: We have become second-class citizens! We are legally disadvantaged in the workplace by affirmative action, ignored as victims of domestic violence in the home, discriminated against in funding for health care, oppressed by family courts that favor a mother's claim to custody ... the list scrolls on.
But protesting men miss the point. Until the "utopian" day when the institutions of society have been reconstructed, gender feminists claim no equality is possible. It is men against us; men win only if women lose, and vice versa."
My Reply:
In other words when we protest the societal inequities created by Msinformation (misinformation) we are merely playing into the battle that gender feminist purport to be at the heart of feminist oppression. Hence their sayings: "men are trying to oppress women," "men are assaulting poor, disadvantaged innocent women striving for social justice." In reality anything that men try to do will be judged this way so that only women (primarily of the gender feminist ideology) will be able to govern, lead, and control.
I don't buy the conclusion of Wendy, that we are missing that point. We are aware that gender feminists spin any male protest into the rhetoric of their propaganda, to make it sound like the world according to their dogma, but it won't work. It is becoming widely known that Gender feminist routinely use loony, nonsensical lies and react in hysterical ways to any criticism of their propaganda. They can react in their customary pugnacious ways until L.A. freezes over and it still won't change the fact that they have used statistical lies (big time) to set up their feminist structures, their house of cards, and they use lies to defend it. THE WORLD NEEDS TO BE TAUGHT THAT TRUTH hence: FEMINIST LIES MAKE BAD LAWS.
Wendy should probably be upset that she has chosen "ifeminist" as her "handle" and people keep associating the word "feminist" in any form with the abuses of the gender feminists, radical feminists, etc. Wendy misses the point that the word "feminist" is over used, misused, and in any form is rapidly becoming associated with all the abusiveness and injustice of gender feminists, radical feminists, etc. (because of the behavior of those later feminists). She would be wise (as I have said before) to pick a new name for what she so eloquently (and usually accurately) puts forth in her articles and on her web site.
If gender feminists and radical feminist are upset with male protesters and want to come out of rhetorical rat holes of male bashing with the vilest of lies and distortions, then let them come forth for all the world to see and hear those vile untruths. The bigotry and hate rhetoric they use will only hasten the day when the rest of society is enlightened, and throws this corrupt forum of "feminist" ideology into the trash heap of the world's oppressive and unjust ideologies.
When all the world sees that we (men and women of good will) are striving for true equality of the sexes (fairness) and not an us vs. them conflict, then all the world will see what pugnacious harbingers of gender conflict the gender feminists, radical feminists, etc. are. Let those "feminist's" wage their abusiveness against men. Let them say it is an assault against women (when it isn't). All the lies in the world will never make it that, and all the lies in the world will never stop men from protesting and pointing out all the abusiveness of those "feminist's" rhetoric and Msinformation (misinformation). Let the re-education begin, and let's hope Wendy finds a way (a name) to more clearly delineate her common sense approach to her gender's issues and rights from the ones that abuse all people, but mostly men. I hope she can find a name that does not incorporate any form of the word "feminist," because of all the baggage and unpleasantness that comes to men's minds, when the word comes up.
Sincerely, Ray
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by Anonymous User on Sunday June 22, @12:50AM EST (#4)
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"I hope she can find a name that does not incorporate any form of the word "feminist," "
Ya, "Individualist".
Individualism covers everyone , women, men, race, religeon.
It is the true form of tolerance and objectivety. It should not be hard to balance individualism and personal accountability.
Such as, your child swings on a park swingset and hurts themself. Than that sucks, but your personal accountability says its your fault and no one elses and no one else should be punished.
Individualism gives you choice and a power balance with the state. Your rights end where others begins.
YOu are an individual first, race,sex,religeon,age second, third.
If you get smashed at a bar and drive into a pole, its not the bar tenders fault its your fucking fault.
There's a lot to be said about personal accountability.
This world has become nothing more than a litigators paradise.
But to play the same game they are playing we could always start whining that the term "Feminists" is assualtive and damaging to men's environment. Let them laugh, cause when they do they still get closer to the reality of what feminsim has become. Because then you have a chance to explain it. Whether they believe it or not they heard it. Soon they will see it for themselves.
Dan Lynch
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by Anonymous User on Monday June 23, @03:17PM EST (#24)
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me--"you would have to defend the authoritarianism inherent in the capitalist workplace."
gONZO---"You know, it's like I used to tell my son, "My Roof, My Rules." If that's the authoritarianism in the capitalist workplace, yeah, I defend it. Bring your gun. And lots and lots of body bags."
This is my point you know. For the workers have no real choice but to starve and go without shelter if they do not obey and give up their autonomy and liberty to the capitalist owner.. "Thus the worker's liberty, so much exalted by the economists, jurists, and bourgeois republicans, is only a theoretical freedom, lacking any means for its possible realization, and consequently it is only a fictitious liberty, an utter falsehood." Mikhai Bakunin
You say start your own business. But I say where would a worker get money to do this in the first place, where would the worker have to start out? They would have to start out by selling their liberty to the owner to get the money, in other words worker have to earn their freedom first before they can enjoy their freedom (not to mention having to CONFORM to the rules of the capitalist class that is imposed on them with that state).
But the Anarchist says that we are born free and that our liberty can only be denied. The anarchist looks for what is stunting the workers freedom and sees that it is the private ownership of the factory or business and so wants to abolish this authoritarian institution. Whereas the so-called libertarian says that private property is liberty, therefore the authoritarian relationship that private property creates is fine and dandy. They put property above autonomy and liberty so therefore aren't truly libertarians but propertarians.
There have been many instances where workers have gone on strike and have been beaten and killed. In fact read Glenn Sacks article "hate my Father, no Ma'am" his grandfather was in the violent labor wars of the thirty's. So when Gonzo try's to imply that I will justify the use of killing and violence for what I see as liberty he at the same time threatens to use physical violence and for me to bring body bags ofr dead workers.
There have been many body bags in the labor movement, almost all of whom are working class folks. Just read about the Haymarket riot.
www.IWW.org
I urge everyone especially Gonzop to read this.
"
Is it necessary to repeat here the irrefutable arguments of Socialism which no bourgeois economist has yet succeeded in disproving? What is property, what is capital in their present form? For the capitalist and the property owner they mean the power and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live without working. And since neither property nor capital produces anything when not fertilized by labor - that means the power and the right to live by exploiting the work of someone else, the right to exploit the work of those who possess neither property nor capital and who thus are forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owners of both. Note that I have left out of account altogether the following question: In what way did property and capital ever fall into the hands of their present owners? This is a question which, when envisaged from the points of view of history, logic, and justice, cannot be answered in any other way but one which would serve as an indictment against the present owners. I shall therefore confine myself here to the statement that property owners and capitalists, inasmuch as they live not by their own productive labor but by getting land rent, house rent, interest upon their capital, or by speculation on land, buildings, and capital, or by the commercial and industrial exploitation of the manual labor of the proletariat, all live at the expense of the proletariat."
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/baku nin/capstate.html
I think that the time and energy you spent to defend capitalism and argue against anarchism or socialism proves I got under your skin Gonzo, that I touched a sort of sensitive spot. When all I was showing is that you and others don't really know what socialism is, and when it comes down to it capitalism or anti-socialism comes before solidarity with men who are socialists of all stripes.
I've come here to this site for more than a year and didn't say a word because my only intent here was to stop misandry and bring geneder reconciliation. I could have solidarity even with capitalists on this issue, but I got tired of the lies and distortions about socialism. You're solidarity with men only goes so far as it conforms to your ideas. That was my point and I made it.
This is all I have time for.
Propertyless George
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I think that the time and energy you spent to defend capitalism and argue against anarchism or socialism proves I got under your skin Gonzo, that I touched a sort of sensitive spot.
Not at all, your illogic has been most entertaining. I'm on vacation this week, and have nothing better to do. What, you think I don't get a kick out of getting a know-it-all little twerp's knickers all in a knot?
When all I was showing is that you and others don't really know what socialism is, and when it comes down to it capitalism or anti-socialism comes before solidarity with men who are socialists of all stripes.
Methinks he doth protest too much, just a lil' bit o' the ol' projection 'ere, eh wot?
I've come here to this site for more than a year and didn't say a word because my only intent here was to stop misandry and bring geneder reconciliation.
Yeah sure ya betcha. So ya say - I have, and have the posts to show - you don't. How convenient.
Cute use of prejudicial language and the Appeal to Pity.
I could have solidarity even with capitalists on this issue, but I got tired of the lies and distortions about socialism. You're solidarity with men only goes so far as it conforms to your ideas.
Hmm. More projection. See, you're a... whatever - marxist anarchist? first, all other things second.
And I didn't prove that, me bucko - you did it all by your lonesome.
That was my point and I made it.
Show of hands? Anyone persuaded?
This is all I have time for. Propertyless George
Well, good riddance to bad rubbish.
---- Burn, Baby, Burn ----
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by Anonymous User on Monday June 23, @05:54PM EST (#27)
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This is what I'm trying to say in a nutshell, besides of course pointing out the willful ignorance on socialism. The burden of proof for your ownership of property and the authority that that ownership grants you is on YOU to prove as legitimate, not for me. I'm arguing in the negative the person who argues in the positive is the one who has the burden of proof on them. You haven't proven jack. I'm pointing out that the authority of the property owner is illegitimate.
Oh yeah I'm on vacation too, thanks to the labor movement.
"Anarchism, in my view, is an expression of the idea that the burden of proof is always on those who argue that authority and domination are necessary. They have to demonstrate, with powerful argument, that that conclusion is correct. If they cannot, then the institutions they defend should be considered illegitimate."
Noam Chomsky
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by Anonymous User on Monday June 23, @06:33PM EST (#29)
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Propertyless George,
We'll do fine without you. We don't need your solidarity. Frankly, you're support isn't really isn't all that important. Bye.
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This is what I'm trying to say in a nutshell, besides of course pointing out the willful ignorance on socialism. The burden of proof for your ownership of property and the authority that that ownership grants you is on YOU to prove as legitimate, not for me. I'm arguing in the negative the person who argues in the positive is the one who has the burden of proof on them. You haven't proven jack. I'm pointing out that the authority of the property owner is illegitimate.
Oh yeah I'm on vacation too, thanks to the labor movement.
"Anarchism, in my view, is an expression of the idea that the burden of proof is always on those who argue that authority and domination are necessary. They have to demonstrate, with powerful argument, that that conclusion is correct. If they cannot, then the institutions they defend should be considered illegitimate."
Noam Chomsky
It's mine because I own it. I say so. I'll keep it by shedding your blood if you think you're man enough to take it.
I'm sitting on it son. It's mine. Come take it if you want. Feel froggy? By all means, jump.
The strong shall do as they will, the weak shall suffer what they must. At the end of the day you still may be bleating how it isn't mine - but I hold it. There's your proof.
I'm wrong? Show me, big fella. Come get it. Bray and bleat all you want - I don't care, you've a perfect right to be both wrong and stupid, and I'm happy to let you demonstrate it beyond all doubt to all and sundry.
Thought so. All talk. No action.
Grow up.
---- Burn, Baby, Burn ----
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The gender war has not broken out into open violence yet. But it will. The difference between the open oppression of men and that of women earlier is that the culprits who oppress men are still alive, still enjoying the fruits of their repression, and clearly identifiable. What is the difference between Feminism and Baathism? The target of their tyranny.
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