tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post953650368520385677..comments2023-10-24T11:03:41.388-05:00Comments on ladypoverty: The stateJ.R. Boydhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076895859826581960noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-26721093401740761432011-03-05T12:37:28.111-05:002011-03-05T12:37:28.111-05:00err...ignorederr...ignoredEnronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04452719183147212113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-33795683750658706732011-03-05T12:37:09.178-05:002011-03-05T12:37:09.178-05:00That book by Rocker is consistently under-read and...That book by Rocker is consistently under-read and ingnoredEnronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04452719183147212113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-48340363641468633582011-03-04T22:11:26.307-05:002011-03-04T22:11:26.307-05:00Of course, JRB. And thank you.Of course, JRB. And thank you.Jack Crowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499087036876745723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-11740001573964419652011-03-04T16:54:17.268-05:002011-03-04T16:54:17.268-05:00Jack:
If I am printerlogically skilled enough, I ...Jack:<br /><br />If I am printerlogically skilled enough, I would like to print out this comment as a handy pocket summary of US history, to be deployed on the job and elsewhere.<br /><br /><br />Brian M.: <br /><br />You ask good questions. I hope we will be able to address some of these concerns soon.JRBhttp://ladypoverty.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-6934628173033326822011-03-02T16:38:43.956-05:002011-03-02T16:38:43.956-05:00Brian,
I think those ameliorating functions have ...Brian,<br /><br />I think those ameliorating functions have to be understood economically. The welfare state was a constructed response to the decline of "rural america," the explosion of industrial agriculture and the concentration of oil dependent populations in large urban environments.<br /><br />"People" were hungry and pissed, and the plutocrats needed them less hungry and less pissed so they'd take jobs, stay at work, have kids and make the plutocrats wealthier. Welfare staved off a very red revolution, or chaos.<br /><br />But, by "people", I don't mean black people, Mexicans, domestic women, Indians or Asian coolie labor.<br /><br />Welfare deliberately excluded black folks, aliens and migrants, so that it could be sold to the plutocrats and Senators of the South. Instead, blacks and migrants got a prison system, Jim Crow and legal buttressing of sharecropping, transferred to the factory.<br /><br />Only after the threat of black people becoming pissed people became a reality did the welfare state get expanded to include them proactively, but too little and too late (and always coded with racist appeals to contain "welfare queens" and "thugs"). <br /><br />So, that what I think has always defined these communities, vis a vis the state, has been a twin set of oppressions - the first being naked violence and incarceration, the second the more subtle but publicly symbolic infantilization of colored people as perpetual dependents (regardless of the facts on the ground).<br /><br />This works especially well to divide The People (and this still mostly means Europeans) from the Dependent Others (and this of course first and foremost means blacks) by assigning to the one membership in the middle and laboring classes, and to the other the role of leech upon labor and taxpayers.<br /><br />I'm not saying that's the deliberated purpose of the ameliorating functions, but it's how it works practically. Only those who "pay in" are considered worthy of receiving the benefits, and only European Americans (and very lately, Asians from the Pacific Rim) get treated as productive contributors.<br /><br />Everyone else* - especially those with legitimate gripes and uneasy membership in a larger hostile culture - is a sign of decay, corruption and a failure of the system.<br /><br />* - I'm curious how this would apply to gay people, who are both mistreated by the state and used as a signifier of its liberal benevolence - but I have no experience as such, and am loathe to speculate without some evidence...Jack Crowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499087036876745723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-66937122225674885872011-03-02T11:16:27.697-05:002011-03-02T11:16:27.697-05:00PS. I also want to express again my appreciation ...PS. I also want to express again my appreciation for your site and your writing. You make me think. As the American project lurches into a particularly toxic phase, it's good to read alternative analysis, other ways of looking at things...even or especially when you ask questions!Brian Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-4120815912832260382011-03-02T10:46:22.829-05:002011-03-02T10:46:22.829-05:00I guess where my skepticism still comes into play ...I guess where my skepticism still comes into play is that better run States are often better at ameliorating non-State coercion and perhaps better at providing broad public services. Public sewers built under bureaucratic control are objectively better than dumping the night soil into the gutters. There is a net benefit for society...<br /><br />Plus....as a member of a despised minority, I am not too positive on being at the mercy of community lynch mobs...errr...community assemblies. Especially if said community assemblies are motivated...as they often will be...by religious fervor. for every mayor enforcing property over all you have a community council of elders requiring a young girl to be raped because her brother was seen comporting with a girl of the wrong traditional caste. <br /><br />I'm a gloomy gus, though. With a personal interest in the matter as I am a dread....LOCAL BUREAUCRAT LOL. <br /><br />Plus, Jack Crow has a fascinating essay over at his site that posits that the ameliorating influences of which I speak are beign eliminated in favor of raw control. Definitely food for thought. So...my more positive spin may be fading away. :) <br /><br />I'm curious how many government isos hang out at your site (LOL)Brian Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-29139297317868821942011-03-01T21:48:31.728-05:002011-03-01T21:48:31.728-05:00PS. Your questions and skepticism are great.PS. Your questions and skepticism are great.JRBhttp://ladypoverty.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-80916273077249333622011-03-01T21:45:45.150-05:002011-03-01T21:45:45.150-05:00Brian M.:
The fundamental issue isn't "w...Brian M.:<br /><br />The fundamental issue isn't "what form of social organization" is appropriate for one community vs. another, but whether such choices come from the community itself or are decreed by a specialized class which rules over it. Omit "the state" and you omit the prospects for this specialized class from social life, and nothing else. <br /><br />So rather than have a mayor and city council who guide policy according to the preferences of "property against the majority," you might have mass assemblies or neighborhood meetings where all voices can be heard -- instead of shut out -- who then elect delegates <i>to carry out their decisions, not make decisions for them</i>. This would be a normal part of the life of the community. <br /><br />Questions of large scale administration are completely valid, which is why anarchists insist that everyone have a role in answering them, not just certain people.<br /><br />You are right that tyranny exists in non-state forms, but this doesn't justify tyranny in its political form; nor does it imply that the latter is somehow an antidote to the former. On the contrary, the two can happily coexist. Individuals and communities should be given the maximum advantage in confronting tyranny of every kind, which means having the time and freedom to address them; something which does not happen in a life filled with toil and insecurity at the direction of others.JRBhttp://ladypoverty.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-372530955892855132011-03-01T20:35:58.128-05:002011-03-01T20:35:58.128-05:00Sure...human beings will of course adapt. That...Sure...human beings will of course adapt. That's what we do. <br /><br />I'm not sure the adaptation will always be a positive thing. <br /><br />I don;t know enoguh about Pre-Augustan Rome...but there was certainly a State of sorts...and a system of aristocrat-patron relationships that may function...sorta...but seems to me to be as coercive in its own way???? <br /><br />Plus, pre-Augustan Rome may have lacked a huge bureaucracy, but it also lacked modern sanitation and amenities that I, in my blighted state-loving soul, like to have. (LOL...just kidding). <br /><br />jrb: I bring up scale because human cities are so huge and impose such externalities that without some kind of organized state to handle, for instance, water supply, or garbage, etc. As for private enterprise taking over...who organizes this? is that more just? <br /><br />I am not trying to be a troll here. I'm just not convinced that coercive non state entities are a net improvement over states. <br /><br />Stephenson's The Silver Age was one interesting vision...but not one I necessarily found real appealing in the end.Brian Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-61462668315559834022011-03-01T19:49:20.163-05:002011-03-01T19:49:20.163-05:00PS: to clarify:
The point of referring to Weir...PS: to clarify: <br /><br />The point of referring to Weirton Steel was not to say that it was a huge long-term success -- it wasn't, as the Wiki page states, eventually it went bankrupt. But for those who participated in the ESOP and gained control over the company, it was a great thing -- while it lasted -- according to the locals. They didn't find it hard to transition to employee ownership.<br /><br />Why it eventually failed is an interesting question but my memory of the situation suggests that the employees took over an already-dead company, made it work for a while, but eventually found the things that killed it before the ESOP were still with the company. Meaning, it might well have failed regardless, but they gave it a good shot.<br /><br />It really depends on the will of the people, doesn't it? Downscale to the family unit, imagine mom, dad, two kids. Dad dies unexpectedly. Dad has been the breadwinner and "authority" in the family. Does his death mean the family now will fragment, fall apart? Or can mom & two kids adapt?<br /><br />Any child who has lived through a parental divorce knows what I'm talking about, I think.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-12964921228244921192011-03-01T19:41:21.386-05:002011-03-01T19:41:21.386-05:00I'm a little confused or unclear as to what sp...I'm a little confused or unclear as to what specifically guides those reservations of yours, Brian.<br /><br />When Weirton Steel was "bought" (not a euphemism, but an oversimplification) by its employees, was it a huge freakin' disaster?<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISG_Weirton_Steel<br /><br />Not according to the residents of the Ohio Valley that I knew and talked to at the time.<br /><br />Are you saying you can't imagine any conceivable way for things to work in a stateless society?<br /><br />Are you saying the state must be controlled and then eliminated?<br /><br />What are you saying?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-48458343654804065612011-03-01T19:41:05.399-05:002011-03-01T19:41:05.399-05:00Brian,
Is it possible not to worry about scale? ...Brian, <br /><br />Is it possible not to worry about scale? Sometimes I think that the arguments about scale are colonizations of our mental landscape. We think about size of community because most of us have had no other experience, and a decade of education which prepares us only really to understand "big" as "managed."<br /><br />Very large polities (pre-Augustan Rome, Golden Horde, Imperial Russia) have operated on massive scale with little in the way of what we would treat as bureaucratic hierarchy.Jack Crowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499087036876745723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-52182545873403787982011-03-01T16:41:52.341-05:002011-03-01T16:41:52.341-05:00Thanks for the response jrb...but I still remain u...Thanks for the response jrb...but I still remain unconvinced. Sure...distribution of services in State-controlled cities varies widely. In a metropolitan area controlled by a wide melange of non-state actors, do you anticipate this as being different...or better? That's my struggle...because I don't believe muddling through always works more effectively. Tyranny exists in non-state forms, and I remain unconvinced that a unformated coalition of non State groups will be effective at the metropolitan scale. <br /><br />Mutualism is interesting...but how scalable is it?Brian Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-38188170420534704102011-03-01T15:27:47.325-05:002011-03-01T15:27:47.325-05:00Abonilox:
Thanks! I fixed the link. The Nietzsc...Abonilox:<br /><br />Thanks! I fixed the link. The Nietzsche work is entitled "The Twilight of the Idols" -- footnote 3 on page 83.<br /><br />And thanks for blogging. I just discovered your place.JRBhttp://ladypoverty.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-85671431505719688102011-03-01T14:15:27.058-05:002011-03-01T14:15:27.058-05:00Really well done. Love the Nietzsche quote. I coul...Really well done. Love the Nietzsche quote. I couldn't find from the link what the original source was...Aboniloxhttp://abonilox.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-2960638874429594652011-03-01T12:49:48.447-05:002011-03-01T12:49:48.447-05:00Brian M.:
One way to approach the issue is to ask...Brian M.:<br /><br />One way to approach the issue is to ask, "How are cities run now?" <br /><br />Are they run well by the standard of every individual; or only certain individuals, with large parts of the population struggling and underserved?<br /><br />If communities of whatever size aren't meeting the minimum requirements of personal security and self-fulfillment for their inhabitants, what is the problem?JRBhttp://ladypoverty.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-83484253015811985652011-03-01T11:34:06.476-05:002011-03-01T11:34:06.476-05:00I might agree somewhat with Jim H above but more f...I might agree somewhat with Jim H above but more fundamentally....how will your view work in a metropolitan area of 7 million people? I just remain skeptical that things will work very well or efficiently. Sure...people will get by and things will muddle through, but I am not sure the life will be very "nice" in this stateless utopia. I envision...not Somalia...but maybe, Kinshasa or the favella towns outside major Latin American cities. Or...I imagine the garbage being collected, cheaply, and dumped by the side of the road a la Southern Italy (another place where the State is quite weak in many respects). Or... the racist's mythical South Central, witn weak central authority and plentiful competing gangs and local groups. It "works" I suppose, but not very justly or effectively. <br /><br />I love your writing and you ask so many good questions...I just wonder about your solutions, especially in concentrated population centers with millions of people. And...I am not trying to be a concern troll in any way (LOL).Brian Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-36014218054826721942011-02-28T22:01:07.578-05:002011-02-28T22:01:07.578-05:00You are most persuasive and engaging. More so than...You are most persuasive and engaging. More so than others taking the anarchist position.<br /><br />George Lakoff talks about the "Principle of Conservation of Government: If conservatives succeed in cutting government by the people for the public good, our lives will still be governed, but now by corporations. ..." <a rel="nofollow"> http://wisdomofthewest.blogspot.com/2010/12/breadcrumb-trail.html</a> Without some form of guarantee of human rights, don't the Kochs and the Cokes of the world win every time?Jim H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/02088100982761595050noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-3343119157892815322011-02-28T16:34:12.778-05:002011-02-28T16:34:12.778-05:00reminded me of Utah
Mark Twain said, "Those ...reminded me of Utah<br /><br /><i>Mark Twain said, "Those of you who are inclined to worry have the widest<br />selection in history." Why complain? Try to do something about it - you know,<br />it's [been] goin' on nine months now, since I decided that I was gonna declare<br />that I am a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Oh yes, I'm<br />going to run.<br /><br />Shopped around for a party. Well, I looked at the Republicans. Decided<br />talking to a conservative is like talking to your refridgerator. You know, the<br />light goes on, the light goes off, it's not gonna do anything that isn't built<br />into it. But I'm gonna talk to a conservative any more than I talk to my damn<br />refridgerator. Working for the Democratic party, now, that's kind of like<br />rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.<br /><br />So I created my own party: it's called the Sloth and Indolence Party. I'm<br />running as an anarchist candidate in the best sense of that word. I've studied<br />the presidency carefully. I have seen that our best presidents were the do-<br />nothing presidents: Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding. When you have a<br />president who does things we are all in serious trouble. If he does anything<br />at all: if he gets up at night to go to the bathroom, somehow, mystically,<br />trouble will ensue.<br /><br />I guarantee that if I am elected, I will take over the White House, hang out,<br />shoot pool, scratch my ass, and not do a damn thing.<br /><br />Which is to say: if you want something done, don't come to me do it for you,<br />you gotta get together and figure out how to do it yourselves. Is that a deal?</i>adamcrazypantshttp://adamcrazypants.tumblr.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-87679930519452553492011-02-28T12:47:54.707-05:002011-02-28T12:47:54.707-05:00Most excellent.Most excellent.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-58874081820884474232011-02-28T11:21:22.765-05:002011-02-28T11:21:22.765-05:00I have to acknowledge being influenced in this reg...I have to acknowledge being influenced in this regard by a certain Mr. Crow.JRBhttp://ladypoverty.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5461044.post-92221452821818730002011-02-28T11:15:11.567-05:002011-02-28T11:15:11.567-05:00When Red Emma blended Bakunin, the Neetch and Marx...When Red Emma blended Bakunin, the Neetch and Marx - it worked.<br /><br />You are in good company, with this post.Jack Crowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499087036876745723noreply@blogger.com