Anarchist Fodder For Thought

Dmitry Orlov's second part of "In Praise of Anarchy":

…
Kropotkin's third, and perhaps most significant observation addresses a common misunderstanding of Darwinian evolution. You see, when most people say “Darwinian” it turns out that they actually mean to say “Hobbesian.” Kropotkin pointed out that the term “survival of the fittest” has been misinterpreted to mean that animals compete against other animals of their own species, whereas that just happens to be the shortest path to extinction. This misinterpretation of facts directly observable from nature has led to the faulty Hobbsian justification of the economic appetite as something natural and evolved, and therefore inevitable, giving rise to the conjectured laws of the marketplace, which in turn favor nonempathic, exclusionary, brutal, possessive individualists. The result has been to enshrine mental illness—primitive, pathological, degenerate narcissism—as the ultimate evolutionary adaptation and the basis of the laws of economics. Thus, an entire edifice of economic theory has been erected atop a foundation of delusion borne of a misunderstanding of the patterns present in nature.
…

Richard Seymour on Chavez:

Richard Seymour on Chavez:

I think we on the international left have struggled to really comprehend what is going on in Venezuela. It's not a question of us being particularly dim, or not me anyway (you can look after yourselves): it just defies all our expectations. Who would have thought that a politician elected on a 'Third Way' ticket with a degree of ruling class support would turn into the mortal enemy of US imperialism and the Venezuelan ruling class? Who could have anticipated that an agenda of constitutional change, none of it terribly radical on the surface, would become a kind of political manifesto, a programme of action in the hands of mobilised masses aiming to make good its promise of equality, participatory democracy and human rights, to realise them in the fullest sense? Who would have expected that the ruling class would be so brittle that they would lash out in an ill-judged coup, thus losing a tremendously important political battle, causing a crisis in the state and proving to the Chavez government that had to be a 'class struggle' government to a degree, mobilising its popular support against the elite? Now, importantly, who would have thought the radical left government would still be in power, still going strong, still not hitting a brick wall in terms of delivering reforms?

What is a ‘left’ or ‘workers’ government?

What is a ‘left’ or ‘workers’ government?

A government of the traditional workers’ parties does not gain power, merely because the majority of workers have voted for it. It also depends upon being allowed take office by the bourgeoisie, in other words they feel they are forced to give up their governmental positions to the leaders of the parties with a base in the workers’ movement. They do this either because they feel it would be counter-productive to destroy the myths of parliamentary democracy merely to prevent the temporary loss of power or because they feel compelled to retreat before a mass upsurge of the workers movement (as in Germany in 1918 and the SPD-USPD government, or in Spain with the Caballero government of September 1936).

However, it is only governmental positions that the bourgeoisie give up. They maintain their control over the major sectors of the state machine, over the key areas of the economy and over most of the means of communication. In other words, they retreat from the ‘front-line’ of the state, which in any case have less and less importance as the concentration of capital proceeds, but instead consolidate their power in the hierarchies of the state machine and in the economy.

Thus the ‘left government’ is not a revolutionary government formed by the smashing of the bourgeois state. Rather it exists with capitalism and its state still intact.

At a time of major social crisis the bourgeoisie is prepared to concede even major material reforms on condition that their main agency of control – the state machine – is left intact. Short-term concessions can be made as long as the bourgeoisie retain the means to perpetuate their long-term control. Reforms can always be repealed and fresh attacks launched when the workers movement has declined. …

While it was written 1977, with the impressions of Chile and Italy, is still (and especially) interesting today in the context of Venezuela – were we are seeing the realization – and Greece – were this option is currently not really on the table, but things might have to change.

Cubans are living longer

It is a bit difficult to follow it through as data for Cuba is not available for all time points, but Cubans (a blueish medium size blob in this diagram) are living longer lives than most others in Latin America and the Caribbean.

That is Socialism!

Whether it was a question of the right of petition or the tax on wine, freedom of the press or free trade, the clubs or the municipal charter, protection of personal liberty or regulation of the state budget, the watchword constantly recurs, the theme remains always the same, the verdict is ever ready and invariably reads: "Socialism!" Even bourgeois liberalism is declared socialistic, bourgeois enlightenment socialistic, bourgeois financial reform socialistic. It was socialistic to build a railway where a canal already existed, and it was socialistic to defend oneself with a cane when one was attacked with a rapier.

This was not merely a figure of speech, fashion, or party tactics. The bourgeoisie had a true insight into the fact that all the weapons it had forged against feudalism turned their points against itself, that all the means of education it had produced rebelled against its own civilization, that all the gods it had created had fallen away from it. It understood that all the so-called bourgeois liberties and organs of progress attacked and menaced its class rule at its social foundation and its political summit simultaneously, and had therefore become "socialistic."
– Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

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