Re: Newbie: An anarchist reads Ursula

Sam R. wrote:

> Dan Goodman wrote:
> > > Ursula K. LeGuin is a canon author of modern anarchism, this is
> > > for a number of reasons and /The Dispossessed/ isn't the most
> > > important one, ideologically speaking, for an anarchist reader.
>
> > I don't see an anarchy in _The Dispossessed_. I see a government
> > which isn't called a government.
>
> I am a very much more "mainstream" "class-struggle" anarchist, I
> certainly know of individuals who would consider the collective
> "management of things" to be government. The mainstream of anarchism
> is pretty tolerant of pseudo governments (chiefly in desired forms
> such as workers' councils etc.). They seem to dodge the issue by
> either claiming that pseudo-government is a necessary step towards
> true self-government, or that the pseudo-government in question is
> really a participatory democracy. The first tends towards "stagism"
> as seen in Marx's idea of social revolution, the second towards more
> immediate intellectual dishonesty.

It might be worthwhile to have a chart showing which anarchist groups
consider what things to be governments: Fourieran phalanxes,
city-states, caste councils, companies which control company towns,
etc. If I ever have a spare decade or two with nothing more urgent to
do....

I've read that Libya sometimes claims not to have a government. Oddly
enough, I don't know of any anarchists who agree with this.

> Le Guin's key criticisms of anarchism as relates to the idea of
> central coordination committees are:
> 1) The management of things turns all to readily into the management
> of people;
> 2) Societies are remarkably intolerant of dissent, even if they claim
> not to be.
>
> I think that the second is a relative social truism, and all but the
> pure idealist would recognise the need for continuous struggle in
> "post-revolutionary society".

I've known a couple of people who believed that if there was no State,
there would be no crime.

> The first is more pertinant, because it exposes a contradiction in
> Marxian views of the post-revolutionary society as one of the
> management of things. If the material conditions of life dictate
> social reality, ie: if the arrangements of things correspond to
> consciousness, then the management of things is the management of
> people.

I wonder what Marx would think of today's societies. Particularly the
shifts which have made factory workers an increasingly smaller fraction
of the population.

> In any case, the state apparatus is so limited and light in Le Guin,
> and matches very closely the ideal of a voluntary federation of
> workers' councils (the next society suggested by a majority of
> anarchists), then its a reasonable criticism of anarchy as a
> historical movement.

At least, one kind of anarchy. She doesn't seem to be very accepting
of anarcho-capitalism, and doesn't treat it in that novel.

> As suggested in a rather brutal manner in another reply,

>From someone who I don't recall seeing posts from before. And won't
see posts from again.

> this aspect
> has probably been done to death in a hostile manner. I thought I'd
> continue in the tone of my initial post in reply to you.

Thank you for doing so.

--
Dan Goodman
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All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
.

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